Decentralized social network Mastodon says it can’t comply with Mississippi’s age verification law — the same law that saw rival Bluesky pull out of the state — because it doesn’t have the means to do so.

The social non-profit explains that Mastodon doesn’t track its users, which makes it difficult to enforce such legislation. Nor does it want to use IP address-based blocks, as those would unfairly impact people who were traveling, it says.

top 100 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 263 points 1 year ago (58 children)

There's going to come a point at which the Feds/States will lean on the ISPs to handle the censorship for them. We've had people all over the Nat Sec system staring at the "Great Firewall of China" and asking themselves "Can we get something like this over here?"

  • source
  • hideshow 58 child comments
  • [–] 110 points 1 year ago (44 children)

    This is why it's perfect time to get some tech literacy regarding tor, i2p, yggdrasil, and shadowsocks. It's not perfect solution to use tech to circumvent restrictions that shouldn't be there in the first place, but sometimes it really comes to that point and it's really nice to have all systems ready!

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 44 child comments
  • [–] 83 points 1 year ago (22 children)

    Arguably though, at some point they'll just say "if we can't read your traffic, you can't use the Internet."

    Which still isn't a problem, as I'm sure we can come up with a means to encrypt traffic to make it look entirely legitimate. But it's going to take a while.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 22 child comments
  • [–] 62 points 1 year ago (20 children)

    At that point people would probably go to a p2p adhoc wireless meshnet to bypass the ISPs entirely.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 20 child comments
  • [–] 29 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Sneakernets, my friend. Never underestimate the bandwidth of a pocket full of microsd cards traveling on the subway.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago

    Flash drives of banned foreign films are the one method of accessing foreign media that north Koreans realistically have. It's extremely hard to prevent people plugging a flash drive into their computer in their home to view some media

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    I don't know literally ANYTHING, so take that into account when answering this, but why can't a single person access the "Internet" on their own, without an ISP. Can't they be their own ISP? Or can't small groups of people - friends, family, co-conspirators - create their own private ISP?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago

    The p2p meshnet that they were referring to basically is a local/small group ISP.

    As for why a single person cannot (effectively) become their own ISP? It's complicated. Really complicated. ISPs have to pay other ISPs just like you and I do, unless they're a Tier-1 ISP/Network. Otherwise you're always going to be paying to connect to (and generally paying for bandwidth) another network that has access to a network that then has access to a T1 network. T1s are basically the largest networks that hold (or can directly access) the majority of people on the internet. Top of the food chain, so to speak.

    So in theory, yeah, you can become your own ISP - but you'll still need to pay and be at the mercy of other ISPs. Datacenters are typically their own ISP, but they have to pay others to get online just like we do.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    this is what the mesh networks are that people have mentioned elsewhere in this thread.

    It is theoretically possible to create a purely peer-to-peer network where each individual connects to people nearby, and then any individual can in theory communicate with any other, by passing data packets to nearby people on the network who then pass it on themselves until it reaches the other person.

    You can probably already grasp a few of the issues here - confidentiality is a big one, and reliability is another. But in theory it could work, and the more people who take part in such networks, the more reliable they become.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    But can they only access each other in their own "web?" Can they access the World-Wide Web on their private web? Or does that just expose them to all the other stuff anyway?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago

    You can have nodes on a mesh network which act as gateways to the internet, but such nodes are going to have to go through an ISP. There's no other way to connect to the internet at large unfortunately.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago

    Imagine the internet is a network of roads. The ISPs in some parts of town control the roads, in other parts they only control the stop lights. You can build your own road through private land to avoid the stop lights but it’s expensive. The isps can put traffic cops at the stop lights and monitor and stop you if they want. The only way to get around it is to build a road all the way to the destination.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago* (4 children)

    Like Metastatic on LoRA?

    Or maybe we'll use software defined radios (SDR) to transmit on other unregulated bands (as a hacker, you can often force the software to believe it's in the wrong region to transmit on bands the FTC didn't approve, as long as it's legal somewhere.)

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Meshtastic will never replicate anything like the modern internet. It’s slower than 1980s dialup data speeds. Text messaging, maybe…but you ain’t sending a video through it, that’s for sure.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I didn't know there were unregulated bands. I thought pretty much everything except 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz required licensing and those two were technically unlicensed, but still regulated.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    What's in a name? Legally speaking, your brain and nervous system would be classified as an 'unintentional radiator' (MRIs work because of this fact) and as such would fall under regulated devices if we weren't legal persons.

    I used 'unregulated' (errantly if you insist) to mean both unlicensed and also use cases where FCC isn't actively enforcing the regulations on the books, cause technically virtually everything is 'regulated'.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    All they have to do is send a few crews with log dipoles or yagis. Take a few operators down and charge them with terrorism or something and a critical mass will stop using it.

    We have the tech for drones sweeping everything everywhere with sensors. Cameras, radios, microphones, IR...

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago

    If you mean an HTTPS ban, it’s technically possible, but even mainland China and Russia haven’t gone that far. One major reason is that it would completely undermine basic internet security. It would instantly make man-in-the-middle attacks trivial, letting anyone sniff purchases, transactions, and more. Buying anything online - or using a credit card at all - would suddenly become extremely risky.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I'm making a website to aggregate all of this information. Pro net neutrality, anti censorship laymens guide. Still in the works but its called zoracle.life.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I've tried a few times to check out i2p, it seems to take hours of leaving it running to even get to the point where you can very slowly and inconsistently load even the official pages though.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    In my experience, if you have anything but "Network: OK" status (for example, "Network: Firewalled"), it's not working properly. If you're behind a VPN, you need to port-forward and properly configure a port in I2P config/settings. Another sign that it's misconfigured is 0 participating tunnels. This is how properly configured I2P network statistics looks like with high internet bandwidth:

    spoiler

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Thanks. Somehow the network actually seems to be working pretty well for me now, not sure why it wasn't before.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    The situation does seem quite desperate. I'd like to heed your call. Please advise on most critical systems I should have ready right now today please. I know have a lot of work to do and must stay efficient

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)
    • If the internet were fully controlled, you’d need mesh networks - DIY, decentralized networks using radios, local connections, or other alternative infrastructures. I don’t know all the details, but Yggdrasil is a promising modern project that functions as an alternative “internet” for mesh networks, while also working over the regular internet.

    • Within the normal internet, the most resilient solution against heavy censorship is probably Shadowsocks. It’s widely used in mainland China because it can bypass full-scale DPI (deep packet inspection) by making traffic look like normal HTTPS. There are ways for authorities to detect it, and there are counter-methods, but it remains one of the most reliable tools for evading state-level traffic filtering.

    • Next in line are Tor and I2P. Both are very resilient, and blocking them completely is difficult. It’s a continuous cat-and-mouse game: governments block some bridges or entry nodes, but new ones appear, allowing users to reconnect.

    • Finally, regular VPNs are useful but generally less resilient. They’re the first target for legal restrictions and DPI filtering because their traffic patterns are easier to detect.


    Overall, for deep censorship resistance, it’s a hierarchy: mesh networks > Shadowsocks > Tor/I2P > standard VPNs. You can ask chatbots about any of these and usually get accurate, practical advice because the technical principles are public knowledge.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    Couldn't the US hypothetically put a clause in some 'online safety' law conveniently deanonymizing Tor given they own most of the exit nodes?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Owning a lot of Tor exit nodes doesn’t automatically deanonymize users. Exit nodes only see the traffic as it leaves Tor toward the clearnet, not the original sender. To actually identify someone, you’d need to match their traffic entering the network with the traffic exiting - a correlation attack - which requires visibility on both ends. The US doesn’t “own most exits” either; the network is run by many independent operators, and the Tor community actively monitors for malicious relays. Even if a law forced US exit operators to log everything, that alone wouldn’t deanonymize anyone unless combined with large-scale surveillance of entry traffic, which is extremely resource-intensive and not guaranteed to work. In practice, governments can make running exits legally risky, but they can’t just legislate Tor anonymity away.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Governments also need regular users on Tor for it to function properly, otherwise it becomes easier to track down who is targeting you, most likely another government if they are the only ones with "legal" access.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (7 children)

    I have absolutely no idea what any of that is after tor. I have heard of i2p but I forget

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago* (5 children)
    • Tor is optimized for accessing the regular internet anonymously. It uses onion routing with a small number of long-lived relays, and you exit back to the clearnet through an exit node. Hidden services (now called onion services) exist, but they’re secondary to Tor’s main use case.
    • I2P is designed primarily for internal services (called eepsites, torrents, chat, etc.) inside the I2P network itself. It doesn’t rely on exits the way Tor does. It uses garlic routing (a variant of onion routing with bundled messages), and every participant is both a client and a router, making it more peer-to-peer.
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [+] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Only if you're deliberately running an exit node (doing so requires special setup).

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [+] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)
  • [–] 74 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    If this really about protecting kids, they could've done opt in blocking at the ISP level. Just a few new fields with ISPs and they have products that can take care of this already.

    This is really about tracking every little thing you do online.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 27 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    All my IT and InfoSec friends have called me alarmist for suggesting even the possibility of a GFW of America, but every day that passes, it looks more and more likely to happen, doesn't it?

    Start practicing circumvention techniques now, y'all, while it's still legal and cheap to do so. Learn amateur radio. Learn Meshtastic. Learn all the different censorship-resistant VPN technology out there. Host your own websites or services for friends, family, or your community. It doesn't make it impossible, but it does make it hard, and fascism is nothing if not lazy.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 36 points 1 year ago

    staring at the “Great Firewall of China” and asking themselves “Can we get something like this over here?”

    I've just been assuming that was the goal all along.

    Fifteen years ago, I said on Reddit, "The U.S. is trying to become like China before China can become like the U.S." Of course, I got buried.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago* (5 children)

    Its already happening in Spain. Everyday there is a football match from the spanish league (thats from Friday to Monday, both included) LaLiga orders the ISPs to shutdown everything that uses Cloudflare under the pretext that the shady websites that offers pirated football use their services, killing easily 1/3 of the national traffic for like 4-6h.

    Why the ISPs comply?

    • The biggest ISP of the country (Movistar) also happens to be the main one that showcase legal football.

    How is this legal?

    • The judge that authorised this and the president of LaLiga have been friends since forever.

    Eventually this will go the European court where they will rule this was illegal and anti-constitutional all along and give a Spain a fine (the the citizens have to pay), and revoke this bullshit, but untill then we are screwed. Nothing will happens to LaLiga, the judge, or Movistar, fucking privileged and corrupted bastards.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Whoa whoa whoa! Callate chico!

    You copied this from us Italians where we have the friend of Berlusconi providing the State with a censorship system (the Piracy Shield), allegedly exactly for the same reason since 2023.

    Let's give the right Fascists what is theirs.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 106 points 1 year ago (7 children)
  • [–] 22 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    Would have been the smart move for business, too. Just don't comply until everyone else caves and then sue the state for favoring some businesses.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 71 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    We need more federation and P2P in everything.

  • source
  • hideshow 7 child comments
  • [–] 35 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    P2P! I have been screaming this into every forum at reddit since last piece of shit president was president. See? This is why!

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    What P2P solutions exist that need more attention? I know PeerTube does some neat P2P stuff to keep server load down (if they ever had the traffic...)

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Keet, is a messaging app! It's in beta right now, but its already pretty stable and has a ton of promise!!

    More info= works kinda like torrents - your client's IP & connectivity info is encrypted, then distributed across their 'hyperDHT'. Users you've connected with can ping the DHT to get your current IP info, then you establish a direct connection to whoever you're chatting! File shares are also accomplished over that DHT, so you can send files of any size, even terabytes!

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    You can play multiplayer games with LAN support together for free using a program like Hamachi.

    Use a free VPN (https://riseup.net/en/vpn) to download the game for free. I usually go for fitgirl repacks if they're available. Then you and your buddies can connect to the same 'server' using Hamachi and play together.

    I recommend doing this with the new Halo collection and Baldur's Gate 3 so you can see it's possible, even with new and advanced games.

    Brains > wallets, don't be a corporate simp.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 57 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    Last time i checked "states rights" didn't mean the right to impose your laws on people or businesses running out of other states.

    If anyone from Mississippi wants to use our services I'm totally ready to ignore any and all laws that don't acknowledge to sovereignty of the net.

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 148 points 1 year ago* (19 children)

    I agree with mastodon, even though eventually Texas will enact similar legislation forcing me to use a vpn to read it

  • source
  • hideshow 19 child comments
  • [–] 46 points 1 year ago (18 children)

    Woudn't it be smarter to just leave the hellhole that is Texas? Either to the north or to the south, leaving is a win.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 18 child comments
  • [–] 111 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Sometimes there's family or other things you just can't take with you. Support structures you might not have somewhere else. Friends and neighbors. Mutual aid.

    There can be circumstances that override that. But honestly, the more that flee. The easier it is to get what the fascists want. And at best you're only helping yourself short term. Because no matter where you go. They will come for you if they can.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [+] 49 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)
  • [–] 33 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    And even there. There's no guarantee. Going to Europe where fascists in Russia, Hungary, etc loom? Maybe you'll be safe a little longer somewhere on the Asian continent with the currently slower rolling fascist forces there. But it's only temporary. You can't ultimately escape.

    The question is. Where well the breaking point be for most people. What event will cause the public to drag these fuckers from their homes and hold them responsible. Because that's what it's going to take. For them to remember that they rely on us. Not only for their wealth. But continued existence. Only when that fear has been driven into them, will things even start to get better.

    And it might surprise us. It may just be a red state that does it. One of these Republican sycophants getting dragged from a town hall. Assaulted by a whole community for their rolls in making things worse for everyone. Police are going to have a hard time locking up a whole town. And these elected ghouls that love to ignore their constituents will reel in terror. To be clear, violence isn't the answer. Fear is. The fear of knowing we far outnumber them. That they could be subject to violent accountability at any moment. Dragged from their safe beds even.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (-1 replies)
  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago

    People fleeing fascism are just hoping other people will be forced to fight it and win before it gets to them. No matter what happens, eventually some people will have to stand and fight it. There is nothing wrong with deciding that the time to stand and fight it has come. It is scary, yes. It has been a long time since we have had to fight fascism. We might feel like we have forgotten how. But we will learn quickly. The same technology that enables them also enables us in ways just as profound, maybe more profound. Vive la resistance!

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    If they're coming no matter where Id recommend anyplace that lets you keep a firearm and to stay away from anywhere that doesn't. Unless anyone's come up with a better way to stop fascists in the past 80 years, there's really only one solution. If you don't want to be part of the solution then you may as well stay right where you are and hope someone else does it for you.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Firearms are a double edged sword. Maybe they help, maybe they hurt. But when society turns against you, and no place is safe for you. All the guns in the world even in the face of an unarmed populace won't save you.

  • source
  • parent
  • load more comments (-1 replies)
  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago

    I was fruitful and multiplied, its hard to organize a large migration of people, some of whom want to stay.

    I will travel, but am rather tied to this area, even if I do not see it changing for the better in my lifetime

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago

    Idk about the person you are replying to but I have spent 15 years trying to get out of the state that I am in. It’s really hard to move out of low cost of living areas to higher ones without a job and a lot of planning.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago

    Are you really so naive that you believe that a VPN subscription is more difficult or a higher bar than actually getting up and moving?

    Potentially meaning you need to find new jobs, new friends, new support structures....etc

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Rather than encourage people to leave, we should encourage more enlightened people to move there, and change the political climate. A lot of states are closer to flipping than people think, and Texas is one of them.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Rather than encourage people to leave, we should encourage more enlightened people to move there, and change the political climate

    You want to put those "more enlightened people" at risk of being Gestapo'd or killed? We need them where they can actually do a net positive effect!

    First clean up the shit in Texas (or any other fascist shithole) and make it livable, then live there.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Your answer seems so out of touch with reality. It feels equivalent to suggesting a depressed person to simply don't be sad.

    Moving out to a different state is not easy, either because of family, job, money, studies, life or any other situation.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    I don't think that comparison is as unequivocal as you seem to think. Sure, I bet it's more likely than not that the average person has any of those attachments, but some people don't. Maybe their job is a dead end, their family is abusive or toxic, their money is a sunk cost, their studies are related to a futile program, and they just need someone to put a bug in their head.

    I was abused, manipulated, homeless, with 30k stuck in a scam and not a penny to my name, trying to get into triangle tech. I had every reason to stay. But my closest friend told me to run the fuck away and never look back - I had never considered it. Best advice I ever got and it saved my life. And triangle tech was just another scam.

    You never know ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  • source
  • parent
  • Also states don't have one company to go after. It is nearly impossible to track down and file court orders for if your lucky non-profits in other countries.

    Like I don't think there are many people that host Mastodon instances that will listen to a court order out of the goodness of there heart.

  • source
  • load more comments
    view more: next ›
    190 comments in c/technology@lemmy.world view that post
    35 comments in c/privacy@lemmy.ml view that post
    7 comments in c/mastodon@lemmy.world view that post
    7 comments in c/technology@lemmy.zip view that post
    2 comments in c/privacy@programming.dev view that post
    1 comment in c/fediverse_press@lemmy.world view that post
    1 comment in c/fediverse@lemmy.zip view that post