this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2023
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Counter rant: This is why we built encryption and VPNs many years ago. This is a solved problem, but rather than solving it you'd rather just complain ineffectually about it. The solution, the product of years of work of technical people and privacy people, is sitting right there staring you in the face available for you to use as a free service, a paid service, or your own self-hosted service. Use a VPN, that's what it's for.
It's still right to complain and protest about something that is unjust, even when ways to circumvent it exist. Because the next logical policy step is to ban VPNs, as many countries already have, and the solved problem becomes unsolved again.
Free VPNs should be avoided at all costs for many reasons, and the alternatives are an additional service to pay for, to fix another service you already pay for too that doesn't work the way it should work in the first place.
I don't see what's ineffectual about the complaints. Of course people will, and should, complain. Loudly.
Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 is free and can be as trusted as any of their other services.
That's DNS
No, their warp protocol is a fully fledged VPN. They use the same branding for it
Hmm, Cloudflare themselves seem to say it's not.
https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-warp-plus/
It will get you around ISP and network level blocking, with high bandwidth and considerable less privacy concerns than any other free vpn. It is not surprising that you will need to pay money for geo-spoofing, and due to the nature of it’s design it can only expose your client IP to cloudflare customers. As far as VPNs go, those are very minor restrictions.
Saying it isn’t a VPN is pedantry and also wrong no matter what they say.
The ProtonVPN free plan is good though. There's no reason not to trust them, Proton is a privacy company and their business model is very clear. Also, their apps are completely free and open source. Windscribe might also be an option, but they have bandwidth limits. Proton doesn't limit bandwidth, instead they only allow you to connect to a small amount servers in only 3 countries. They also block P2P on the free plan, but it's fine if you just want to get around censorship and browse the web.
Yeah, fair enough. My point still stands though: VPNs are a mere band-aid to the underlying issue, not a solution. You're merely shifting your trust from your ISP to another company, not fixing the problem.
I always use a VPN, no matter what network I'm on. I don't need or want to trust my ISP, I just need to trust my VPN company. And when I don't trust my VPN anymore, I can easily switch to another one, while I can't switch ISPs that easily, because they actually own the fiber-optic cable that runs to my house. Censorship is not the only issue with ISPs, privacy is another reason why a trustworthy VPN is mandatory for me. You can't fix ISPs, they are garbage, and they will always be. But you can use a VPN, so you don't have to care about your ISP.
Which is exactly my point. Not all VPN companies are trustworthy (I'd say most are not, tbh). You're still stuck trusting some third-party. The problem lies elsewhere. VPNs are a band aid.
Sure, but were never gonna fix ISPs, so I'm happily using this band-aid solution
The problem is that VPNs can be a lot slower (for example large downloads) than a "normal" connection, at least iny experience.
Decent VPNs should be mostly unnoticeable
I only notice my vpn when I'm gaming with friends. Otherwise video streaming and downloads are unchanged.
Dunno why this comment is being downvoted. Y'all must have some shit VPNs
Counter counter rant: both can be true.
Just because there's a workaround doesn't mean there isn't a problem.
There are many ways to solve this problem, with different degrees of acceptance: legally (arguing for personal freedom granted by basic laws, depends on jurisdiction), or technologically (tools to evade or deceive censorship techniques, could require technical knowledge for proper use).
We have the tools, but legal grounds can also play a greater role (e.g. declaring vpn/tor illegal causes a chilling effect for potential beneficiaries).