Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

421 pointsposted 12 days ago
by siev
(restofworld.org)

377 Comments

mahdi7d1

12 days ago

I've been moderately happy this morning to find out I can open hackernews. Also Gmail is working. After attempting to get bridges using email and configuring an dozen of them I got 100% connection but then it disconnected without me being able to connect to anything. I would assume some sort of tunneling must be possible cause the services available are varied and not limited to a few websites (We only had access to Google Search for about a week and nothing before that) now even Nintendo Store opened to my complete surprise.

_ink_

12 days ago

I there anything the outside world can do? Like are the people relying on https://snowflake.torproject.org/ and adding bandwidth there actually makes a difference?

siev

11 days ago

I usually use snowflake as a last resort, and even that's not consistently working right now. However I've seen people recommend running Conduit[1] to friends overseas, which is an easy-to-use Psiphon proxy node. Psiphon is a popular circumvention tool here so that could be helpful.

[1] https://conduit.psiphon.ca/

mohsen1

12 days ago

Unfortunately if it's public the government can also see it and block it :(

direwolf20

12 days ago

Snowflake aims to make every IP address a Tor bridge. It hides Tor traffic inside something very similar to a video call, which works in a browser behind NAT.

user

12 days ago

[deleted]

ignoramous

11 days ago

If the censors could probe and detect Snowflake on IPs, those will get blocked. When a censor observes suspiciously high amount of traffic to a set of IPs, it might block them or shape bandwidth.

hopelite

12 days ago

[flagged]

mohsen1

12 days ago

You and your friends at Islamic Republic would do exactly what Israel has done in Gaza, if necessary. Killing thousands in less than 2 days is just a sign of nature of Islamic Republic. If necessary they would use chemical weapons against people of Iran.

bamboozled

11 days ago

If you're an American, demand radio free gets all it's funding back to 2024 levels, for a start. I read that people in Iran have relied on that service for a long time.

SturgeonsLaw

12 days ago

Is there anything people outside Iran can spin up in order to get more routes out?

user

12 days ago

[deleted]

m-p-3

10 days ago

https://reticulum.network/ with LoRa-based directional antennas pointed toward Iran near the border?

Don't expect sending anything massive such as video recording, but should be enough for text-based communications.

gambutin

12 days ago

Glad to see you here.

I’m almost afraid to ask but how are you and everyone else?

mahdi7d1

12 days ago

I use this same username everywhere and it's tied to my identity so let me keep it brief. I live in a small town and you wouldn't get much protesting or any political activity in those.

On the other hand, I'm currently serving in the police force (Which all able bodied men of age have to do and serve in one of the three armed forces of my country) and the bigger question since the start of the protests has been "What to do if I was put in a position against people?"

Thankfully that hasn't happened yet but still there is a feeling of being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

marbli2

12 days ago

Logged in just to say, 100% with the other person's comment for you to make a new username... why even risk having something so personally identifiable on the internet especially in the country you live in. I don't and I live in the United States...

mabedan

12 days ago

Brother, maybe make a new username...

thomassmith65

12 days ago

That is a nightmare. Hopefully events play out such that you can stay true to your conscience.

weikju

12 days ago

… while every other country waits to see how it goes while drafting plans to emulate this

dragonelite

12 days ago

The global cybersphere will split up, the west and other parties have shown they will use social media networks to organize regime change and take over legitimate protests.

Especially now that China is taking an ever increasing share of the global information streams. Given the increased panicked the US had about tiktok. Showing the result of the western sponsored genocide in Gaza. They had to enforce ownership handover of tiktok US to a group of US based entities.

So i wouldn't be surprised US internet sphere will shrink over time now that China can go on the offensive in the cyber-realm.. The components are already in place just pull the switch so cloudflare has to regulate who gets in and who gets out.

jimbohn

12 days ago

When it comes to the internet, it seems to me that "the other parties" here carries a lot of weight when it comes to disinfo, polarizing propaganda, etc.

throw310822

12 days ago

Why, do you think that the US, where all the giant social network companies are based, isn't doing this on a massive scale, much larger than anything Russia or Iran (and probably China for now) could ever hope to do?

jimbohn

11 days ago

Because most propaganda I see online seems to have a clear direction, and because of some not-so-recent "scandals" where a bunch of American influencers/grifters were discovered to be paid by russia to incite civil war.

sofixa

12 days ago

Because if it did, we'd know about it. If we can get researches from Russia to expose their country's nefarious dealings, at the threat of death, we could easily get French, or German, or Canadian, or British, or American, or Czech researchers or whistleblowers exposing American propaganda campaigns.

Hell, look at Twitter/X. It got acquired by a mental guy who was screaming about government propaganda and censorship (while doing Nazi salutes). Do you really think that if there was any government mandate to do anything like what the Russians are doing, he wouldn't have exposed it as "SEE, I TOLD YOU BIG GUBIMNT BAD!!" ?

sofixa

12 days ago

< The global cybersphere will split up, the west and other parties have shown they will use social media networks to organize regime change and take over legitimate protests.

It's interesting you focus on "the west" when we have solid proof about e.g. Russian interference in many an election and protest via social media. From paid propagandist (e.g. Tim Pool) to the Internet Research Agency. The only factual information we have about anything remotely similar from "the west" was that research about Facebook activity in the Central African Republic being roughly 40/40/20 split between Russians, French, and actual locals. And even that isn't comparable because the French online campaign was mostly combatting Russian disinformation propaganda, not trying to bring about a coup or stoking tensions to get to a civil war.

> Showing the result of the western sponsored genocide in Gaza

The genocide in Gaza is not "sponsored" by the "west". US, maybe.

lstodd

12 days ago

> The genocide in Gaza is not "sponsored" by the "west". US, maybe.

Well, Hamas was for decades sponsored by entire West via UNRWA while their "from the river to the sea" slogan is as clearly expressed intent to commit genocide as one can wish for.

spwa4

12 days ago

I think you mean sponsored by the UN, whose largest voting block is the "Organization of Islamic countries" and whose second largest voting block is the "Non-Aligned movement" (that really means aligned with Moscow). There's overlap, for example, Iran is in both camps (fitting since it's a theocracy and both the Iranian government and the parent organization of Hamas, the muslim brotherhood, was greatly grown and sponsored by/with the help of the KGB during the cold war. Perhaps also relevant: the PA's original leader, Yasser Arafat El-Masri (translates to: The wise Egyptian) was an Egyptian KGB spy and was sponsored by Moscow with at least a billion dollars)

lstodd

5 days ago

Well yes, the history of Arab-Israeli conflict is fascinating. Sadly those who shout "Gaza Genocide" seem incapable of even thinking of reading up on the topic.

Non-aligned is China nowadays for what it's worth, given that UN turned into complete irrelevance, only thing left for them to do being grift.

ajsnigrutin

12 days ago

I mean... EU already blocks eg. some russian sites (some countries more effectively than others)... plus all the chat control pressures every year.

Spain is blocking whole blocks of internet during football matches.

UK is making you "show your ID card" to jerk off.

But every such country likes pointing fingers at others, "hey, our censorship is not bad, they have more of it!".

edit: considering the downvotes, HN is not bothered by our censorship either

walletdrainer

12 days ago

> UK is making you "show your ID card" to jerk off.

There are no ID cards in the UK, so you actually have to get a special jerking off loicense.

isoprophlex

12 days ago

I remember giggling at those "oi you got a loicense for that m8??!" memes. Funny, maybe, but not to be taken seriously.

Fast forward less than ten years, and here we are.

nicoburns

12 days ago

There are passports and driving licenses which are the de facto forms of ID in the UK (there are technically other valid forms of ID for at least some purposes, but almost nobody uses them). ~85% of UK residents have a passport.

walletdrainer

12 days ago

Yes, but luckily the people who don’t fly or drive can now show their jerking-off loicense while buying alcohol at whole foods.

lifestyleguru

12 days ago

What if someone is not a certified wanker?

reactordev

12 days ago

Head down to your local Tory office and prove it.

keysersoze33

12 days ago

If all else fails, ask for BJ

pixelpoet

12 days ago

They referred me to the BBC

reactordev

12 days ago

Old FM department or Business Development & Social Management?

jamesbelchamber

12 days ago

The wanker licensing board defected to Reform last week

avhception

12 days ago

I remember a popular "greentext" specifically about this...

perihelions

12 days ago

An even more apt analogy is France in New Caledonia. Back in 2024, the French territorial government used an anti-terrorism law to enforce DNS blocks in that overseas territory, for the express purpose of suppressing political protests (by New Caledonians angry at the French mainland government).

> "Philippe Gomes, the former president of New Caledonia's government, told POLITICO the decision aimed to stop protesters from "organizing reunions and protests" through the app."

[0] https://www.politico.eu/article/french-tiktok-ban-new-caledo...

This is the only example I'm aware of (are there others?) of a Western government effecting internet censorship to suppress protests. (Though the article also mentions Macron considering (but rejecting) the same idea in France, to suppress protests following a police shooting. See also[1])

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36599726 ("Macron floats social media cuts during riots", 105 comments)

edit: There was also an incident in San Francisco way back in 2011,

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2879546 ("San Francisco Subway Muzzles Cell Service During Protest", 113 comments)

sofixa

12 days ago

> for the express purpose of suppressing political protests (by New Caledonians angry at the French mainland government).

No, to stop the spread of targeted disinformation by foreign actors stoking those protests to turn into riots. (and if you need any proof, check out the protestors with Azeri flags, in New Caledonia. Azerbaijan's tinpot dictator hates France because France supported Armenia, so he's been trying various ways to undermine France because he's that fragile: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/17/new-ca... )

perihelions

11 days ago

"aimed to stop protesters from "organizing reunions and protests"" is a direct quote from one of their top politicians. I'm not going to pretend I didn't read it.

There's foreign bad-actor misinformation in every country (Iran too!)—it's cynical, and specious, to say that excuses governments who take away their citizens' internet access. New Caledonia admitted specific intent to target "organizing protests". That's exactly the reason why they shouldn't have the power to cut off their internet (though really, no one should). They shouldn't be in that position of power over the protesting faction, because their disagreements are so strong that they can't help but abuse that power. They've delegimitized the protestors; by censoring them, they're not "protecting" them from foreign actors in some well-meaning paternalistic way (their rationalization), they are rather continuing their political battle by other methods.

It's an anti-pattern, all over the world right now, that groups of people who start off with irreconcilable political differences, devalue the legitimacy of the other group's speech and their right to speak it. One group calling another "mislead by propaganda" is an aspect of that delegimitization. This pattern needs to be called out and pushed back against, when it's used to rationalize silencing dissent.

expedition32

12 days ago

The difference is that people in my country get to vote. A lot.

In the Netherlands GOVERNMENT=THE PEOPLE to a rather problematic degree (if only you knew how bad things really are).

If you want to start an argument "the Netherlands is just like Iran" I challenge it with 20 political parties in Parliament. Including a pro Kremlin party lol.

traceroute66

12 days ago

> UK is making you "show your ID card" to jerk off.

If you are going to post shit like that, at least get your fucking facts right.

Namely that you are three weeks out of date sushine.

The idea has been dropped: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3385zrrx73o

acka

12 days ago

Reading comprehension, my friend.

The article you linked to is about the dropped plan to require ID for permission to work in the UK.

The parent commenter is referring to age verification for accessing adult content using "highly effective age-assurance systems" (such as photo ID cards, biometrics, etc.) under the Online Safety Act 2023, which is still very much in effect.

traceroute66

12 days ago

> under the Online Safety Act 2023, which is still very much in effect.

To which I say, the people of the UK are not stupid and know what a VPN is.

Its not rocket-science to bypass the ID check requirement.

ajsnigrutin

12 days ago

First you're going to insult me, call me a sunshine, and defend what the UK government is doing, because there's currently a way to bypass a restriction that shouldn't exist implemented this way in the first place?

So, by your logic, russian censorship of media is ok too, just use a vpn, right? Chinese firewall? Just use a VPN! Turkey social media blackouts? VPN!

buzzerbetrayed

12 days ago

Why during football matches?

ajsnigrutin

12 days ago

So people wouldn't stream the games ilegally... the private entity that owns the rights to broadcasting the games can arbitrarily ban whole subnets.

the end result is well... not good:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45323856

sigmar

12 days ago

A company using legal action to protect their IP rights is so different from a theocratic dictatorship shutting down the entire Internet to prevent their overthrow. Perhaps you don't follow the news about Iran but these comments are incredibly daft.

freetanga

12 days ago

The problem itself is not IP protection…. They tried that, and were always chasing behind - servers changed week after week, ban after ban.

So, misteriously (suspicions of bribery abound) now they block full blocks of internet preventively, bringing down innocent and paying customers with them. From Law Enforcement to privatized Minority Report.

Thats what people dislike. If you are a private entity and loose money to piracy, use the legal framework to solve it. Don’t override it with lobbying

lukan

12 days ago

You don't see a problem if private companies get the right to decide who to block from the internet, without any process?

direwolf20

12 days ago

That's freedom of market. You need to sue your ISP for contract breach, they said they'd provide internet access and didn't.

lukan

12 days ago

That market is not really free, but government regulated and mandated and the government says they are fine to do this (as far as I know, I do not live in spain).

marrs

12 days ago

If you have to sue your provider just to get a normal service then society has already failed. I can only imagine you're an American for litigation to be your go-to solution.

mrguyorama

11 days ago

Note, litigation being the "go to" solution of the American system is intended. The civil courts were basically supposed to solve all problems. Which is why they work great for rich people.

All the memes about America being "litigious" are intentional. It is incredibly difficult to seek preventative justice in the US. The intent is that you must be harmed first and then be made right.

It's a system dreamed up by wealthy aristocrats who were openly against slavery but owned people anyway and assholes who had the audacity to claim the constitution was "We the People" even though it excluded most people and was drafted entirely without authority to do so (defensible, the articles of confederation were utterly failing) and purposely built a system where people didn't vote for representation (because they didn't want a society representative of average people) and the few idealists who were far too stupid or gullible to go along with all of this. Tons of them were lawyers.

We don't, for example, have an ombudsman I can go to and complain about a business maybe not following the law and get the government to essentially be my advocate. We instead are forced to sue that company, and prove in court, with vastly unequal resources, that we deserve remedy.

Our judicial system is also clearly preferential to corporations over people, and refuses to hold corporations to justice, even when they have been objectively found wrong!

The jury of her peers awarded the McDonalds hot coffee lady $2.7 million (explicitly "two days of coffee revenue") because there was clear negligence and refusal to act safely after burning tens of other people and being outright warned about their coffee temperature, and the judge decided to unilaterally reduce that payout to half a million! He said the payout "must be reasonably related to the injury" and admitted Mcdonalds had acted recklessly and caused the injury and acted with "wanton and callous behavior" and the judge STILL reduced the clearly valid jury verdict by a huge amount! God forbid a company actually pay for their clear and reckless disregard!

direwolf20

12 days ago

I rarely encounter a company that doesn't scam me to the maximum extent it thinks it can get away with. That extent is determined by how many customers sue them.

ajsnigrutin

12 days ago

But that's even worse... Iran is a stuck up country with huge political issues, internal and external pressures, outside countries attacking it while internally they're at the cusp of a civil war. Of course they'll shut down the internet, what else do you expect them to do? It's not like they have many options, nor the government trying to stay in power and crush a coup, even if that means blocking the internet, nor the people who are protesting against it and risking their lives.

But EU countries should be a bastion of freedom, free speech, free access to information, democracy, human rights, rights to this, rights to that... Why do we, the EU countries have to use the same playbook? Yes, banning the whole internet is in one way worse and in other easier, than just banning a list of sites where people can find a way around it, but again, the difference is just in the quantity, the censorship factor is the same. The government gets scared people will see some other propaganda from the other side, and censors it... and even that is done very selectively (daily mail is still accessible from over here, so are fox news and cnn)

With spain it's even worse, because it's not even the government doing it, but the government giving the right of censorship to a private company which clearly abuses that right and the government tolerates this... no court orders, no judges, no way to complain, no fair use, no nothing, a private company decides and the government gives them a blank stamped paper to aprove that.

Yes, i know iran has it much worse, but there's nothing we can do about it here, assuming the internet is banned for iranians and they can't read this or comment here. But EU is doing the same, and we've been tolerating it for years... a site here, a site there,... not everything, but censorship is still censorship, no matter how many sites are censored, and there are people from EU here that should argue against censorship, even if it's just a few sites and not all of them.

FilosofumRex

12 days ago

[flagged]

breppp

12 days ago

A republic with a supreme religious leader who actually decides everything, that fakes elections and has a council of religious leaders that can disqualify any candidate

that's without even talking about killing 30,000-40,000 citizens for wanting their rights

> It subsidize basic needs of its poorer citizens, such as fuel, bread, housing, education and healthcare.

I'd start with supplying basic needs like water and electricity.

The actual subsidizing is for the IRGC which steals whatever they can get their hands on so they can be counted on to mass slaughter the people

FilosofumRex

12 days ago

Subsidies are enacted and approved by Parliament and enshrined in the law. IRGC has nothing to do with approval or distribution of subsidies.

21asdffdsa12

12 days ago

Do not forget funding widespread proxxy wars and terrorism in the region, although that game has many players: Qatar, UAE, Turkey, Egypt..

FilosofumRex

11 days ago

you're absolutely "Right". Iran should hold as many elections as Saudis or UAE, have as many coups by generals as in Egypt and Pakistan, or build as many American military bases as Jordan and Turkey to be considered a republic by your types.

noduerme

12 days ago

>> Arabia, UAE or Israel's internet

You mean the internet?

siev

12 days ago

> It subsidize basic needs of its poorer citizens, such as fuel, bread, housing, education and healthcare.

Hold on, am I living in the wrong Iran?

orwin

12 days ago

Khomenei is called the "supreme leader" since 89. His predecessor betrayed his allies by wording a referendum for the abolition of the monarchy weirdly, making it instead about the installation of a theocracy.

(i don't want to make it overly political, but once again the historical materialist offshots of the revolutionary groups are the only ones who understood the betrayal and called a boycott of this referendum. Please listen to marxists when they're in a coup, they are so used to betrayal they'll see it comming)

hagbard_c

12 days ago

It was the same "Marxists" who helped Khomeini gain power so by all means observe Marxists but only to understand where they are trying to lead society so you can be ready to limit the amount of damage they'll do. Lenin is supposed to have called these people 'useful idiots', useful to create societal upheaval because they are so easy to lead and eager to follow but for that same reason they should be neutralised once the Party has gained power. Lenin and Stalin tended to just kill them or sent them into the GULAG, Mao sent them to the countryside, Khomeini followed Lenin and Stalin in getting rid of the Marxist students who helped push the revolution.

orwin

12 days ago

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. They were part of the coalition against the Shah, which included Islamists, Democrats and Marxists. Since Marxists are used to be betrayed, it's basically a feature at this point, they were the ones to understand where the betrayal would come from. If the democrats did follow and boycotted the referendum too, maybe Iran wouldn't have a supreme leader and have a democracy. So if you're part of a coalition with Marxists, listen to their paranoia once it's done.

hagbard_c

12 days ago

Iran is a democratic republic just like the 'democratic peoples republic' of North Korea is, i.e. not at all. It is remarkable how often entities which use the term 'democratic' do not live up to the concept it refers to

direwolf20

12 days ago

The rule is that the more times "people" appears in a country's name, the less free it is. The DPRK has it three times - in Greek, English, and Latin.

FilosofumRex

12 days ago

Iran is not called a democratic republic but an Islamic Republic and at that it is the only one of its kind in all of Middle East. Like all republics holds regular elections and referendums. The fact that you don't like the results does not make it a dictatorship

baxtr

12 days ago

Downvotes might happen because your comment reads one-sided.

What about Russia blocking sites?

As of late 2025 and early 2026, Russia has blocked numerous foreign communication, social media, and information services, restricting platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram (partially), Signal, Viber, FaceTime, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Many independent news, VPN services, and foreign websites (e.g., Chess.com) are also inaccessible

ajsnigrutin

12 days ago

But that's my point exactly.... do you consider this to be a good thing? Should EU behave the same as russia or iran? Should those two countries be an "excuse" for us to do it too (hey! russia does it too!)? Should the police in eg. Brussles start shooting at protesting farmers and say "what about iran, they're killing their protesters too!"?

If we consider russia bad for doing those blocks above, then we should consider EU being bad when they do it for us.

baxtr

12 days ago

Then it's a misunderstanding and I had misread your original comment.

Of course we should not ban anything in the West.

wartywhoa23

12 days ago

[flagged]

wewxjfq

12 days ago

Your upvotes are issued by sheep and wolf in sheep's clothing telling you to not censor propaganda from a country that's been waging war against you.

31337Logic

12 days ago

Yeah, you're right. It's totally fair to compare how the EU treats its people to how Iran is treating its people right now. Good job. :-/

breppp

12 days ago

it's a very weird kind of propaganda I see a lot of lately.

Everything is the same and comparable never mind how hyperbolic. Doubt it? be showered with cherry picked micro facts that on the surface are similar.

This rests on the fact that in order to establish a big picture you have to take small facts and agree on the big picture, and that leap from small and verifiable to large and analytic is the place you can inject faith and emotion

Nursie

12 days ago

This seems to happen a lot.

The UK is doing some shitty stuff and a man was arrested for wearing a “Plasticine Action” t-shirt a few weeks ago, “Palestine Action” being a proscribed group in the UK, and showing support being an offence. When the mistake was realised he was released after a few hours with an apology.

These things are objectively terrible, shouldn’t be happening. The UK government is under popular and legal pressure to un-proscribe the group as hundreds (thousands?) have been arrested and charged.

But it is not the same as someone being ‘disappeared’ in South American dictatorships, where they would be taken and denied process for years if not killed outright. Yet people here drew that comparison. He was arrested for inconvenient speech! It’s the same! And then I came under fire for defending the actions of the UK, having done nothing of the sort.

It’s really weird to watch.

netsharc

12 days ago

But defending the arrest of the man with "Plasticine Action" t-shirt as a mistake (only realized after a "few" hours, god damn!), is god damn ridiculous.

About 2 decades ago I read an article about how bureucracies don't even allow for humor any more, e.g. even clearly joking about having a bomb in the airport is now taboo. Something about rigid inhumane inflexible rules, in my vague memory of that article.

Where airport security has to examine babies for terrorist motives, because it's written in the rules, fuck human reasoning!

Heh in my own estimation arresting supporters of Palestine Action for peacefully protesting is already too close to Iranian autocracy ideal and too far from a "democratic country" ideal which the UK used to be...

Nursie

12 days ago

Who’s defending it?

It’s awful that they’re arresting people with “Palestine Action” t-shirts too. It’s just not the same thing as actually disappearing people.

That's the point of this thread, no? Things can be bad in different ways and to different degrees.

If I say I don't like the way you just spoke about my sister and punch you in the gut, that's a pretty shitty thing to do.

If I say I don't like the way you just spoke about my sister and cut your throat then bury your body in the forest, I would like to think we can agree that's worse.

ajsnigrutin

12 days ago

> If I say I don't like the way you just spoke about my sister and punch you in the gut, that's a pretty shitty thing to do.

> If I say I don't like the way you just spoke about my sister and cut your throat then bury your body in the forest, I would like to think we can agree that's worse.

So at what point can we start saying that violence because of words (or shirts) is bad? How much does it have to hurt? Should we act as if you're a good guy, because it was just a punch? Or should we remove you from power and punish you before your punches turn into throat cutting?

10 years ago, getting arrested for wearing a tshirt with some text on it, would be on an iran/north korea level of shitty governments, something that could never happen "at home" (in uk, eu,...)... now it's somehow become "shitty, but not as bad, because in some other land you'd get shot instead," (and similar excuses). How much closer must UK come to iranian levels, before you start seeing the parallels between the behaviour of the two governments?

We were pointing out "the great firewall of china" not so many years ago as a horrible thing, now we have censorship in EU. How many sites must be added to the EU list to become an equivalent of the chinese "firewall"?

This behaviour has to be stopped now, when it's just arrest and excuses, and not after 10 years when people start getting shot for protesting here too.

Nursie

12 days ago

> So at what point can we start saying that violence because of words (or shirts) is bad?

Straight away!

> Should we act as if you're a good guy, because it was just a punch?

No, and nobody is asking you to. In fact this is the whole point, can you not distinguish between those two guys?

Neither one is good. You're not being asked to decide one is 'good' and the other 'bad'. You're not being asked to accept that the more minor one is OK because it's not as bad as the other one.

They can both be bad. But they aren't the same. We don't say "Dude A was upset about someone talking smack about his sister too, so he's just as bad as Dude B". Or at least most people wouldn't. But we also don't say "It's fine to punch someone in the gut because at least he didn't cut the guy's throat". Dude A probably gets a night in the cells and a minor punishment, maybe a conviction for assault and released on parole for time served. He's got some anger issues and probably some issues in his relationshp with women. B gets serious jail time.

> now it's somehow become "shitty, but not as bad, because in some other land you'd get shot instead," (and similar excuses)

Nobody's making excuses. That's all on you and how you're deciding to ascribe motivations to other posters. Let me say it again - nobody is saying it's OK. I'm not defending anything. If you think I am I'd invite you to re-read the thread.

> How much closer must UK come to iranian levels, before you start seeing the parallels between the behaviour of the two governments?

One is a strict conservative, theocratic dictatorship that is commiting mass murder in order to hold on to power. The other is a troubled democracy that, as far as anyone can tell, isn't murdering its citizens to keep order but has made some pretty fucked up decisions about what constitutes terrorism and a terrorist organisation. Both of these are bad. But they aren't the same, there are some parallels in their actions, though not so much in either motivation or outcomes. And proclaiming that the actions of the UK or the EU are the same as Iran or Russia or China provides cover for atrocities IMHO, and is straight out of the propaganda playbook those countries like to put about the place. It also just destroys nuance of discussion when basically anything negative may as well be Hitler.

> 10 years ago, getting arrested for wearing a tshirt

Was something that happened occasionally under varying different laws. It was shit then too.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/oct/11/manchester-man-ja...

And if you'd worn a pro-IRA t-shirt in the 80s/90s, you'd have faced arrest for that as well. Still would in fact. The major change that people have a problem with in the Plasticine/Palestine action cases is the classification of a pro-Human Rights, direct-action group as a terrorist organisation, and the suppression of speech as a result of that classification. If you'd like to see a list of all the organisations currently classified this way, there's one here - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/proscribed-terror...

I don't think many people in the UK have a real problem with this law as it applies to (say) ISIS, or the Wagner Group, though I know that in some other countries (US?) you are more likely to be able to show support for those without facing sanction because of stronger protections of free speech.

stereolambda

12 days ago

I would see it as moving the baseline, which Europe and (more historically) UK was for many people in civil rights area. If we just say that authoritarian countries are still worse, this partly implies that what Western countries are doing is becoming acceptable, as long as it is still "better" or "less bad".

The important point is, if the erosion of civil liberties continues, these governments are losing their high ground. They must stop.

As in the Cold War, I would give an allowance for the West to still be preferable (modulo strict rights record) if they actually muster some sort of power to confront tyranny. But if the rulers only want cheap rhetoric wins, no.

vintermann

12 days ago

It's not literally the same of course. But you should wonder, how much of the difference is due just differences in how much they need to do?

If South American dictatorships could have their way with less blood and less noise, don't you think they would prefer that?

I'm reminded of a tragicomic recent admission from Nate Silver of 538 fame. He said Disney almost never interfered in their editorial process, as if that was a good thing. What that really meant, after all, was that Disney was perfectly willing to interfere in their editorial process, but almost never felt the need to. (As you would expect. I mean, why would Disney care about political polling?)

Could it similarly be that the UK government is perfectly willing to engage in brutal political suppression, but rarely has a need to? In that case maybe people are right to sound the alarm even though we haven't reached South American dictatorship levels yet.

Nursie

12 days ago

I mean, given that is hasn't worked and hundreds of people have continued to stand up and be arrested for supporting Palestine Action, I'd say that's a no?

It still stinks through and through of course.

vintermann

12 days ago

It hasn't worked in changing policy, or meaningfully changing who's in charge. Currently the government is getting its way with this sufficient level of brutality.

I think it's likely they will get still more scared that they won't, and ramp up the brutality accordingly.

The path forward is clear: Reform gets into power, builds their own paramilitary "immigration enforcement" groups a la ICE, and you get the occasional summary execution in the streets, along with arrests based on UKs unmatched surveillance system.

roenxi

12 days ago

The people complaining probably live in the UK or are related to it somehow. Then it would make sense that they are more worried about authoritarianism in the UK rather than in South America.

And even if the man was wearing a proper "Palestine Action" shirt that'd still be pretty concerning. It is an insane stretch to say that wearing a shirt represents a matter for police action. How far the world has moved on from when the UK could be considered a forward-thinking bastion of liberalism.

Nursie

12 days ago

The people complaining were American AFAICT and weren’t worried by either, they were just drawing hyperbolic equivalences between suppression of speech and state orchestrated mass kidnapping and murder.

roenxi

12 days ago

If we're talking about the Palestine Action shirt, Israel is defending against accusations [0] that they are genocidal. The police action of the UK seems like it could be pretty easily construed as suppression of speech in support of state orchestrated mass kidnapping and murder on a concerning scale.

Whatever is happening in SA might be as bad, I suppose, but I don't speak Spanish or have any family connection there so I'm not going to look it up. Although if they're genocidal then they should stop too, should that need to be said.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa's_genocide_case_a...

Nursie

12 days ago

The example given was of a man in a “Plasticine Action” t-shirt, with the poster saying how that man was “disappeared” by the British state when he was briefly arrested and released.

If you’re not aware of the history of people being disappeared by states such as Chile under Pinochet, or more broadly what it means for a state to disappear someone, that’s kinda on you.

Either way these are not equivalent actions.

Yes, it’s suppression of free speech in a chilling manner. I hate it. No, it’s not the same as suppressing that speech by taking someone and holding them in a secret prison for years and/or killing them.

DrScientist

12 days ago

> No, it’s not the same as suppressing that speech by taking someone and holding them in a secret prison for years and/or killing them.

Sure. Though in the UK I give you Julian Assange - 5 years in BellMarsh, mostly in total isolation as if he was some major threat.

vintermann

12 days ago

And one thing Assange used to say over and over again, was that he was inspired by government attempts to suppress WikiLeaks releases, because that was evidence that they feared the information in them could actually change things. This is pretty much also the main thesis of Chomsky, and many other western dissidents (and some others too, e.g. Ai Weiwei): our leaders are as unaccountable and willing to use brutality as any dictatorship, they just have less reason to.

direwolf20

12 days ago

Because we already obey them more than Iranians obey Iran.

breppp

12 days ago

Call me when the UK government brings the machine guns and starts slaughtering 40k Palestine Action protestors and I promise to agree it's all the same

direwolf20

12 days ago

They don't have to, because British are more obedient than Iranians.

ajsnigrutin

12 days ago

10 years ago, you'd be saying "call me when UK police starts arresting people for wearing a wrong t-shirt".

breppp

12 days ago

I'll make it easier for you: wake me up when the UK government slaughters 1% the amount of the protestors the Iranian government just did in two days. 400 protestors shot by machine guns mounted on SUVs in London.

That just might be approaching slippery slope territory to the current Iranian actions.

Currently I believe we are at zero protestors casually shot on the streets of the UK, so I fail to see the equivalency

vintermann

11 days ago

Bad as the Iranian regime is, we know that foreign governments are actively working for regime change/collapse in Iran (Mossad boasted in public about being with the protesters on the ground in Iran, whether that's true or not it seems like a statement intended to make things worse). So maybe be extra careful where you source those death numbers claims.

UK is not, and will not be in the situation Iran is in for the foreseeable future. There will not be several powerful countries, some widely hated in UK and openly preferring a UK in smoking ruins to democratic government in the UK, calling for revolution there (although don't get me wrong, UK too could totally could use a revolution). UK has nuclear weapons. UK has a world-class surveillance apparatus, and doesn't have to contend with the cynical people running it getting regularly murdered or bought out by more powerful actors.

What all this means - and this has been the core message of just about all dissidents in western countries for decades - is that the people with control in the UK don't have to gun down hundreds (or tens of thousands, if you believe the colored reports) in the streets to cling to power. If it was their best option, they might.

Nursie

12 days ago

Sure, and his treatment has been awful in so many ways.

I'm honestly not trying to defend any action by any state in this thread, I'm not trying to say that the UK is better than any other state. I'm not trying to make any point at all beyond using a specific example in agreeing with the comments above mine that "Everything is the same and comparable never mind how hyperbolic."

But it seems to be construed as if I am, no matter how much I agree that the actions we're talking about are terrible. People come back and tell me the UK is bad and I should feel bad for defending it. I know right! And if I was I would!

I must admit I find the whole thing very frustrating.

DrScientist

12 days ago

The problem is you have to fight for these things every generation.

It's a mistake to take things like trial by jury, open justice ( not secret courts ), non-arbitrary detention, even regular elections for granted.

I totally agree with you that the UK is not Iran and there is too much hyperbole - but at the same time the current government is trying to criminalise legitimate protest, cancelling elections and trying to remove trial by jury for a substantial set of things ( the ultimate protection against an authoritarian state ).

As an example, it's very telling that the government ensured that in all the Assange legal proceedings it never went before a jury.

The current government creating all these precedents, in the shadow of the prospect of a potential Reform government is something I think we should all be concerned about.

Nursie

12 days ago

Tell me about it, that Jury thing in particular was shocking to hear, that they’re considering throwing aside an ancient right in the name of expediency and clearing a backlog, as if it was a minor detail and not the basis of the system of justice.

DrScientist

12 days ago

Especially since there is no evidence that it's the presence of juries is the cause of the backlog.

The idea that the state can deprive you of your freedom for a sentence likely to be less than 3 years without the chance to be tried before you peers, is worrying.

Note is was six months before Nov 2024, it's 12 months now and they are looking to extend to 3 years! ( or more - given the word: likely ).

Juries are not an administrative inconvenience or process inefficiency.

The current legal reform seems to be operating on the assumption that the defendent is guilty - rather thana resumption of innocence.

Better to let the guilty to go free, than imprison the innocent.

breppp

12 days ago

and that's exactly how the discussion pattern I was describing above works out

and that's why it is efficient propaganda

roenxi

12 days ago

I mean, you bought up an example of a man being dragged off the streets of the UK for (1) trying to express support for playdough and (2) being suspected of undermining support for genocide.

I have relatives in the UK, right now. And after this conversation I'm now more concerned for them than I was this morning, and I can make some educated guesses about why ol' mate didn't want to talk to you about Pinochet, who Wikipedia suggests died 20 years ago. Sounds like something is going on in the UK right now.

I mean, seriously, I have left-wing family members who might be travelling to the UK this year. Is there some sort of guide to what political t-shirts will get them arrested?

Nursie

12 days ago

This feels disingenuous on your part now and is in fact exhibiting the exact problem brought up in the thread.

You’re not being asked to feel better about the UK! If you didn’t know about this stuff and you feel worse about the UK, good, you probably should!

But you are being asked to see a difference in degree between:

  Someone speaks out about human rights abuses and murder sanctioned by the state, and is arrested, then later released with an apology.

  Someone speaks out about human rights abuses and murder sanctioned by the state, and is arrested, their arrest is denied by the state and they turn up several years later in a mass grave.
You’re telling me those are the same thing?

> I mean, seriously, I have left-wing family members who might be travelling to the UK this year. Is there some sort of guide to what political t-shirts will get them arrested?

“Palestine Action” is currently a proscribed organisation. They are proscribed because some of them are alleged to have fucked with some fighter jets and done some other illegal direct action stuff.

So currently it’s illegal to show support for that specific group.

There are open court challenges to the whole situation, and many hundreds of people are awaiting trial for continuing to show support to the group after the proscription. The whole thing is a shitshow.

But you can (AFAICT) support Palestine and Palestinian people as much as you like, you’re just not allowed to wave “Palestine Action” flags or t-shirts around.

ajsnigrutin

12 days ago

I live in EU and I oppose internet cenorship, privacy invasion and many other bad things the governments have been doing for years now.

I can't do anything about iran, i don't live there, neither does anyone else commenting here it seems... but many of us do live in EU, and are bothered by EU doing the same thing as iran, even if it's on a smaller scale (for now). You can't support censorship at home and then act outraged when someone else just implements more of it... even though some do, as long as the censored things are the things they personally don't like.

To be fair, i'm more worried about UK, since it's a "test ground" to see how things work before the bad thing are implemented elsewhere, but either way, in my small country we have a saying, that "people should first sweep infront of their own doorways", and yeah, EU and our censorship is my doorway in this case.

TLDR: if we're bothered by internet censorship, we should first stop at 'at home'.

Flatterer3544

12 days ago

If not for EU there would already be multiple states with privacy invasive systems seen in UK.. We are close of getting there and they keep on trying, but so far the blocking states are enough as majority.

Sure EU has some fkn horrible sides to it, such as the anonymous vote to get big stuff through when a majority should be enough as democracy depicts, but currently 2 states out of all EU states can block the big decisions...

ericmay

12 days ago

> I can't do anything about iran, i don't live there

You also don’t live in the United States, or in Israel or Palestine but folks tend to forget that it seems.

But you can do something anyway which is to be aware of the atrocities committed by Iran’s regime, make sure your government is aware of your opinion, you can protest outside the Iranian embassy in your country, help Iranian dissidents, help Iranians find sneaky ways to get internet access, &c.

I’m not expecting anyone to do those things but I find this “I don’t live there” argument continue to creep up whenever it comes to Iran but it never enters conversation when it comes to specific other countries.

> TLDR: if we're bothered by internet censorship, we should first stop at 'at home'.

Sure but you don’t have to focus on one issue at a time. Honestly resorting Internet access in Iran is probably more important than whatever rules and things the EU is implementing because in Iran people are actually dying and you can always change the EU rules back through democratic processes.

ajsnigrutin

12 days ago

But what can you do for iran? I mean... we can type text on forums and sites like this, that no one in iran can see... and in the meantime, EU will push for another chat control, some new "think of the children" thing will happen, suddenly the "show your real-identity ID to watch at porn" will turn into "show your ID to register on reddit".

On the other hand, there are many people from EU here who need to hear it, that EU is doing the same as iran... censoring websites and more (IDs, chat control,...). Yes, maybe not at the same level, less sites are censored here, but censorship is still censorship, and the trend is going towards more control and more censorship.

United states, israel (and palestine), etc. are different. Are we bothered by what israel is doing in palestine? Yes! (some of us). Can we actually do something about it? Sure... the germans can tell their government to stop selling weapons to israel [0], we can implement sanctions, tarrifs, etc. This is something that we can do "at home", something that can make some change. We did that for russia, we did that for iran, north korea etc (at various times and various levels), but we did something. We didn't really do that (at least not at scale) for isreal. US is doing that to us (EU) with tarrifs every two weeks, but we didn't really properly respond, even under the threat of an invasion on greenland.

Yes, restricted internet in iran is bad, but we can't stop it. Sadly, changing back EU rules is similarly hard to do, which again, is something that should be fixed, by us, at home.

[0] https://www.dw.com/en/war-in-gaza-germany-supplies-30-of-isr...

ericmay

12 days ago

> I can't do anything about iran, i don't live there

(Just a reminder that the above is what I responded to)

> But what can you do for iran?

You can encourage your governments to take action against Iran as well. Further sanctions, diplomatic pressure, providing support to the Iranian people, &c. In my case as an American I am encouraging my government to take the toughest action possible to stop Iran. Much of the blood of dead Palestinians can be placed at their feet too since they arm and support Hezbollah and Hamas who are doing what they can to keep killing people and keep the conflict active.

Just because you personally don't know what can be done doesn't mean something can't be done, and at a minimum you can encourage your government to continue to do the things it's already doing. You don't have to know what can be done, you can leave that up to others while demanding that the Iranian regime halt its indiscriminate mass murder of Iranian civilians before they make the number of people killed in Gaza look like a warmup.

Not living in Iran doesn't mean you (an EU citizen I presume) can't do anything about the actions of that regime. It's simply not a valid argument.

otherme123

12 days ago

> Spain is blocking whole blocks of internet during football matches.

Lets make this clear: "Spain" is not blocking, some ISP companies which have many users ask the judge for permission to block IP ranges because they are streaming football matches. The judge agrees (they don't seem to know how Cloudflare works), so the ISPs are the ones that are blocking their own users to access sites behind Cloudflare. As they have millions of users, the block feels huge, but it is not issued by the government.

I am not a customer of those ISP, so my internet isn't disrupted at all during football matches. Some services, like annas-archive and torrent sites, are intermittently blocked, but you can easily avoid the blocks just by switching DNS server to 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8.

pezgrande

12 days ago

The fact they allow this sh*t even when it is widely know that is happening and being abused, makes the government also responsible because inaction.

otherme123

12 days ago

One thing is that they facilitate, not by inaction but by allowing judges to allow the blocks, and another different thing is saying that is the state the one who issues the block.

JasonADrury

12 days ago

This is not even close to true. The Spanish state is mandating that ISPs implement these blocks or face significant penalties, up to and including imprisonment of responsible individuals.

Yes, technically "Spain" is not blocking. ISPs are. It is however the armed agents of "Spain", who will come and violently lock you in a tiny room if you refuse to do as you're told. If you try to resist hard enough, they will simply execute you on the spot.

user

12 days ago

[deleted]

otherme123

12 days ago

So this is not even close to true en the first sentence, but it is true in the second paragraph.

As I said, my ISP doesn't do this block. Are they defying the Spain government mandate? Are they facing penalties or prison? This is a private thing that Movistar /O2, mainly, is doing, to protect their football stream. Thes is like saying that the US government forces Disney to enforce tneir IP protection.

Your last paragraph is a shame. Execute people on the spot, what the fuck are you even talking about? Spain don't even punish people torrenting or piracing unless you are profiting from it (e.g. selling pirate streams).

JasonADrury

12 days ago

The court orders cover only specific ISPs, if your ISP is not one of those, they are not defying the mandate.

You can see right here https://www.poderjudicial.es/search/AN/openDocument/766326fb...

> Are they defying the Spain government mandate?

Nobody has claimed that this is a government mandate, it isn't. It's a court order, coming from the judiciary. While Americans might consider the judiciary to be a branch of the government, in Spain it is considered entirely separate.

> Execute people on the spot, what the fuck are you even talking about?

The police will absolutely kill you if you try to forcefully resist them when they come to arrest you for violating a court order. This is not unique to Spain, but is more of a universal principle.

otherme123

11 days ago

You are misunderstanding everything:

1. The ISP ask a judge to ban some IPs, and the judge gives them the permission to do so, because they asked. A judge could ask every ISP to do so, but they don't. But the ISP must request permission to ban, that es the reason the ban is limited to some ISP.

2. It does not come from the judges, it comes from the ISP that request to do it. Some ISP don't care about football, so they don't ask, they don't ban, and they are not mandated nor allowed to ban.

3. Not true, please don't FUD. In Spain is extremely rare to be killed by the police, even resisting, unless you threat them with a gun for example. And there are more cases with guns or knifes that are peacefully defused, than "executions on the spot". I don't know what are your intentions lying like that, but they don't look good.

JasonADrury

11 days ago

I assume you can read Spanish, I don't think the link to the court order leaves any room for interpretation.

LIGA NACIONAL DE FÚTBOL PROFESIONAL y TELEFÓNICA AUDIOVISUAL DIGITAL S.L.U filed the lawsuit against Vodafone España S.A.U, Vodafone ONO S.A.U, MASORANGE Orange Espagne S.A.U, DIGI SPAIN TELECOM S.L.U, TELEFÓNICA ESPAÑA S.A.U and TELEFÓNICA MÓVILES ESPAÑA S.A.U.

> A judge could ask every ISP to do so, but they don't

You are getting this wrong. The judge isn't acting on their on initiative here, but because La Liga (together with Movistar+) sued the biggest ISPs in Spain.

They didn't bother suing the smaller ISPs, probably because co-ordinating the blocking with them isn't worth the hassle.

>3. Not true, please don't FUD. In Spain is extremely rare to be killed by the police, even resisting, unless you threat them with a gun for example. And there are more cases with guns or knifes that are peacefully defused, than "executions on the spot". I don't know what are your intentions lying like that, but they don't look good.

You're failing to understand that this is the implicit threat that accompanies most court orders anywhere.

1) If you refuse to comply, you will be locked in a small room for an indefinite period

2) If you continue to actively resist, increasing amounts of force will be used to force your compliance.

3) If you still continue to resist, you will be summarily executed.

otherme123

9 days ago

Last time I answer you, because at this point you are acting in bad faith:

Telefónica Audiovisual Digital SLU is suing, among others, TELEFÓNICA ESPAÑA S.A.U and TELEFÓNICA MÓVILES ESPAÑA S.A.U.. What do you think is going on there? Come on, you don't even have to be that smart: they are suing themselves to get a judge order that allows them to block the IPs. In fact, some of them are eagerly waiting for the judge permission to click the ban button the next second.

> You are getting this wrong. The judge isn't acting on their on initiative here, but because La Liga (together with Movistar+) sued the biggest ISPs in Spain.

The nerve you have. This is exactly what I was saying from the beginning: the ban is not something that comes from the state or the government. The ban is something that the ISPs are asking for, they would love to be able to do it legally without a judge intervention, but they need to get the OK from a jugde. In fact, Movistar/Telefonica never acknowleged the ban and claim technical difficulties, in fear of losing clients to ISPs that are not so aggresive banning the IPs.

The discussion here was if there are parallelisms between the Iran Internet blackout (state initiated and enforced) and Spain banning some Internet IPs during football matches due to piracy (private companies initiating and enforcing on their users), because some of you were painting Spain as some kind of 1984 state.

Your last part is FUD, and a slippery slope fallacy. There are ways to refuse to comply, for example not banning the IPs and then claiming technical difficulties to do so. In fact, that was what were doing all the ISPs that were requested at first to ban Cloudflare IPs: delay the ban for a couple of hours, the football match ended, and they did nothing claiming it was impossible to comply. No one was locked, forced to comply or summarily (you are not using this word correctly, because it means "without trial") executed. Week after week, they are not issuing the IP banning, and they still safe and sound.

dybber

12 days ago

That would really boost productivity! Not gonna happen.

direwolf20

12 days ago

Which country cares about productivity, besides China?

michelsedgh

12 days ago

They already have uncensored unfiltered sim cards they issue to their own people, we found that out when X (Twitter) started showing which country you made the accout from and thousands of people had Iran which normal people can't access X without VPN. Its just that they shut off the internet for normal people now, which they hadn't done before.

yolkedgeek

12 days ago

No, This is different.

In "normal" filtering situations, we can connect to most VPNs and do our stuff. When blackouts like these happen, EVERYTHING is blocked. It gets almost impossible to connect to a VPN. They have advanced tech that detects and blocks all VPNS and proxies. The internet speed is also now at crawling speed so you really can't upload download anything.

Also, in each blackout, people find ways to work around the censorship. And each time, they detect them and patch them. We have almost ran out of ways to prevent the censorship now.

j3th9n

12 days ago

LoRa Meshcore.

ranguna

12 days ago

Isn't that easy to jam?

tryauuum

12 days ago

How will this help connecting to the internet?

j3th9n

11 days ago

It will help connecting people, that was the intention of the internet in the first place.

mrtksn

12 days ago

Do they have something like intranet with some local services, like in DPRK&Cuba? is this the case of completely losing connection and devices practically bricked for anything other than displaying the time?

siev

12 days ago

We do. It's not very good. As in, there isn't even a properly functioning domestic search engine that can match the quality of anything past AltaVista. The only local platforms worth a damn are the ones you'd be using anyway. (the local equivalents to Uber, Maps etc.)

All other platforms (instant messengers, social media, news) are massively unpopular for being horrid to use at best, and government spyware at worst.

To slow down the immediate damage the government has rolled back a few of the recent restrictions, hence why I can access HN. Among Google and a handful of other basic websites. But they are obviously experimenting and trying to figure out how much censorship they can get away with. There is talk of a planned "whitelisting" of the country's internet. Where almost all but a few big important services are blocked completely. This would have the bonus effect of making circumvention using VPNs and other methods even more difficult than it already is.

breppp

12 days ago

for someone with a tech background, how hard is it to setup your own tunnel? I'd assume cloud providers are whitelisted due to economic reasons?

e-khadem

12 days ago

Lol. That was _before_ these new restrictions. And don't assume that you could setup a simple wireguard server and be done with it. No, it had to be a proper low fingerprint method (e.g., you had to hide the tls-in-tls timing pattern and do traffic shaping). Now, something like dnstt sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. You may be able to open gmail in 10 minutes if it does, and you explicitly have to block the fonts.

yard2010

12 days ago

Dam I feel so sorry for you :( At first I thought like gp, bypass it, then I realized you don't have the privilege to bypass it and leave trails behind. It's not like using a vpn to watch netflix of another country, as netflix won't knock on your door.

I wish you all the best. Stay safe my friend.

N19PEDL2

12 days ago

> it had to be a proper low fingerprint method (e.g., you had to hide the tls-in-tls timing pattern and do traffic shaping).

Can anyone recommend a good book, video course or other material to learn more about these topics?

e-khadem

12 days ago

FOCI papers[1] are great IMO, but some of submissions are just an academic curiosity, not a practical solution that works for the average Joe at a low cost and scale. For practical methods that are heavily used, you can take a look at popular opensource implementations and their documentation. Sing-box, Xray core, hiddify (their patches on top of xray and singbox), shadowsocks and shadowtls, and many more. ShadowTLS provides a good starting point with a fairly detailed documentation and clearly describes the development process.

The way that I see it, its not just a technical problem anymore. It's about making the methods as diverse as possible and to some extent messing up the network for everyone. In other words, we should increase the cost and the collateral damage of widespread censorship. As an anecdotal data point, the network was quite tightly controlled / monitored around 2023 in Iran and nothing worked reliably. Eventually people (ab)used the network (for example the tls fragments method) to the extent that most of the useful and unrelated websites (e.g., anything behind cloudflare, most of the Hetzner IPv4 addresses, and more) stopped working or were blocked. This was an unacceptably high collateral damage for the censors (?), so they "eased" some of the restrictions. Vless and Trojan were the same at that time and didn't work or were blocked very quickly, but they started working ~reliably again until very recently.

[1] https://www.petsymposium.org/foci/

nerdsniper

12 days ago

https://people.cs.umass.edu/~amir/papers/parrot.pdf

Here's an overview. Be warned, the conclusion is:

> We enumerate the requirements that a censorship-resistant system must satisfy to successfully mimic another protocol and conclude that “unobservability by imitation” is a fundamentally flawed approach.

haute_cuisine

12 days ago

What about SSH? Does it work? If yes, you can use some TUI browser as it would only pass updated SSH screen

breppp

12 days ago

sorry if it came out as patronizing, I was genuinely curious as to the difficulty of bypassing these

egorfine

12 days ago

I don't see any drawbacks on this. Recent protests demonstrated that:

a) protests can and will be crushed by the government forces and people will be ultimately defeated;

b) people have no means to force government to enable back freedoms;

c) control is much easier with no internet available.

Russia is on the same path by providing white-list only internet access "during Ukrainian attacks" and a bit longer every time until ultimately internet will become whitelist only.

Also as we have seen specifically in russia, there is no shortage of senior software developers and network engineers truly putting in their best work to block VPNs better and deeper.

Thus Iran's (and russia's) internet blackout may indeed become permanent.

Update: obviously in this comment I am looking at this from the standpoint of an oppressive government.

gryfft

12 days ago

Do you have a different definition of 'drawback' than I do?

egorfine

12 days ago

I'm speaking from the standpoint of an oppressive government. Freedom of internet access is something that they would rather never allow.

Telaneo

12 days ago

They presumably mean drawback from the government's perspective. For the average citizen it obviously sucks.

ktallett

12 days ago

As in the total opposite meaning?

AnimalMuppet

12 days ago

Drawbacks are that your population loses contact with progress. Your people become less skilled for the modern world. That's fine if you want a country of agrarian peasants or factory-working drones, but it cripples your country if it's in a technological arms race.

I mean, North Korea does manage to produce rockets and nuclear warheads. They aren't exporting technology, though.

egorfine

12 days ago

> your population loses contact with progress

This is only a drawback if you think about your country's future.

Which oppressive regimes do not.

Thus it is an advantage, not a drawback.

AnimalMuppet

12 days ago

Yes and no. Take someone like Putin. He wants to be an oppressive regime, but also he wants Russia to be militarily strong. Well, militarily strong is highly tied to technological progress these days. He can force his people into human wave attacks. And that is dangerous enough to perhaps take Ukraine. It's a different story if he actually attacks NATO, though.

egorfine

12 days ago

Oh no worries.

Those who are commuting daily to lay down flight paths for russian missiles to kill Ukrainians - those have unrestricted internet access.

im3w1l

11 days ago

I wouldn't be so sure about this. I think people who don't give a shit about society or politics or human rights abuses and only care about advancing cool technology can participate in and drive progress.

feverzsj

12 days ago

It actually surprised me that they didn't do it before. China already achieved this in 2010s.

namirez

12 days ago

Hard to make it airtight without tanking the economy. Since the economy is already tanked, I guess they don’t care anymore.

johncolanduoni

12 days ago

Does the Iranian economy rely heavily on access to the global internet? They can’t trade with most of the world due to sanctions, so what in their internal economy grinds to a halt without global communications? I’m not saying I think that it wouldn’t, just that I don’t immediately grasp the mechanism.

namirez

12 days ago

Good points! I’m not an expert, so I’ll wait for people who know more to weigh in. But as far as I know: (1) they still need to import basic necessities like food and medicine, and (2) despite heavy investment, they haven’t managed to build an intranet that’s fully isolated from the internet.

culi

12 days ago

Have they though? Everybody I know who grew up in China has told me its trivial to bypass restrictions with VPNs

peyton

12 days ago

Depending on where you are, “everybody I know who grew up in China” may not be an unbiased sample w.r.t. ideology, forthcomingness, or truth-telling.

p0w3n3d

12 days ago

The question is what do you win when found using VPN?

bspammer

12 days ago

There is pretty much no risk. It’s expected you will use a VPN, you can talk about it openly in public.

Now, if you’re doing something unrelated that the administration doesn’t like, you can expect VPN use to be included in the long list of charges.

feverzsj

12 days ago

You phone and computer will be checked thoroughly using automated tools. If they didn't find any sensitive keyword, you'll be fined and recorded in the system. If they find something, a detention for at least 3 days or ... forever.

That's the standard procedure. But polices in developed areas usually treat them like antragsdelikte(no trial without a complaint).

HDThoreaun

12 days ago

"bypass restrictions" meaning put on a list of people to closely watch.

IshKebab

12 days ago

Apparently they use traffic analysis now so it's difficult to bypass even with VPNs.

blahgeek

12 days ago

I guess by "Everybody I know who grew up in China" you mean those elites who speaks English and have already bypassed restrictions to talk to you online or travels to other countries. There's some selection bias here.

jobgh

12 days ago

No shot. The economy is already in the gutter. The productivity hit of a total internet cutoff would be a death sentence

dpe82

12 days ago

That assumes the regime cares more about the economic prosperity of their people than about staying in power. So far they seem to care more about power. North Korea provides a model for how terrible the situation can get for every day people in that sort of arrangement.

21asdffdsa12

12 days ago

The regime does not even care about the capital having water in the next month. They are basically doing pre-emptive starvation culling at this point.

ReptileMan

12 days ago

North Korea is effectively an island. Iran has many neighbors and long borders. They have no choice but to be at least semi integrated into the world and strong enough to defend themselves.

halestock

12 days ago

You can only let that go so far, because at the end of the day you need to pay the military to keep you in power.

esafak

12 days ago

In the long run we're all dead. In the meantime, NK is still standing.

user

12 days ago

[deleted]

tdeck

12 days ago

Some level of eonomic prosperity is necessary to keep the government's key supporters (e.g. the ruling class and the army) satisfied.

Imustaskforhelp

12 days ago

Their economic prosperity is more linked to Oil than Internet.

Plus, the elites economic prosperity is also linked to their not being protests and for the toppling of govt to not occur and they might be willing to offset some losses to keep the average population in check

Which sucks for the average iranian but we saw how their protests were cracked down with 20-30 THOUSAND people killed and Iran hiding bodies etc.

I have heard that all shops are either shut down or running at the most minimum capacity. Economic prosperity just isn't a question now in Iran.

reeredfdfdf

12 days ago

Yeah, foreign intervention is probably the best option at this point. If the elites are willing to murder tends of thousands of innocent people, then I see no moral issues with foreign intervention to get rid of IRGC and current government using any means necessary.

AnimalMuppet

12 days ago

Two things can be true at once:

1. The government of Iran is an oppressive, immoral dictatorship.

2. Foreign intervention to try to remove it would likely result in worse outcomes, not better.

kelipso

12 days ago

Consent manufactured or manufacturing consent I wonder.

user

12 days ago

[deleted]

bpodgursky

12 days ago

North Korea unfortunately has given them a path forward. If you're willing to murder your own citizens en masse, you can get away with about anything.

reeredfdfdf

12 days ago

North Korea has nukes though. Iran doesn't, and probably never will.

bpodgursky

12 days ago

Iran has 90 million people and a giant conventional missile arsenal that deter neighbors from allowing military action against it. Invading Iran would be enormously difficult. It will also probably get nukes sooner or later. But it doesn't need nukes to be nearly untouchable.

reeredfdfdf

12 days ago

Considering America and Israel accomplished total air superiority over Iran in matter of days just few months ago, they're obviously pretty damn far from being untouchable.

Invading Iran would be difficult, but totally destroying IRGC and military (as long as they side with the former) wouldn't be that hard. Dropping communications equipment and weapons to Iranian opposition groups wouldn't be hard either.

bpodgursky

12 days ago

Yes, but what was accomplished with the air superiority? It's not regime change. It set back the nuclear program, maybe six months. That probably won't work ad infinitum, at some point they are going to build redundant sites and hardened facilities that are resilient to bunker busters.

The IRGC and military are HUGE. This is a numbers thing, not a competence thing. Neither the US or Israel has the munitions to make a lasting dent with air power alone.

_wire_

12 days ago

Yes, just start small

heraldgeezer

12 days ago

No that is american propaganda. Glorious islamist economy is great! Look at ICE shootings instead.

bluescrn

12 days ago

And if you disagree you're a russian bot. But there wouldn't possibly be any middle-eastern bots spreading propaganda...

dyauspitr

12 days ago

I don’t think a lot of their economy depends on the internet. Even rich countries in the Middle East would continue to sell oil if the internet wasn’t functional. Might cause some logistical issues but nothing that can’t be done over the phone.

duxup

12 days ago

Is the Iranian economy tied to individuals having internet access to the rest of the world much?

cryptoegorophy

12 days ago

Spacex satellites blockage was the surprise. How did they do it? I thought it would be the best dooms day kind of insurance. Turns out not.

m4rtink

12 days ago

AFAIK they used GPS spoofing which confuses the Starlink terminals - they need to know where they are to properly connect to the satellites above.

This can be overriden to use "Starlink positioning" where the terminal ignores GPS signals and dtermines its position based on Starlink satellite signals. I think this is what is used in Ukraine where GPS is mostly jammed/spoofed to hell even far from the front.

The GPS positioning is the default as it is likely more user friendly/has quicker lock in normal circumstances.

Another venue of attack could be the Starlink WiFi AP included in the terminals- you could track that down.

So in general:

* switch the terminal to Starlink positioning

* disable the Starkink terminal WiFi AP and conect by ethernet or connect an AP via ethernet with a new SSID and different MAC address

And it should be good to go.

cryptoegorophy

12 days ago

Spoofing - ok, but how did they detect all the starlinks? Assuming that users were smart to not turn on WiFi on starlink. Do these antennas emit certain waves that a “scanner” can detect and with 99% certainty figure out that that point on a map is a starlink antenna ?

edg5000

12 days ago

My wild guess is that jamming is local. Major cities may be fully jammed. To get an idea about GNSS jamming range (different signal of course, probably much easier to jam), there are maps online where you can see which parts of Europe are currently GNSS-jammed. But I have the same question as you.

4gotunameagain

12 days ago

> probably much easier to jam

Definitely much easier to jam. Much higher orbits for gnss satellites, much lower signal intensity.

Also, starlink uses phased arrays with beamforming, effectively creating an electronically steerable directional antenna. It is harder to jam two directional antennas talking to each other, as your jammers are on the sides, where the lobes of the antenna radiation pattern are smaller.

Still, we're talking about signals coming from space, so maybe it is just enough to sprinkle more jammers in an urban setting.. I'm curious as well.

exDM69

12 days ago

The GPS jamming maps are based on commercial air traffic flying in the area.

While that gives some ideas of how widespread the jamming is, it won't give accurate information about the range (air traffic avoids areas with jamming) of the interference or any information from places where there is no commercial air traffic (war zones, etc).

fc417fc802

12 days ago

Supposedly it's high packet loss but still available to at least some extent. Or at least it was initially? Really highlights the importance of low bandwidth P2P capable messaging systems that support caching messages for later delivery as well as multiple underlying transports.

DeathArrow

12 days ago

You can jam the satellites, you can jam the receivers and you can jam GPS.

alephnerd

12 days ago

RF and GPS jamming has been a solved problem for decades. As a SWE, we are all expected to take Physics E&M, Circuits, and CompArch in our CS undergrad - think back to those classes.

merelythere

12 days ago

Genuine question, is it that easy to deploy these tools over a country that big?

alephnerd

12 days ago

Yes in most population centers. Any country that has the ability to stand up a cellular network has the ability to deploy jamming at scale.

The components needed to build jammers and EW systems have been heavily commodified for a decade now (hell, your phone's power brick, car, and TV all have dual use components for these kinds of applications), and most regional powers have been working on compound semiconductors and offensive electronic warfare for almost a generation now.

fc417fc802

12 days ago

I don't think it's as easy as you're suggesting. GPS L1 jamming has been done routinely enough but the satellite bands (X/Ku/Ka) appear to be much more difficult to pull off.

Iran was reported to have mobile units with a fairly short range that constantly roamed around, only hitting 2 of the 3 bands (Ku/Ka). They're also reported to have received mobile Russian military units capable of jamming all 3 (X/Ku/Ka) over a much wider area. (I'm not actually clear the extent to which X band is associated with either Starlink or Starshield. Starshield also reportedly operates to at least some extent in parts of the S band. [0])

So the technology clearly exists but it doesn't seem to be something you can trivially throw together in your basement. That's quite unlike (for example) a cell phone jammer which a hobbyist can cheaply and easily assemble at home. I assume the extreme directional specificity of the antennas plays a large part in that.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2025/10/17/nx-s1-5575254/spacex-starshie...

askvictor

12 days ago

Couldn't they target each starlink satellite for jamming as it flies overhead? The sat would still send fine, but you could effectively kill the antenna?

fc417fc802

12 days ago

I guess (non-expert understanding) that it depends on how tight the beamforming is (relative to the distance of the jammer from a given ground station) or alternatively if the jammer can prevent the satellite from successfully locating the ground station to begin with.

yanhangyhy

12 days ago

thats sad... this kind of blackout only works for china because china has a massive internal market and the gov has a way of check things like: "we know you are using VPN, but as long as you dont do or say terrible things about CCP, we dont care". so this model works.

but even with his, i still feel angry when i want to check something on google/ins...when i dont have a realiable VPN. i remeber when we start working on golang dev, and because its under google domain so many sub sites is blocked including golang ones, its very time consuming for chinese devs to develop golang projects, you have to figure out the VPN/goproxy... stuff..

nntwozz

12 days ago

If I were a betting man I'd wager that technological determinism wins in the end.

AndrewKemendo

12 days ago

Do you think they have a better shot than any other country with an explicit firewall (Eritrea, China, NK, Cuba etc…)

Symbiote

12 days ago

I don't think Cuba belongs on that list.

They have limited service because they can't afford anything better, and the USA prevents installing additional undersea cables, but only a small number of sites are blocked by Cuba itself, such as a few Spanish language news sites run by Cuban-Americans.

Many more sites are unavailable in Cuba because their USA owners refuse access to Cuba, but that's not Cuba's fault.

thrownaway0511

12 days ago

They could've easily invested more of that oil money they leeched from Venezuela into infrastructure. They built 1 optic fiber cable over a decade a ago, why didn't they build more all this time? It's always the imperialists fault, isn't it?

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALBA-1

fragmede

12 days ago

The companies block access to Cube due to sanctions, which there because of Cuba's communist government, which is their fault.

C6JEsQeQa5fCjE

12 days ago

I am more powerful than you, and I come to you with a request to act against your own interests in order to serve me. You refuse. The harsh consequences for refusing me that I am about to unleash against you are your fault. I am going to starve you for resources for decades, and any bad outcomes for your economy are your fault. You should not have refused me.

fragmede

11 days ago

Overthrow Fidel and democratically install a leader, instead of whatever nonsense you're pedalling.

tryauuum

12 days ago

You could've at least tried to put the blame on both parties in this scenario

xboxnolifes

12 days ago

Somewhat of an aside, but its odd to me that "communist government" is considered both unworkably unsustainable while also must be sanctioned in order to be stopped.

user

12 days ago

[deleted]

dust42

12 days ago

Prepare to go back to newsgroups with NNTP / UUCP. With today's uSD cards that should create a pretty decent, offline store and forward national discussion platform. No programming needed, it's all there already, just forgotten...

littlecranky67

12 days ago

There must be so much video footage from smartphones during the demonstations that show gruesome killings and masacres, the iranian elites have to make sure this footage never sees the rest of the world. They have to ban the internet forever.

dominicrose

12 days ago

I don't want to believe that a government so incompetent, corrupt and cruel can continue to function. I don't trust that the rest of the world will help militarily although it's a strong possibility, but I do trust that they will continue to isolate the country. It's possible that the regime will implode simply because there is no honor among thieves.

fatherwavelet

12 days ago

Unfortunately, they are extremely competent at holding on to power. Inflation has been oscillating between 20% and 50% since 2019 yet here we are. It is hard to over throw the people who have all the guns.

I am usually pretty isolationist in my thinking but I really wish the US would have already invaded.

Millions of young Persians who are absolutely no different than you or I. It is now or never. If the regime can put down this uprising it is going to be hard to form another uprising for a long long time.

dist-epoch

12 days ago

Nah, just for a year or so, after they will say all the footage is "AI generated".

RandyOrion

12 days ago

Sadly, this already happens in China.

After many years of heavy censorship on 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, there are a lot of accounts on Chinese BBS who say all the footage "AI generated".

randomNumber7

12 days ago

They likely try to find and remove a lot of these videos (and their owners) before turning on the internet.

tsss

12 days ago

They don't have to. In two weeks nobody will (pretend to) care anymore.

littlecranky67

12 days ago

From the phones, computers, usb sticks and SD cards of millions of people?

danparsonson

12 days ago

They certainly wouldn't be the first regime to violently suppress millions of its own people.

user

12 days ago

[deleted]

Departed7405

12 days ago

I really hope the next iPhone with Satellite connectivity not limited to SOS will help for that.

At the same time, I can see Apple caving to Iran governement - or China's - and restrict this feature to countries where it is legal.

9dev

12 days ago

Apple devices are pretty much unobtainable to most of the population of Iran due to a variety of reasons

morajabi

12 days ago

Untrue — there is a large market for Apple devices, iPhones are super popular in Iran. Fun fact, IRL stores use iMacs because it looks good but they install Windows on them to be able to use their legacy Windows accounting software :)

blahgeek

12 days ago

Fun fact - back in 2009, iPhone 3GS sold in China does not have WiFi feature. If that's possible, I can totally see a new iPhone model with restricted satellite feature selling in Iran and China.

gambutin

12 days ago

I’m curious if it’s possible to somehow retrieve the whitelist to see who’s on it?

4gotunameagain

12 days ago

Mossad is curious as well. They might want to indiscriminately make people's devices blow up in public again.

derektank

12 days ago

There are a lot of words one could use to describe the Israeli pager attack on Hezbollah, but indiscriminate isn’t one that leaps to mind, particular when compared against other contemporary military strikes

4gotunameagain

12 days ago

Comparing the lack of humanity of military strikes surely is a slippery slope.

Let me remind you that many civilians died, including two children. Don't take my word for it:

The following quote can be attributed to Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa Director at Human Rights Watch:

    “Customary international humanitarian law prohibits the use of booby traps – objects that civilians are likely to be attracted to or are associated with normal civilian daily use – precisely to avoid putting civilians at grave risk and produce the devastating scenes that continue to unfold across Lebanon today. The use of an explosive device whose exact location could not be reliably known would be unlawfully indiscriminate, using a means of attack that could not be directed at a specific military target and as a result would strike military targets and civilians without distinction. A prompt and impartial investigation into the attacks should be urgently conducted.”
https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/09/18/lebanon-exploding-pagers...

derektank

12 days ago

The affected equipment was C2 infrastructure and distributed by Hezbollah itself to its members for use in conducting military operations. Again, if you’re familiar with the use of military force today or really any military history since the invention of artillery, a handful of civilian deaths from an attack on several thousand combatants, while always tragic, does not represent an indiscriminate use of force.

nroets

12 days ago

Here's crazy idea: Instead of the US spending all this money on restraining the Iranian government through military build ups and sanctions, rather drop hundreds of thousands of Starlink kits by drones.

Firstly the protesters will be able to communicate in private.

And secondly, Iranians will continue to be reminded of the freedoms most other Muslims enjoy: As in free speech and free trade.

One of the reasons the Berlin wall fell was that East Europeans saw on TV that how prosperous Western Europe became.

stratocumulus0

12 days ago

One major difference is that it was extremely difficult to leave Eastern Europe. Borders with the West were fortified and even in the unlikely event of getting a visa issued, the government would make sure that your loved ones were left behind, forcing you to eventually come back.

The citizens of Iran, in turn, are free to leave the country as they wish. In fact, the official policy is that if you don't like it here, then you are are supposed to move out.

fma

12 days ago

What good is the free Internet when the government can use it push false narratives and obvious lies and the people just believe it (talking about America in this case).

exDM69

12 days ago

Starlink was also blocked by radio frequency interference.

Granted that can't possibly cover the entire area of the country.

scyzoryk_xyz

12 days ago

What? No. There are countless reasons why the wall fell but TV wasn't one of them. East Europeans didn't 'see' anything 'on TV' that would suggest anything other than what was endorsed by local authorities.

Trade was a big factor though. As the collective quality of life in the East was deteriorating, efforts were made by authorities to save the dire situation by opening trade and some degree of freedom of movement with the West. As this plan failed economically, a side effect was that it only became common knowledge across society how big the gap in quality of life really was.

The idea that free internet access will magically change the situation for Iranians on it's own is naive.

inlined

12 days ago

If the weak link is GPS, could they not accept an override for the time and spherical coordinates to connect?

m4rtink

12 days ago

It should be possible to switch the terminal to use the satellites themselves for positioning (Starlink positioning) but it needs manually switching to that option.

aquir

12 days ago

This should not be possible in 2026...

dist-epoch

12 days ago

This will be entirely possible in 2027 when AI will be able to individually profile each connection for "disident" risk.

ZoomZoomZoom

12 days ago

I've seen unconfirmed reports of strange blocking patterns in Russian Federation that suggest individual profiling has at the very least been tested already. No need to wait a year.

amai

12 days ago

This doesn't help. The prophet has seen what they did to their own people.

random123346

12 days ago

There is active discussion on net4people about using DNSTT, but as more of these tunnels go up, I'm sure it will be blocked.

Given the denied environment the Iranian people see themselves in. I believe its worth mentioning asynchronous networks[1].

For example, they could use NNCP[2] in sneakernet style op[3].

Couriers could even layer steganography techniques on top on the NNCP data going in and out on USB drives. This can all be done now, and doesn't require new circumvention research or tools.

NNCPNET[4] is now active which provides email over NNCP and therefore can be done completely without internet. Once a courier gets to a location that isn't as denied, they can route it over the internet via a NNCP relay. Both for getting information out, and getting data back in.

For those wanting to get information to new agencies, you should consider SecureDrop. Here[5] is a list of securedrop locations.

Like all operations, please consider your OPSEC.

Good luck

[1] www.complete.org/asynchronous-communications/

[2] www.complete.org/NNCP/

[3] www.complete.org/dead-usb-drives-are-fine-building-a-reliable-sneakernet/

[4] www.complete.org/nncpnet-email-network/

[5] https://docs.securedrop.org/en/stable/source/source.html

iamnothere

12 days ago

Thanks for mentioning NNCP, it doesn’t get enough attention.

I am hoping more tools will be built on top of it, with good tolerance for asynchronous/offline networks, particularly for communication and social. We may need it soon elsewhere.

Mail over NNCP works well as you mentioned because mail is already asynchronous. Maybe Delta Chat over NNCP is worth a try.

kumarvvr

12 days ago

Good luck trying to take something back from the populace once already given for decades, even if it is in a limited form.

It's a desperate attempt, that really shows how cornered the administration is.

Any power that fears information, has to have a highly fine grained, high level control of information to maintain power. This is absolutely difficult, in a country as culturally diverse and with a long history as Iran.

morajabi

12 days ago

This has been the administration's response to such events for multiple times over the last 6 years (3 times to be exact, plus during the time of war with Israel) and the claim has always been Iran wants to shutdown internet forever. But in all those cases the access was re-enabled after a few or several weeks.

Right now the internet access is widening and some areas are already back to normal internet — but it hasn't been stable over the past week. https://radar.cloudflare.com/traffic/ir

ReptileMan

12 days ago

>Good luck trying to take something back from the populace once already given for decades, even if it is in a limited form.

Like the right to not wear scarf? Seems they had the good luck with that one.

amai

12 days ago

So Iran becomes a second North Korea...

alsetmusic

12 days ago

I think that'd only further cause people to push back. I think this could only backfire.

Imagine if all the conveniences of the internet were taken from you. Not that you'd never had them, but that you'd come to rely on them and then they were gone. Feels like some palpable oppression to me. And it has nothing to do with your political views. Everyone will feel the squeeze and nobody is gonna be dismissive about it.

veqq

12 days ago

But they unblocked it on Wed/Thur, I've been talking to friends normally since then.

namirez

12 days ago

Astroturfing much? I haven’t been able to talk to my family for three weeks. Friends who manage to connect are hopping from one workaround to another because IPs are routinely blocked.

veqq

12 days ago

Do not immediately jump to such disgusting accusations:

> Astroturfing much?

I have been involved in antiregime activities for years. You can easily find many posts of mine evangelizing the cause in the oddest places e.g.: https://www.themotte.org/post/2196/culture-war-roundup-for-t...

> I just want the regime to change

I run one of the biggest defense forums where I post about it a lot: https://www.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/1q09y6q/ac...

ReptileMan

12 days ago

Can we cut couple of undersea cables and make it properly permanent for elites too?

hahahahhaah

12 days ago

Can ROTW sanction Iran by giving it zero internet access even to "elites" by refusing to peer.

vlovich123

12 days ago

You’re proposing a world wide agreement even by their allies? Like they can just tunnel their traffic through Russia or China.

You could try to bifurcate into allied and non allied, but even that would be flawed, especially in countries like the USA where it becomes a first amendment right to try to ban such connectivity. It’s very hard to kill the Internet in terms of connecting peers - that’s kind of the point of its design.

johncolanduoni

12 days ago

IPs owned by Iranian entities could be blocked straightforwardly by network operators at various levels. They could probably fudge the paperwork via Russian or Chinese entities and obfuscate the routes with cooperation from Russian/Chinese network operators, but that would take time.

tucnak

12 days ago

They said "tunnel"

johncolanduoni

12 days ago

If they mean a real proxy, that’s even more involved - you can’t just do that with BGP configurations and will need someone running what is basically a country-wide VPN in Russia or China (which will probably be very identifiable).

vlovich123

11 days ago

I’m really not sure what you’re going on about. Russia and China won’t cut off Iran and will be more than happy to have them pay to connect to VPN providers in country (eg the routes advertised will only let them connect to VPN providers). Or you can use botnets to proxy your traffic for you.

johncolanduoni

11 days ago

Okay, but now you’re running a country-scale VPN service in Russia or whatever, and somebody has to pay for it. Or you have to acquire a botnet, again to handle the internet of a whole country. These are non-trivial barriers to overcome, and simply having transit to Russia does not solve them.

tucnak

11 days ago

You know they can run NAT at the border right? Iran -> Russia -> the rest of the Internet. Russians would never re-advertise Iranian routes, and because they're all such good pals they could let them use whatever segment, so all Iranian traffic would simply appear as Russian traffic to the rest of the Internet, using normal residential subnets of which there are plenty. No need to ever involve the commercial VPN providers, and the scale would be negligible considering we're only talking about "the elites" of which there aren't many.

This is not as hard as you think.

vlovich123

11 days ago

But also Wireguard VPNs are also trivial to spin up and operate at scale, especially since what’s being discussed here is Internet access just for the elites which is a small fraction of the entire population. But yeah, lots and lots of ways to make this work if you don’t get everyone else to go along with your embargo.

direwolf20

12 days ago

That will make it so much easier for the regime to suppress all communication! They'll have more resources to focus on other goals, like killing all dissenters.

Is the idea to unblock their internet if they let everyone use the internet and not just the elite? It won't work. Their elites will find workarounds and they'll leave the internet completely blocked apart from that.

xvxvx

12 days ago

[flagged]

esolyt

12 days ago

If you get a chance to talk to an Iranian, try explaining them why it's fine that they're losing access to internet because the internet was brainwashing them to hate their government. Also tell them their government isn't killing or jailing protesters and these are just made-up by Israel and America.

While you're at it, you can try explaining Ukranians why it's fine that Russia is invading them because America is bad.

siev

12 days ago

I guess it's time to check "be accused of spreading psyops" off my internet bucket list.

Because I guess you're not interested in my own personal experience of witnessing said people get killed either. Or not exiting my home because I feared for my life. But you seem to have a loose definition of "unconfirmed" [1] so I won't dwell on that. Here's all I have to say:

> When the Israeli government claims that Iran needs to be toppled to protect the Iranian people, while they simultaneously commit genocide in Palestine, I have to stop and think about their real motives.

The Iranian government is evil.

The Israeli government is evil.

Both are, believe it or not, true. Conservative ruling systems often dislike other conservative ruling systems.

> Trump wants to bring democracy to Iran

_Iranians_ want to bring democracy to Iran. And as one of them, I sincerely don't give a shit about what Trump or Israel or anyone else outside of this fucking country wants.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_massacres

bigDinosaur

12 days ago

Pass on some of the worst analysis of Iran I've ever read...it's up there with Chomsky on Cambodia on the level of delusion just because 'US bad' or whatever biases the thinking.

xvxvx

12 days ago

'Your analysis is as bad as Chomsky' is probably not the burn you think it is.

jraby3

12 days ago

[flagged]

alibarber

12 days ago

There is some evidence to suggest that certain countries (Russia, China, Iran itself) have an incentive to use the Gaza conflict to cause disunity in the west - and hence keep it in the news cycle and public opinion.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/technology/israel-hamas-i...

Interestingly, during the last internet blackout in Iran, a lot of the pro Scottish independence X accounts went quiet too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_influence_operations_i...

I'm sure many Iranians are deeply concerned about that cause.

dreambuffer

12 days ago

If it is that easy for foreign governments to influence the very thoughts people have day-to-day, then something is extremely broken in your system and nearly all the blame is on your government for allowing that to happen.

alibarber

12 days ago

It sounds like the Iranian government have indeed taken steps to make it harder for their population to be influenced.

bigyabai

12 days ago

All of America's failings are leveraged to sow political division by foreign actors. Abu Ghraib, SAVAK, Dimona - these are America's mistakes, not foreign fabrication.

DrScientist

12 days ago

Interesting, but also absurd.

The Scottish independence movement is a very strong, grass roots campaign that has been building for many decades ( pre-web never mind pre-twitter ), with the Scottish ambivalence to the Union having deep cultural roots.

What keeps Gaza and the wider actions of the current Israel government in the news is the constant killings and injustices. If they didn't want to be in the news perhaps they could stop killing people.

Next you will be telling me Minnesota is only in the news due to Russia bots - and nothing to do with the killing of civilians on the streets.

alibarber

12 days ago

No I am absolutely not saying that.

I am saying that there is evidence that the amount of media (and I am including X/Twitter and other social media) attention given to various causes around the world is actively manipulated. This is in response to a comment querying the perceived disparity in media coverage of events. Not that these events are or are not occurring or a more 'worthy' cause than one another.

I very much understand the history around Scottish independence, but unfortunately it will take me a lot of convincing to genuinely believe that twitter accounts in Iran sharing news that Balmoral castle has been taken over by protestors [1] are well meaning.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20260117184736/https://www.teleg...

DrScientist

12 days ago

You talk about distraction - and I would argue that the article you are linking to is a distraction.

If you don't believe Iranian tweets are a major factor in Scottish independence - then why mention it?

And while I agree there is a lot of media manipulation attempts out there - I'd argue, if you take your Iran/Israel issue as an example - do you truely believe that Iran is outgunning Israel in this regard??

In terms of coverage - did this incident gget much coverage? https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260125-israeli-forces-ki...

In the 848 days since Oct 2023, 1109 people have been killed within the occupied terrorities by Israeli government forces or settlers.

That's more than 1 a day. Are you arguing that has disproportionate coverage?

I'd argue it hardly gets a mention.

anthk

12 days ago

Nice try with the Hasbara, but in the end Netanyahu's gang, Iran crazies are Trumpists arent that different in the end. It's all about power, as 1984 stated. Ideology it's just marketing and bullshit for the people.

baxtr

12 days ago

I agree that people on the top usually got there because they wanted power. Also, they want to stay in power as long as they can. The greatest feature of democracy is that change of power is organized.

With that said, I would argue there is a huge difference between those you have mentioned in how they deal with protests.

To make my point clearer, I have an idea for you: In each of the countries you mentioned, go to the capital with a sign "I am against this regime, I want change" and see what happens.

avadodin

12 days ago

It's not even in the same ballpark.

0.03% of Iranians vs 3% of Gazans.

I think we can all agree that Iran shouldn't be massacring its own nationals even if as the government claims they are foreign-influenced, but don't use this as a platform to push an agenda that harms even your own cause.

high_na_euv

12 days ago

>It's not even in the same ballpark.

>0.03% of Iranians vs 3% of Gazans.

"One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic"

avadodin

12 days ago

I am saying the opposite.

Sure, they all had moms and dads and to their families they were likely important and missed but there is a World of difference to the people left behind between some activist no one knows getting murdered by the state and their own families and acquaintances getting mowed down while they themselves are living precariously.

This moral absolutism is relativism in disguise.

edit: sorry, I shouldn't have replied to a political post however egregious. I will not engage further.

idop

12 days ago

Murdering 30,000 innocent people in three days of protests is indeed not in the ballpark of killing 30,000 militants in two years of a war, you're absolutely right.

Gibbon1

12 days ago

There is a legal principal that comes into play when people are locked up for contempt of court. You can be locked up indefinitely or until the issue is moot. The the reasoning behind that is you hole the keys to your own cell.

The Israeli's demand was returning the hostages and the bodies of the people Hamas murdered. Hamas refused to do that for a year and a half.

noduerme

12 days ago

Let me get this straight: If 60,000 people are killed in a war in 3 years, it's a genocide, but if 30,000 protesters are killed in 2 days, it's not? Not that either one is a genocide, but you're saying the difference is what percentage of the population died? Therefore, 10 people in Luxembourg are equal to 200 people in China?

willysin

9 days ago

Pallyweid [fake israelophobic buzzwords: apartheidgenocide] exposed. Gaza war with genocidal [Hamas Charter, declaration and methods] "Palestine" Gaza regime. We all know Hamas/PIJ death cult methods (search 'dead baby strategy'. In fact, it was already by Egyptian born Arafat - Hitler's al-Husseini-mufti's family who began the 'human shields' tactics of ITS OWN PEOPLE already in early '80s in Lebanon) - to maximize casualties of both sides. Almost all who propagated "genocide" already paddled the "apartheid" slur years earlier. BTW The A slurs began by Ahmad Shukeiri in UN on 10.17.61, who rationalized the Holocaust months after WW2 [B'nai B'rith 7.12.46] and on 11.30.62 had promoted in UN Neonazi gang Tacuara, who guarded Eichmann and Mengele. Then you have UNCHR by Pillay Kothari "Jewish control" 2022 trope, or UN's "rappartour" Francesca Albanese infamous - dubbed modern 'Goebbeles', her antisemitic tweets from 2014 remembered; or the mocked $30 membership IAGS "experts" countered [T.O.I, 9.9.25] by 537 real experts denying the "genocide" lie. So are objecting major countries who are neither socialist or Muslim. All the propaganda Goliath machine nor hecklers who pressure pols. to utter the G word, don't change facts. Nor the 32 Wikipedia editors organized gang [see ADL, 3.18.25].

Numbers: even if one accepts the 60,000+ figure, but since over 25,000 Terrorists have been eliminated on Gaza, the combatants-to-none ratio is rather impressive. And yes, Hamas women are usually assistants... all that is in the course of 2 years.

VS Islamic Republic of Iran massacring some 60,000 in a few days.

[Journalist].Shirin Sadeghi @ShirinSadeghi Jan 22, 2026: Thread on the scale of death, injury and devastation in Iran right now. This Dr conservatively estimates 60,000 killed, 360,000 injured and at least 1 million directly affected.

----

Iran may have killed over 30,000 protesters in two days: Report. By Brady Knox. Washington Examiner. January 25, 2026. — Over two weeks, the Rapid Support Forces murdered thousands of civilians, with one estimate putting the kill count at over 60,000.

----

CBN News @CBNNews: The Middle East is watching to see if the U.S. will strike the Iranian regime. As further reports of the violence inside Iran come in, the number of those killed by the regime is staggering.

Global terrorism expert Dr. Amir Hamidi said, "A physician-linked medical network has released what is described as a hospital-registered death toll of 40,274, emphasizing this does not cover all facilities and includes victims who never reached hospitals. Based on those gaps, the estimated toll may exceed 60,000. This is not crowd control. This is mass killing, disappearing chemical attacks, and black cloth to hide the evidence. This is a nationwide uprising met with state terror. And it fits the pattern of crime against humanity.”

It's a massacre on a scale that makes it one of the world's deadliest in a generation. The International Center for Human Rights adds that more than 350,000 have been injured and more than 10,000 blinded. [Saman Rasoulpour @SamRasoulpour Editor in Chief | Co-founder, Pulse Media | Covering Iran: news & analysis]

Saman Rasoulpour @SamRasoulpour: In the early days of Iran’s nationwide internet shutdown, at least 30,000 to 60,000 people were killed on the streets. During this period, Mohammad Marandi was among a small, handpicked group of regime-approved individuals inside Iran who retained internet access , joining international media via live video from the state broadcaster Press TV’s studio in Tehran, while helping justify the regime’s narrative as the killings unfolded. Jan 28, 2026.

----

Turlockers continue to show support for Iranian protesters. Joe Cortez, Turlock Journal, Jan 28, 2026 — ... protesters in Turlock, with friends and family still in Iran, paint a far more harrowing picture. “When I spoke to my friend (Saturday), he told me that it’s over 60,000 that have been killed,” said Turlock’s Raymon Galavan, who came to the U.S. from Iran in 2006. “People are protesting for freedom with nothing in their hands, and they’re being killed with (military-grade) bullets. And the people who are in hospitals, they take them out and they kill them on the street, and bury them in mass graves. This is the reality. This is not out of a movie.”.. “What they’re telling me right now is that there are absolutely two or three families in each street, and in each alley, that have had someone killed,” said Farhad. “The estimated number of killed in two nights is more than 40,000. Whoever says different … forget about it. It’s a massacre.” Robert David, who co-organized the local protest with Charles Sharlou, added to those disturbing totals. “The numbers we’re getting are more than 800,000 injured and over 300,000 who have been arrested by the regime,” said David, also a native of Tehran. “There is no freedom in Iran. Whatever the regime wants, they do in the name of Islam, and everybody is expected to follow.”

midlander

12 days ago

You treating human life as less worthy if a population has more of them?

It’s 30k in a week - all civilians vs 60k in 2 years - in a mixture of civilians and combatants.

k4rli

12 days ago

The way you just call them all militants using human shields is truly amazing. From reddit by same username I can see that you're an American living in Israel also so it matches up.

jraby3

11 days ago

Did you also see I was born in Baghdad and know first hand what actual ethnic cleansing is?

Qatar spent $20B on education alone in the US. China Russia and Qatar have collectively brainwashed millions of Americans and Europeans.

vasco

12 days ago

It's a beautiful thing when you can designate any male carrying objects in their hands as terrorists and get license to kill him and his human shields (guy went home).

lm28469

12 days ago

> an American living in Israel

lmao, every. single. time.

jraby3

11 days ago

Did you also see I was born in Baghdad and know first hand what actual ethnic cleansing is?

Qatar spent $20B on education alone in the US. China Russia and Qatar have collectively brainwashed millions of Americans and Europeans.

trolleski

12 days ago

Half of killed in Gaza were kids. So the militants narrative is just untrue.

However, if someone pick and chooses where to apply human rights, it's unethical to say the least.

idop

12 days ago

If you say so

trolleski

11 days ago

Psst, I'm not alone saying it...

idop

11 days ago

So am I. The number of people repeating a lie doesn't make it true.

trolleski

11 days ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_genocide

Or is it all made up? Did Israeli official say on TV they want to starve Gaza, or not?

idop

11 days ago

It is the biggest con since Tesla FSD. Countless pictures from the civil war in Syria are passed off as if they were from Gaza. Countless staged photos and videos. Countless articles repeating Hamas claims with pictures whose captions have nothing to do with what's actually in the picture. Every stupid thing someone said gets butchered to fit Hamas narrative. Your ridiculous Wikipedia article is no different, including that quote some "Israeli official" said a day or two after the October 7 attacks. Not only was he referring to Hamas, it didn't even happen. The amount of food that entered the Gaza Strip during the war is gargantuan[1].

Don't get me wrong, people are definitely suffering, but when there are so many lies, it's hard to tell what's true, and when you spend your entire life in bomb shelters and see your friends and family get murdered, it's even harder to care.

Look at the UN. You've got that Francesca Albanese woman, who's supposed to be an "expert on human rights". Even she spread the obvious lie that "Israel killed more journalists in Gaza than both world wars combined", a ludicrous claim anybody with half a brain knows is ludicrous. Nobody knows how many journalists died in the two world wars (nobody knows how many died in Gaza while we're at it), and even her source for that claim says so ("No one knows how many reporters have been killed doing their jobs... Available counts are fragmentary and deaths of non-Western journalists, especially prior to the 1990s, are largely undocumented.").

But she spread the lie anyway, and the media helped her spread it more. Why? Why would an intelligent UN official spread such a lie? Why was the Wikipedia article about Zionism edited to say that "Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible", with the only "sources" cited for that insane, false claim being anti-Israel texts from the past decade only?

Not everything about the war is a lie, but much of it is.

[1] https://gaza-aid-data.gov.il/mainhome/

trolleski

10 days ago

Look, Israel didn't let in journalists claiming it's for their safety, and there are repressions against Albanese as well as the Chief of the ICC. If the situation was so clear, the above would not happen.

leonhandreke

12 days ago

I agree that it got appallingly little press, as do many large-scale human rights violations around the world. However, I feel like pitting it against "the rhetoric in Gaza" is wrong. Gaza is much more our war (where "we" is "the West"). Our governments directly provide the funds and weapons that are being used to commit the large-scale grave human rights violations by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank. In plain English: we're funding the genocide with our tax money. In a democratic system of government, I would therefore expect and hope for these issues to take up a much larger part of public discourse.

Given the direct comparison and language of the parent comment, it's hard for me not to see an implied agenda here: Iran's regime is bad, they're islamists, just like Hamas, therefore Israel should be excused for having turned Gaza into a parking lot, or something along these lines. Our commitment to human rights should be strong enough to reject this sort of thinking and condemn every single one of these civilian deaths.

jraby3

11 days ago

I don't think anyone really believes civilian deaths shouldn't be condemned. I think the main source of argument is who gets the blame. Hamas could've returned the hostages at any time, but they got rewarded by foreign money (and immensely successful anti Israel propaganda campaign by Qatar, Russia and China) to keep going.

The only real way to peace for gazans is to have a non Islamist government take over (like from the UAE) and re educate the population to not start training their children for intifada at the age of 3 or 4 and instead use some of the billions they've received in aid to build infrastructure and education.

miki123211

12 days ago

A situation only gets press when people disagree about it[1].

George Floyd got a lot because he was a borderline case, an innocent man shot by police for some, a criminal who got what he deserved for others. That creates tension. That creates arguments. "local cop shoots innocent 80-year-old woman carrying groceries" is a story for a day at best, then the cop gets punished and we move on.

Gaza is the same. You have one side complaining about human rights abuses, and the pro-Israel side supporting Israle to the death. In Iran, there's no such tension, we all agree that this is bad, shrug and move on.

[1] (funnily enough, this was cited today on HN in an entirely unrelated article) https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...

jraby3

11 days ago

It's not just press. The actions of the world are to let Iran continue doing what it wants to its people and not interfere.

The reason isn't that no one disagrees, it's that Qatar, Russia and China don't think the issue is divisive and have not launched a multi billion dollar propaganda campaign about it. And the actual press couldn't care less if Israel isn't involved.

noduerme

12 days ago

My GF and I rarely discuss news or politics, but she's a frequent NPR listener who gets most of her (ahem) "news" from there and Reddit. So the other night something came up about Israel and she casually said "well, but everyone hates Israel now". In that context, I said what do they think about the masses of unarmed people shot in the streets of Tehran. So imagine my total surprise when she said she had no idea there were any protests in Iran. None at all. Somehow, for a couple years of the war in Gaza, she was attuned to every video - real or fake - that was attributed to that war zone. Yet this completely passed without her noticing.

She said, "well, how would I know about it if it's not on the news?"

I said, "well, it was on the news." And then I went looking for articles about it. And y'know, I realized that unless you actually went looking, you probably wouldn't find those articles, even though they're only a few weeks old.

What is super disappointing about this is that when the US does take action against the Iranian regime again, the reasoning is not going to be legible to most Americans. I don't really understand how this was erased so quickly. That meme about Columbia's campus being totally protest-free was pretty much on point. It's startling to see a large portion of the population being manipulated so thoroughly into being rabid about one thing and totally blind to another at the same time. Is having consistent values no longer a value?

jraby3

11 days ago

It's because Qatar, Russia and China launched a multi billion dollar propaganda campaign targeting Israel. Israel is so divisive it's the perfect way to divide a population.

Lots of worse things have happened in the past two years (Sudan, Nigeria, and now Iran). No Jews no news.

yfw

12 days ago

Might have to do with the funding cuts to public broadcasting?

noduerme

12 days ago

I don't think so. We still have public broadcasting, and it's apparently not doing a wonderful job of giving an evenhanded, facts-first picture of world events. If anything, this has actually changed my mind and made me think that defunding it isn't a terrible idea.

coldtea

12 days ago

That's because the "30k" number is bs

greazy

12 days ago

[flagged]

nosianu

12 days ago

https://honestreporting.com/message-to-the-media-stop-publis...

> Weeks after it was exposed that Hamas’ so-called “Gaza Health Ministry” has been circulating false casualty figures, much of the media are still reporting them without a hint of skepticism.

> In April, research by Salo Aizenberg, a board member of HonestReporting, revealed that thousands of previously “identified” deaths — including more than 1,000 children allegedly killed in Israeli airstrikes — had quietly disappeared from Hamas’ own tallies.

> Aizenberg’s findings echoed a December report by the Henry Jackson Society, which documented how Hamas had systematically inflated civilian casualty numbers to suggest that Israel targets non-combatants.

defrost

12 days ago

Noted.

Also noted, re: the two sources cited:

* In November 2024, Honest Reporting Canada's assistant director, Robert Walker, was criminally charged with 17 counts of mischief for allegedly vandalizing several properties in a Toronto neighborhood by spray painting anti-Palestinian graffiti.

~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HonestReporting

and

* (Henry Jackson Society) Co-founder Matthew Jamison, who now works for YouGov, wrote in 2017 that he was ashamed of his involvement, having never imagined the Henry Jackson Society "would become a far-right, deeply anti-Muslim racist ... propaganda outfit to smear other cultures, religions and ethnic groups". He claimed that "The HJS for many years has relentlessly demonised Muslims and Islam".

~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Jackson_Society

lukan

12 days ago

"to suggest that Israel targets non-combatants"

Anything coming from Hamas is certainly not trustworthy, but according to the ICJ, there were quite a few more indications that Israel did this. Just the blocking of food alone is proof of targeting non combatants.

m000

12 days ago

> Anything coming from Hamas is certainly not trustworthy

This goes both ways and applies to all conflicts, but somehow we always cherry-pick the source that is not aligned with western interests as the "untrustworthy".

lukan

12 days ago

Who is "we"? What are western interests in this context?

I "cherry-pick" sources that do not spread lies. That excludes Hamas, as well as the circle around Netanjahu. The ICJ seems more interested in truth and you may criticize how that went for them, or are they anti western in your book?

m000

12 days ago

ICJ is definitely a legit source. But it also looks biased to cite only one of the two sides as untrustworthy, and choose the one which actually agrees with the legit source for the specific case.

I don't claim the bias was deliberate. The point is that we have internalized having to conform with the narrative of western (elite) interests, which in this case is to exert control on the region, resources and trade routes.

KoolKat23

12 days ago

I get the feeling you don't want to hear it, but there is despicable thing called child soldiers.

sorushn

12 days ago

Their most dangerous battalion, consisting of 1000 infants, was neutralized by the brave IDF Soldiers.

anthk

12 days ago

Both Israel (Gaza), Iran (religious nuts) and the USA (ICE fascists and Trump's gang) can be declared as ruled by human turds, they aren't mutually exclusive.

heraldgeezer

12 days ago

Because the left love the islamists. Because Iran helps Palestine and Hezbollah. So Dropsite, Hasanabi and all of Reddit will not talk. It is that easy.

noduerme

12 days ago

How there is a marriage of convenience between western progressivism and ultra-conservative theocracy is still confusing and mysterious to me.

jraby3

12 days ago

You only have to look at Iran's history to see what this eventually leads to.

The left loves Islamists even though Islamists are against everything the left stands for (women's rights, freedom of press, religion, sexuality, etc).

I think Qatar's influence ($20B+ spent on US education) is the biggest factor here.

nroets

12 days ago

[flagged]

nerdsniper

12 days ago

> Iranians will be reminded

I think this comment is misguided enough / detached from reality enough to rightfully be flagged to death for being trite and not contributing anything to the discussion.

Iranians lost internet than 3 weeks ago. They are as aware now as they ever will be about how things are going outside their borders.

blagie

12 days ago

> Then Iranians will be reminded how peaceful and prosperous the most other Muslim countries are.

This is factually incorrect. Top 10 majority-Muslim countries, sorted by population:

Indonesia, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, Algeria, Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia

Now, the majority of those have problems with seeds in Western Imperialism, but the point is (a) the majority of those have problems (b) Iran's problems also have seeds in US interventions.

The gap between how peaceful and educated most people are, and how bad governments are, is a phenomenon almost unique here. Figuring out how to bridge that gap is the major challenge. The trick would be establishing a collective caliphate -- where the caliph isn't an individual but an institution -- and which spans the Muslim world.

M95D

12 days ago

> how peaceful and prosperous the most other Muslim countries are.

Which coutries are those?

3rodents

12 days ago

UAE, Indonesia, Malaysia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey among many others.

u_sama

12 days ago

This doesnt fit either the peaceful nor prosperous except Malaysia/Indonesia maybe.

UAE directly finances the sanguinary RSF in Sudan and CTS in Yemen, Saudi Arabia/Qatar has financed institutions behind the expansion of the Muslim Brotherhood/Salafism in the worlld and Turkey has a shaky economy with a large underbelly as well as engaging in their own brand of imperialism abroad.

renewiltord

12 days ago

[flagged]

mrexroad

12 days ago

> perhaps they will now form pleasant relationships and have joyful interactions

You do understand what’s happening in Iran, right? Hard to take your comment seriously.

renewiltord

12 days ago

A small price to pay, surely, to be rescued from the mind flaying less fortunate people in corporate hellholes must face daily.

Even with ublock Origin, these corporations will build a profile on me. Not so in Iran, where people can live without the watchful eye of Google looking at everything they do.

Akashic101

12 days ago

> less fortunate people in corporate hellholes must face daily

I'm sorry but how tone-deaf can someone be? Over 12.000 people have been killed in the protests with some reports going up to 30.000 since then and here you are happy about the fact that Google cannot profile them anymore. Protesters are beeing shot on-masse in the streets and families from outside the country have no ideas if their brothers and sisters are even still alive. Have some decency.

akho

12 days ago

You can block your own internet, if you feel that way.

mrexroad

12 days ago

I have a disdain for what online advertising has become and the data industrial complex that it empowers. Tbh, I think advertising should be regulated like porn and prohibited for those under age of 18.

With that said, what in the actual fuck makes you say this when ten(s) of thousands are being murdered in conjunction with this ad-free period you’re speaking so wistfully about?

uwagar

12 days ago

trump could do similar in usa one day to stop drugs and illegals...what a tragic day that'd be!

CrzyLngPwd

12 days ago

Just imagine how much we'd all get done if the internet were switched off.

samus

12 days ago

Switch off yours and see how well it works for you.

CrzyLngPwd

11 days ago

I do, often, and it works well.

You should try it.

samus

11 days ago

It sucks when you have to keep in contact with your family and your acquaintances during a, let's say, developing situation, and the government decides to shut it down.