Iran's government moves to criminalize VPNs (2021) | Hacker News Reader

Iran's government moves to criminalize VPNs (2021)

article19.org

89 pointsariosto41 comments

The Powers That Be demand accountability from all except themselves. Such has been true throughout human history.

[2021]

Yeah... It's not recent. Especially not after the uprising this year.

Added. Thanks!

When I was reading about Internet censorship in Iran and what they have done in recent years, it made me think of WhatsApp.

They have blocked most of the popular messaging platforms including Telegram long time ago but for some reason they have not blocked WhatsApp.

Since the current round of protests in Iran started in mid-September, they also blocked WhatsApp, but only because they don't want people organizing, discussing and sharing in groups. Basically everything is blocked now and this new development is most likely a temporary thing until they can handle the protests.

But isn't the fact that they haven't blocked WhatsApp in these years suspicious? Maybe they have access to NSO's Pegasus spyware or something similar. I don't think NSO would sell it to Iran considering NSO is an Israeli company, but they could still do it by using a middleman and not letting NSO know who the real customer is. Or maybe they developed a similar tool themselves because they have the motivation and the money to buy the information even if they are not capable to find it themselves.

If they use Pegasus, the messaging app doesn’t matter.

Hey Iran, do everyone a favor and criminalize NAT.

2021, They were doing this before it was cool

Has already fallen behind PRC.

There are similar moves to "make people accountable" for their online actions in the west as well; only the details differ, the motivation is the same -- structural control of online activities and content.

people are and always have been accountable for their actions both online and offline, that's how things are done in any country with the rule of law. The issue is of course what activities and what content and whether lawmakers are accountable to the people. The internet is not a magical land of anarchy.

The Internet has magical lands of anarchy like the dark web, but the fact that the security and anonymity are fairly symmetrical adds a layer of protection for the one visiting these lands. There's also an awareness that the information in these regions is even less trustworthy than random stuff from the clearnet since you know literally nothing about it.

I don't know if somebody is being funny, but I think it's cool that my post on free speech was flagged and censored.

5 days ago, HN admins have removed a post about the desastrous effects of liberal policies (shock doctrine) on Kirghistan economy and societal fabric adopted after the collapse of Soviet Block.

I only had access to it because my rss reader had already saved the link to the blog post in its internal database. But there wasn't any reference of it anymore on HN when I wanted to reach the comment page.

Beside that, the rumors of journalists being fired from english media sphere for their coverage of the recent Nord-stream sabotage and the self-censoring (kind of olympic level mental gymnastic) of some other reporters about the event is mind-bogging.

Political articles that are very likely to devolve into mudsling fests are regularly nuked from hn, as I'm sure you and everyone who uses the rss feed knows. I'm frankly fine with that. It's not the focus of this site. Occasionally those articles are pretty interesting, and then I'm happy I see them from the rss, but usually I can see why they were removed.

What was the post? It was most likely flagged by users, not admins.

Posts about divisive ideological topics are often (in fact usually) low-quality and lame, so it's natural for them to be downvoted or flagged. That's to be expected on a site that is trying to hover at least a little above internet default, with its flames and its rages and its repetitions.

People don't post about these things out of intellectual curiosity—they mostly just reiterate pre-existing positions and points and agendas. Such comments typically make up for the lack of curiosity or information with rhetoric and indignation. That's what we're trying to avoid on HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Hi Dang, thanks for reading and commenting.

I know my position on the topic is a little controversial, but I wasn't deliberately trolling, I do genuinely believe what is wrong with today's internet is a lack of accountability.

TV, newspapers, books, magazines were all held accountable for spreading disinformation and harmful speech. I think we need the same protections on the public facing internet.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com