Comment by foob | Hacker News Reader

Comment by foob | Hacker News Reader

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As part of a company in the residential proxy space [1], I just wanted to point out that this type of proxy is used in a very different way than low-end VPNs. Residential proxies tend to much more expensive, and this results in them being used almost exclusively for legitimate business purposes. It's even a standard practice to go through a KYC process before obtaining access to residential proxies in order to ensure that they'll be used responsibly.

VPNs are often used for piracy, SPAM, and other nefarious purposes while residential proxies are primarily used to obtain access to data through web scraping. Large companies like Google are able to scrape the same sites without getting blocked already, and proxies help to level the playing field between innovative startups and established players. I can certainly understand the critique, but I strongly believe that the existence of residential proxies results in a lot more good than evil.

[1] - https://intoli.com

My critique is that Hola VPN users don't realize that they are peers, nor what that entails even if you were to use more direct language than the vague "share your idle resources with the community!" rhetoric on Hola VPN's homepage.

But since you brought it up, we both know residential proxies are especially attractive to bad actors and circumventors.

It's like how we're both capable of pitching Tor as the emancipator of the sanctioned journalist trying to publish the truth in the face of mortal danger. Yet 99% of Tor traffic to my websites is malicious despite our feel-good hypotheticals.

Of course, residential proxies are even better than Tor because a network can't just block the residential IP address space. ;)

Upvoted for realism, but I want to respond to this:

> It's like how we're both capable of pitching Tor as the emancipator of the sanctioned journalist trying to publish the truth in the face of mortal danger. Yet 99% of Tor traffic to my websites is malicious despite our feel-good hypotheticals.

Of course. That's the reality of freedom on the radical edges — bad actors need it more than pro-social actors. Many of us choose to support radical freedom(s) anyway because the capacity for anyone to act* freely is judged to outweigh the negative effects from bad actors.

*browse, post, etc.

Phrased a different way, the argument is that the benefit of the freedom for those incorrectly assessed to be bad actors outweighs the cost of the freedom for those correctly judged to be bad actors.

Yes, well-put.

Most users from third world countries can't distinguish between ads and content.

still loving that f5bot article, thank you sir

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