Also worth noting that traffic obfuscation would become much more important, as a crackdown on VPNs would likely also be accompanied by a crackdown on privacy-oriented tools

On the one hand, I know it's bullshit and they would just break the tools that a.) everyone uses, including themselves, and b.) it just brings even more chaos and will not solve the problems that they think. On the other hand, I feel they just don't give a shit and want to go through because they know that enough people will probably just give up and accept it, which will lead lawmakers to continue with these surveillance tatics because they'll believe people are ok with it. I don't think it's going to work, but I feel we are at a point where they just don't care and will push on through with some way to damage VPNs. I apologize if I'm coming off pessismistic, but's hard to try to be positive when it's not one country, but many countries that want to restict or ban VPNs and this just part of the plan to dismantle privacy. We'll see what happens in the coming months.

I have never heard about socks. I'll have to look into regardless if a VPN ban happens or not. Thank you.

I have not heard about Socks5. I'll look into it. Thank you!

I hear you but whats to stop them from banning foreign vpns?

Government security would be too. They would undoubtedly give themselves an exception, but it shows how little the people suggesting it understands how the modern world operates

Rules for thee. I really do not think a ban on vpns would affect business at all, it would be focused on the general population as we do not deserve privacy where the businesses do.

We'll see what happens, but I feel that, if they don't ban VPNs, they are going to try and put restrictions on them in some way. I just think they don't care if they break the tools everyone uses and are totally on board messing with VPNs, which is why I wanted to see if there was anything else that could possible replace them. I'm hope I'm wrong and they leave VPNs alone, but we are in new territory of governments trying to dismantle our privacy and I feel at this point, nothing is off the table.

What is your implication here?

That no has ever or will ever discuss VPN alternatives outside of this +30 vote thread on lemmy.ca and that the governments of the world will reference this thread to go about determining what to outlaw?

I'm sorry to tell you, but every single one of these governments is already in some regard aware of everything in this thread and beyond by virtue of it already being public information - and if they weren't aware of this stuff, don't you think they would for example, just pay someone to tell them?

They know Tor exists, they know I2P exists, they know Socks5 Proxies exist, they know meshtastic exists, they know freenet exists, they know Yggdrasil exists, they know mail exists, they know sharing the password to an email account so that people can read each others saved drafts exists, they know carrier pigeons exist, they know SSL/TLS exists, they know telnet exists, they know ssh exists, they know IRC exists, they know matrix chat exists, they know signal exists, they know simplexx exists, they know telegram exists, they know dead drops exists, etc.

You also realize that if they wanted to cover all of their bases they don't even have to go that far? They could just pass a law stating "Any product or technology which hides internet bound network traffic from your ISP is now illegal"? They could even say "Attempting to keep any information private from a government entity is illegal".

Like unless you secretly wrote your own communications protocol and then never shared it (which kind of defeats the purpose), then if you have access to the knowledge of the protocol existing, so does any government (at least in the case of any widely used communications technology).