Cloudflare starts blocking pirate sites for UK users

PSA: UK users can visit all their favourite websites in Tor Browser. Just don't run your torrent client using the tor network. Thank you.

You can also access 4chan, Tattle Life, and other nasty gossip websites that the UK nanny state wants to ban.

And you can access the porn on Reddit and Twitter (though in some cases you'll have to make an account). And of course the "tube" sites work fine.

After you've done that, as a UK citizen, please go to https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903 and ask the government to repeal their awful law.

I don't actually use Reddit or Twitter, but I sometimes come across NSFW posts from links. I've found that old.reddit.com seems to allow you to bypass the filter(s) without needing an account. For Twitter, I tend to use the xcancel.com Nitter instance, though there are other Nitter instances that work fine.

Bonus for using Nitter here, you can also see the latest posts from an account instead of the most popular posts, and see replies/interactions to individual tweets. Oh, and it gives you plain HTML.

Reddit pisses me off so much that despite the fact that I don't even use Reddit, just so that my experience sucks less when I'm linked to Reddit or have another reason to lurk it,

- I use the "Old Reddit Redirect" extension to force the browser to go to old reddit

- I use the "Load Reddit Images Directly" extension to bypass Reddit's hideous image viewer that tries to load if your browser makes the mistake of having text/html in the "Accept" headers when opening an image in a new tab. (Dear Firefox/Chrome/etc: maybe stop doing that? If I open an image in a new tab, there is a zero percent chance I want HTML.)

On tor, reddit blocks you from logging in with 90-95% of the exit nodes

> Just don't run your torrent client using the tor network. I have never used tor so novice question: why not?

> please go to https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903 Signed!

You'll need more than just an account to access "certain mature content" on sites like Reddit - you'll soon need to upload some photographic ID.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj4ep1znk4zo

I hope many UK citizens are going to sign it.

The tor network essentially relies on donated exit node bandwidth, and there's a finite capacity at any point in time. Torrenting is a bandwidth hog (and a lot of exit nodes will filter it out anyway)

I wrote a similar comment but then realised that if you're using tor per GP's recommendation, you'd be fine as long as your exit node isn't in the UK, or other regressive jurisdiction.

> I have never used tor so novice question: why not?

bandwidth is a scarce resource on tor.

Crazy stuff

Tor is great but the bandwidth/latency kinda sucks for casual browsing activity. A VPN is a more realistic workaround to this kind of geofencing.

I almost said "solution" instead of workaround, but of course the only actual solution is to fix the legislation.

Not really been much advance notice of that to account holders. I wonder how the normally sane and well balanced people left using Twitter will react to that. Or even how they determine "UK account" anyway, given all the usual geographical qualifiers.

It's actually pretty ok for casual browsing these days. Have you tried it recently?

> PSA: UK users can visit all their favourite websites in Tor Browser.

And get to solve a dozen whack-a-mole intentionally-slow-loading reCAPTCHAs just to see the page, or worse, end up in a Cloudflare redirect loop.

It might be necessary to ensure that your exit node is not in the UK or another locality that is otherwise blocked.

That procedure depends upon your platform and client.

http://www.b3rn3d.com/blog/2014/03/05/tor-country-codes/

Edit: Use this link instead (thanks mzajc!):

https://web.archive.org/web/20180429212133/http://www.b3rn3d...

It is trivial to create a digital picture of a false ID.

I get a "badware" risk on that link from uBlock Origin (Firefox).

"uBlock filters – Badware risks"

The bypass via old.reddit.com stopped working today as well.

Which is why you will need to provide a cryptographically secure identity credential issued by the government, and you will need to re-verify at regular intervals, not just upload a JPEG.

Make no mistake, the plan is to require 'KYC' for Google, reddit, Facebook, X soon and all that and then later require it for all web sites, even this one.

Australia recently passed a law requiring Google to KYC Australian account holders to check ages to decide if the user will be allowed to control the "safe search" setting.

Well. Certainly for people in the room here. One imagines regulators know that too, and will draw the line accordingly… that they may grudgingly tolerate validation systems that allow some degree of individual fraud, but stomp on the first of us here to vibe-code our way to a fraud-as-a-service site that gets any traction.

I’m reminded of all-around-good-guy @patio11’s evergreen The Optimal Amount Of Fraud Is Non-Zero…

https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...

The domain has been squatted and displays typical spam advertisements. The last good archive is on https://web.archive.org/web/20180429212133/http://www.b3rn3d...

Tor is great but wouldn't an easier and higher bandwidth (for the yarr harr) solution to just buy any VPN service that exits outside of the UK?

No it isn't. https://metrics.torproject.org/bandwidth.html

I just googled 'top nsfw Reddit' and aside from some disturbing implications of 'top' all opened fine with 'old.'. The IP is UK based, is coming up as UK on all geoip sites I tried and is in all of the last 30days of maxmind as UK based.

It might be some kind of phased rollout of course.

Oops, I should note that I'm a U.S. citizen in a state without any porn age gate laws. I have no idea what the status of using old.reddit.com to bypass the NSFW filter is in other jurisdictions, or honestly even my own (not sure how to test it.) All I know for sure is that it worked last time I tried it.

Strange that they would allow such petitions in North Korea.. ehh I mean in the uk.

Stop disseminating misinformation by a YouTuber who has no business making judgement calls on a topic they obviously don't understand.

Is it really just a matter of my bandwidth being hogged up, or more a risk of getting my IP address (range) banned, if not worse legal risks from activities being traced to me?

I get enough of that between Brave Browser and using Linux as my desktop OS.

That's why some "tor-torrent" protocol should be invented, where data is sent via torrent network. There's still some bandwidth amplification, but as long as someone is seeding from within tor, the whole transfer could be done there.

...would also help with privacy and nasty telco letters.

You can't get banned because no one knows who you are. You can bring down the entire Tor network. Probably not you by yourself, but if enough people do it they can.

I believe OP was responding from the perspective of an exit node operator.

Yes, an exit node operator will appear as the source of the traffic, which can have legal repercussions. (Personal risk.)

But on a macro scale, the entire Tor network has fairly limited bandwidth and torrenting is a very easy way to saturate it. (Existential risk to the network / tragedy of the commons)

They don't show up significantly more often for me than in Brave browser.

Though at that point might as well use Tor in Brave, because the additional ad&trackers blockers improves drastically the load times.

Now, if only Brave would go the extra mile of having the Tor browser window better mimick the Tor Browser.

Thats relay bandwidth, I assume exit node bandwidth is some fraction of that

You can use the I2P network for torrenting if that's what you want, as that kind of traffic is not frowned upon.

Probably going to be slower than over the Tor network without any manual tweaking.

> After you've done that, as a UK citizen, please go to https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903 and ask the government to repeal their awful law.

There is literally no point in signing those petitions. The only disagreement between the major political parties in the UK is how draconian it should be.

I use tor semi-regularly to get around stupid UK geo-fencing of content and honestly it hasn't been like that in a while.

> Tor is great but the bandwidth/latency kinda sucks for casual browsing activity

It is reasonably decent these days. Generally there are periods where Tor network is slow.

> A VPN is a more realistic workaround to this kind of geofencing

Generally I tend to use a combination of Tor / VPN depending on what I am doing. Some gossip sites have onion urls and I will use Tor if visiting those. Other sites that are geo-fenced (sites like Odysee) are easier to get to via VPN.

> I almost said "solution" instead of workaround, but of course the only actual solution is to fix the legislation.

That isn't going to get fixed anytime soon. In fact I expect it to get worse over time.

Is the reddit equivalent of xcancel/nitter (i.e., redlib https://github.com/redlib-org/redlib) also blocked? Presumably if the instance is hosted outside the UK it would work since I think it effectively proxies your requests.

I've got PiHole and a couple extensions installed that block more than Brave itself does. Not really into Tor, but I did try it a couple times.

I have no idea what Tattle Life is but two clicks in, first to “Offtopic” and then “The Lucy Letby case”, and Apple Pay pops up.

Not a fake one, but the real deal trying to charge me £0.00.

I don’t have the patience to investigate that further but I am all behind banning scummy sites like that.

Tor is a bit slow for streaming video.

Ssshhh

They may work out that UK has a 2 party system where each one just takes turns and none of it makes much difference.

Yes

You are very unlucky

I don't think many of the so called alternatives are going to be any better. Wait til they figure that one out!

Reddit runs an onion service. Can you not use that?

> donated exit node bandwidth

Hey, we pay $100B/yr of tax money into the NSA/CIA/etc budgets every year so they can run exit nodes among other activities, I wouldn't exactly call it donated

Logins almost always give some 4xx error from both their onion address and regular address on Tor

You can browse though

If it hits 100k then it needs to be debated in parliament. However the bill was already debated in parliament and got through and the petition doesn’t bring anything new to the table.

There would be more of an impact if, perhaps, everyone in the UK who has had to shut a web site because of this law wrote to their MP.

Reddit is also very aggressive at blocking VPNs. Mullvad is constantly blocked. Occasionally I'll turn it off, but Reddit is just a terrible place so I usually go elsewhere (I'm only going because of Google search results. I'd rather use an LLM than turn off my vpn for Reddit)

Interesting, are you using any particular exit country for Mullvad? I’ve used Canada and never ran into Reddit blocking it.

VPNs are yet another Cloudflare and are next in line to implement censorship.

> If it hits 100k then it needs to be debated in parliament.

I don't think so. It says on the site "At 100,000 signatures, this petition will be considered for debate in Parliament".

I've seen people get excited about petitions before that got to 100,000 signatures and it all fizzled out, or it wasn't debated seriously in parliament. Often you will get a cookie cutter response with these petitions that is a paragraph long.

The reality is that most of the public are indifferent or supportive of the current legislation and most MPs know that.

> There would be more of an impact if, perhaps, everyone in the UK who has had to shut a web site because of this law wrote to their MP.

Each MP would get maybe a max of 10s of emails/letters each. Many of those MPs wouldn't even bother answering you. Those that do will often will probably give you the brush off.

I've written to my MP before (about encryption legislation), spent a lot of time presenting a clear and cogent argument and I got a "well I might have a chat with the home secretary" and they were still singing the same tune years later. What I was telling them was largely the same as other industry experts. They don't care and that is the unfortunate reality.

The fact is that the direction the UK government (doesn't matter whether it was Red Team or Blue Team) has been going in has been clear for well over a decade at this point. It would take a major political shake up for this to change IMHO.

True, but MPs receiving a few mails that say “this law has affected me in this way” is IMO far more likely to be effective than a petition with 100k signatures that says “I don’t like this law which you recently approved”.

MPs have been known to respond to letters. I have had responses to various issues. It obviously depends on the MP. Many MPs were very much opposed to this issue.

They very well could be, but I doubt they remain in business for very long were they compelled to block the raison d'etre people use them.

Some clients by default leak your IP when using Tor, the last I checked. When announcing to other peers, the IP of the host machine is provided.

So, you anonymously make the requests through an exit node, but the request contains your IP, which defeats the entire purpose of Tor.

> True, but MPs receiving a few mails that say “this law has affected me in this way” is IMO far more likely to be effective than a petition with 100k signatures that says “I don’t like this law which you recently approved”.

I think they are both ineffective. So I don't believe that is true.

> MPs have been known to respond to letters. I have had responses to various issues.

Getting a response is one thing. Having something done is another.

> It obviously depends on the MP. Many MPs were very much opposed to this issue.

The legislation was going to happen at some point or another. The direction of travel was quite clear. There are always going to be some dissenters, but the awful legislation got passed anyway. So what did their dissent achieve? Nothing.

I came to the realisation a number of years ago that for the majority of people, the only care about being able to use their Netflix, shopping on amazon, check their email and post photos on Facebook. Concerns outside of that are simply too abstract/distant to care about.

Exit nodes have to deal with much more severe things than copyright infringement. They regularly get raided by law enforcement for accusations of child porn and hacking, and have to defend themselves by pointing out they didn't originate the traffic. There's a whole bunch of tips out there about how to not go to jail for running an exit node (which is legal).

Thanks!

Interesting, thanks

> I think they are both ineffective. So I don't believe that is true.

I disagree that writing to MPs is always ineffective. Some campaigns have been successful. Whether it will be effective in this case is another matter. Maybe when people start to experience the block it will gain traction.

Of course if you don’t even make low-effort attempts to make your voice heard and exercise your democratic rights, you can be certain that you’ll lose them.

Funny in a US state I'm finding more and more places are popping up with an age verification. Doesn't really bother me so much content out there but yeah.

It's weird too how I don't want to prove my age, guess it's the taboo aspect of it vs. say showing your id at a bar.

Mostly US and Sweden. I'll give Canada a go. Thanks for the suggestion

> I disagree that writing to MPs is always ineffective. Some campaigns have been successful. Whether it will be effective in this case is another matter.

It won't be effective in this case. It been going in the same direction of travel and none of the parties (including outsider parties such as the Greens, Reform etc) proclaim to believe in in reversing this direction of travel. They are much more interested in other issues that are much more hot button. Those issues are easy for the public to understand because they are likely to have encountered them often.

> Maybe when people start to experience the block it will gain traction.

No it won't. People will either find a way to circumvent via VPN/Tor or some other mechanism (which is what they already do) or they will simply shrug their shoulders and won't bother.

There has already been a large number of forums/sites that have been shutdown or site been blocked in the UK and there hasn't been any significant traction on this issue.

> Of course if you don’t even make low-effort attempts to make your voice heard and exercise your democratic rights, you can be certain that you’ll lose them.

I don't really know how to respond to something like this because I believe it is naive on a number of levels. I consider myself a realist. I believe "making your voice heard and exercising your democratic rights" is about as effective as talking to a brick wall (at least on a national level).

I have personally made attempts. I wrote to my MP often. I cited links, news articles etc to back up my argument. It was an utter waste of time. At best you may get a short response. I realised I was ultimately wasting my time, I stopped and will never do it again. I actually feel stupid for believing that I could make any difference at all. I suspect this is the experience for other people and is often not spoken about.

Moreover much more notable people have tried to make themselves heard around a number of related concerns about freedom of speech, threats to privacy, iffy counter-terrorism laws etc. More often than not has always been either ignored entirely, responses that completely ignored the crux of the issue, or straight up lies from successive governments for almost two decades now.

Realistically our options will be to learn to live with the poor legislation, circumvent it, or leave the country.

> - I use the "Old Reddit Redirect" extension to force the browser to go to old reddit

if you make a Reddit account, you can flip an obscure setting so that www.reddit.com serves the same site as old.reddit.com

I used to have one, but I don't anymore and personally I think if they ever force everyone onto new reddit I will probably just not follow reddit.com links anymore (or use a proxy that is less annoying, if those prove reliable enough.)

Bars usually don't write down your data or associate every movement you make while there with your id, so it's definitely more risky than the traditional meatspace verification process.

Part of the issue is that for my entire life, age was either not enforced or a promise. It feels wrong having gates up where they previously didn't exist.

I get it; I wandered into gay porn sites and irc chats when I was in the 4th grade back in the 90s, and my friends and I loved chatting up those interested in our pre-teenage selves at the time. But I still will never provide a legit id for any age restricted services. Though I do have fakes for non us based companies to deal with financial kyc but haven't used them in some time (years), so no idea if they would work in the days of oligarchic identity management saas.

Why don't users just share passwords? Assuming no credit cards attached to the account, serms no reason not to.

Have you tried that with Google accounts now? They'll logout all your sessions and force extra authentication to get back in.

There will always be something you could maybe do as a workaround, but they are going to make it extremely hard.

> I think they are both ineffective. So I don't believe that is true.

Well, I know doing nothing is ineffective. Might as well do something.

Even if it does, nothing will change. They've been trying to push through this legislation for 10 years. They don't care what the citizens want - their need to spy takes priority.

On this particular issue, that something can't be political. Assuming anything can be done at all.

There is no support from the public and I don't be believe there ever will be, and there is no/very little support from any of the political parties.

Even in places where you would think they would be against such legislation, the disagreement is often how it is worded.

I would rather this not be the case. But I have to accept reality and exist within the confines of it.

> I don't really know how to respond to something like this because I believe it is naive on a number of levels. I consider myself a realist. I believe "making your voice heard and exercising your democratic rights" is about as effective as talking to a brick wall (at least on a national level)

This is partly a perception issue. You need to adjust your expectations.

Individually you are unlikely to make a difference. You write a letter and are knocked back, you see no immediate impact and all your human senses are telling you “this didn’t work”. That is how the human mind works. It’s very demoralising (arguably by design).

You feel like you are the only one acting, because you do not see anyone else acting, and therefore you feel alone on this issue, and knowing you do not have the individual pressure to move the needle, you feel it is shouting into the void.

This is a human feeling but it is not necessarily reality. You don’t know who else has acted on this, who has written letters, what the various MP Signal chats are saying. You have no way to gauge support.

Therefore you should make the efforts even if there is no positive feedback, because there are unseen forces.

You might also need less political pressure than you think. MPs are human. Put yourself in the shoes of a MP receiving letters from the public. If one person sends a letter on this issue, it’s lost in the noise, one of many crazies talking about irrelevant topics, dismissed. If only 10 people send letters on the same topic, that starts to put the issue on your radar, no? 10 letters, then you hear about a 100k petition on the same topic that’s going to get noticed, do some research, maybe even discuss it between MPs. You’ve given a reason for them to make a self-important speech in parliament.

Continual pressure on all fronts. Keep pushing, help efforts that gain more support and build more pressure. It’s all you can do but also the least you can do.

This reply you have given me is why I don't like having these conversations. You fundamentally still believe that the democratic process can work. I don't even believe it really exists. I believe what you see happening publicly is nothing more than political theatre.

> Put yourself in the shoes of a MP receiving letters from the public. If one person sends a letter on this issue, it’s lost in the noise, one of many crazies talking about irrelevant topics, dismissed. If only 10 people send letters on the same topic, that starts to put the issue on your radar, no? 10 letters, then you hear about a 100k petition on the same topic that’s going to get noticed, do some research, maybe even discuss it between MPs. You’ve given a reason for them to make a self-important speech in parliament.

Lets pretend this did happen.

What happens next is when some tragedy occurs (there are plenty that happen unfortunately) e.g. a teenage girl committing suicide because she was bullied on Instagram.

Then every major news website, news paper and news broadcast runs with "Dangerous Internet Trolls caused the suicide of lovely teenage girl".

Then there is a series of "discussions" about the issues on Question Time or LBC. The solutions presented will be various draconian measures which means more censorship, monitoring and surveillance. They will have a token person (that is often unlike-able) arguing against more draconian measures for "balance" which will be derided by the rest of the panel (and often the audience). After that you are back to square one, because it is now politically toxic.

This is known as "manufacturing consent".

I've seen this play out literally hundreds of times now.

I know, what it might do is make people realize that they are not in control, which is what I would like people to know, as a bare minimum.

How nihilistic and dismissive.

Do you wait for the end of football matches before deciding which team to support, because only the one that won matters?

I advocate against laws I don't like, and try to give people practical advise about how to protest against them, as well as how to circumvent them, and minimize their effects, and encourage them to pass this knowledge on. I consider it a good use of my time, even if not everyone cares to retain that info or pass it on.

Politics is never a foregone conclusion (unless you completely give up and go silent, in which case your opposition has carte blanche to do what it likes)... but like "viral content", it's not something you can always whip in your your favour. People are irrational creatures, and you never quite know what will make them all sit up and take notice. You can never be sure what will set the nation's agenda, and what stories "have legs", until they happen. For example: the Post Office scandal was a dull boring thing that nobody cared about, and then... an ITV drama made people care? But there have been ITV dramas about political scandals before, and they didn't all have that effect. But that one did. And the writers of the drama didn't just make stuff up, they followed the details of campaigners and journalists who had been covering this for years, even if at times they felt they were shouting into the void.

You just keep trying and see what sticks and what doesn't. The standard UKGov petitions site has at least some quantum of usefulness in that it encourages people to think about the issue, and if they sign it, they know there are others that agree with them. Change is possible.

> Then every major news website, news paper and news broadcast runs with "Dangerous Internet Trolls caused the suicide of lovely teenage girl".

Sure, that can happen.

What if tomorrow's headline is "porn habits of everyone in Britain revealed", or "6 in 10 people's bank accounts stolen after ID leak". Would there be room for change then?

We can then have the trustworthy, familiar face of Martin Lewis on the news telling people how to protect their identity, and he can highlight how this terrible problem was caused by mandatory rules set by Ofcom, and they can have some squirmy little git from Ofcom promising to "look into the problem", and by day 4 of the ongoing national identity theft disaster, the government will yield.

We can be cynical, but can hope too.

> Sure, that can happen.

It has happened! Quite a number of times in fact. That why I used that particular example.

> What if tomorrow's headline is "porn habits of everyone in Britain revealed", or "6 in 10 people's bank accounts stolen after ID leak". Would there be room for change then?

No. It will be spun in a way where they can justify more draconian measures or something else will be into the news cycle and it will be forgotten about after a few weeks.

> We can then have the trustworthy, familiar face of Martin Lewis on the news telling people how to protect their identity, and he can highlight how this terrible problem was caused by mandatory rules set by Ofcom, and they can have some squirmy little git from Ofcom promising to "look into the problem", and by day 4 of the ongoing national identity theft disaster, the government will yield.

I think it would be the ICO not Ofcom. Nevertheless, they will have some politician or spokes person blaming it on not enough funds and/or powers going to the appropriate regulator.

> We can be cynical, but can hope too.

It isn't cynicism. I am literally describing what happens more often than not.

> How nihilistic and dismissive.

I believe it to be a statement of reality. I am simply spelling out how it is. It is not an endorsement.

Moralising about my assessment does not make it untrue.

> Do you wait for the end of football matches before deciding which team to support, because only the one that won matters?

I also read spoilers for movies before I watch them in the cinema. I am truly awful ;-)

> I advocate against laws I don't like, and try to give people practical advise about how to protest against them, as well as how to circumvent them, and minimize their effects, and encourage them to pass this knowledge on. I consider it a good use of my time, even if not everyone cares to retain that info or pass it on.

I would only bother talking about how to circumvent them. The other activities are a waste of time. It took me quite a while to come to this conclusions (about 20 years) but that is the conclusion I came to. Those who are interested in circumventing it will come and find you typically, those who aren't won't bother.

> Politics is never a foregone conclusion (unless you completely give up and go silent, in which case your opposition has carte blanche to do what it likes)... but like "viral content", it's not something you can always whip in your your favour. People are irrational creatures, and you never quite know what will make them all sit up and take notice. You can never be sure what will set the nation's agenda, and what stories "have legs", until they happen.

I don't believe it is a forgone conclusion. I believe that one has to obtain power to enact change.

I don't believe that anything is "bottom up" i.e. there is a ground swell of public opinion and this peculates up to those in power. I think it is "top down".

> People are irrational creatures, and you never quite know what will make them all sit up and take notice. You can never be sure what will set the nation's agenda, and what stories "have legs", until they happen.

It is actually well understood what makes them sit up and notice. It has been extensively documented.

> For example: the Post Office scandal was a dull boring thing that nobody cared about, and then... an ITV drama made people care? But there have been ITV dramas about political scandals before, and they didn't all have that effect. But that one did. And the writers of the drama didn't just make stuff up, they followed the details of campaigners and journalists who had been covering this for years, even if at times they felt they were shouting into the void.

This only proves my point. Until a major broadcaster in the United Kingdom e.g. run by people with power, money and connections, popularised something only then did people take notice.

> The standard UKGov petitions site has at least some quantum of usefulness in that it encourages people to think about the issue, and if they sign it, they know there are others that agree with them.

I don't think it does. The people that sign these petitions have often already decided that the law needs to be repealed. Ask someone working down the local shop if they even know if this petition exists? Probably not.

> Change is possible.

Not by us. This is a lie told to you to keep believing. It was a bitter pill to swallow that ultimately your voice will go unheard. However it is ultimately liberating as you can direct your energy elsewhere.

The choice will be between going out of business and going to jail. They'll choose to go out of business. I've noticed that HN users often think businesses have some obligation to be infinitely sustainable - they do not. They just need to be sustainable long enough to recoup their setup costs.

The very next tab: https://metrics.torproject.org/bandwidth-flags.html

> They don't care what the citizens want

Polling has shown that the Online Safety Act had 70+ % of the population supporting it.

Something like 60% don't think it goes far enough.

Cloudflare doesn't go out of business, neither will vpns.

Cloudflare doesn't do things that send them to jail, like ignoring court orders. They'll log whatever the court tells them to log.

Cloudflare does plenty of sketchy stuff, like deliberately hosting DDoS-for-hire sites because it increases the demand for anti-DDoS products. But they will take them down if they are ordered to - and reveal their origin IP. They are not going to jail for you.