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Ask HN: The government of my country blocked VPN access. What should I use?

1308 points rickybule | 8 comments | 28 Aug 25 16:43 UTC | HN request time: 0.446s | source | bottom

Indonesia is currently in chaos. Earlier today, the government blocked access to Twitter & Discord knowing news spread mainly through those channels. Usually we can use Cloudflare's WARP to avoid it, but just today they blocked the access as well. What alternative should we use?
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nomilk ◴[28 Aug 25 17:27 UTC] No.45054759[source]▶
Australia and UK might soon go down this path.

Something quite depressing is if we (HN crowd) find workarounds, most regular folks won't have the budget/expertise to do so, so citizen journalism will have been successfully muted by government / big media.

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JustExAWS ◴[28 Aug 25 18:38 UTC] No.45055475[source]▶
I am just waiting for red states in the US to try this too since their current laws requiring ID verification for porn sites aren’t effective.
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1. curiousgal ◴[28 Aug 25 19:17 UTC] No.45055923[source]▶
> red states

Well you'd be surprised to find out that this stupid policy (and many more) have been brought forward by Labour (Left).

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2. nomilk ◴[28 Aug 25 19:25 UTC] No.45056013[source]▶
Both the major Australian parties (Liberal and Labor) seem as spineless as each other.

They're being pushed by media conglomerates News Corp and Nine Entertainment [0] to crush competition (social media apps). With the soon-to-be-introduced 'internet licence' (euphemism: 'age verification'), and it's working. If they ban VPN's, it will make social media apps even more burdensome to access and use.

[0] News Corp and Nine Entertainment together own 90% of Australian print media, and are hugely influential in radio, digital and paid and free-to-air TV. They have a lot to gain by removing access to social media apps, where many (especially young) people get their information now days.

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3. mikestorrent ◴[28 Aug 25 19:31 UTC] No.45056094[source]▶
At this point, anyone who has been watching politics for a few decades understands that the left/right dichotomy is primarily one designed to keep the majority of people within a certain set of bounds. We see it revealed when politicians and ideologies that should be in opposition to one another still cooperate on the same strategies, like this one.

The goal right now is to make online anonymity impossible. Adult content is the wedge issue being used to make defending it unpalatable for any elected official, but nobody actually has it as a goal to prevent teenagers from looking at porn - if they did, they would be using more direct and efficient strategies. No, it's very clear that anonymous online commentary is hurting politicians and they are striking back against it.

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4. int_19h ◴[28 Aug 25 19:36 UTC] No.45056165[source]▶
It has been my impression that in UK, both parties are strongly authoritarian, with the sole difference being what kinds of speech and expression, precisely, they want to police.
5. cherryteastain ◴[28 Aug 25 20:19 UTC] No.45056596[source]▶
Labour supported it but it was proposed and passed by Parliament in 2023 during the Tory government
6. SlowTao ◴[28 Aug 25 21:21 UTC] No.45057175[source]▶
Yep, here in Australia the social media age restriction was pushed through by both sides. Two sides of the same coin.
7. SlowTao ◴[28 Aug 25 21:23 UTC] No.45057198[source]▶
How long until they produce an generative AI version of Burt Newton to do new episodes of 20 to 1 based on some social media slop?

Yep, not a great time line here.

8. immibis ◴[30 Aug 25 08:46 UTC] No.45073030[source]▶
There is a real left/right dichotomy, but there are very few left parties in power anywhere. Democrats, for example, are right.