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Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only
- ReptileMan 8mo agoCan we cut couple of undersea cables and make it properly permanent for elites too?
- renewiltord 8mo ago[flagged]
- mrexroad 8mo ago> perhaps they will now form pleasant relationships and have joyful interactions You do understand what’s happening in Iran, right? Hard to take your comment seriously.
- renewiltord 8mo agoA small price to pay, surely, to be rescued from the mind flaying less fortunate people in corporate hellholes must face daily. Even with ublock Origin, these corporations will build a profile on me. Not so in Iran, where people can live without the watchful eye of Google looking at everything they do.
- Akashic101 8mo ago> less fortunate people in corporate hellholes must face daily I'm sorry but how tone-deaf can someone be? Over 12.000 people have been killed in the protests with some reports going up to 30.000 since then and here you are happy about the fact that Google cannot profile them anymore. Protesters are beeing shot on-masse in the streets and families from outside the country have no ideas if their brothers and sisters are even still alive. Have some decency.
- akho 8mo agoYou can block your own internet, if you feel that way.
- mrexroad 8mo agoI have a disdain for what online advertising has become and the data industrial complex that it empowers. Tbh, I think advertising should be regulated like porn and prohibited for those under age of 18. With that said, what in the actual fuck makes you say this when ten(s) of thousands are being murdered in conjunction with this ad-free period you’re speaking so wistfully about?
- renewiltord 8mo agoWe should perhaps take heart that even if these terrible things are being done, some good is being done too. Privacy is a fundamental human right, and just as important as the others. We should not encourage the view that privacy is a luxury item, only for those who aren’t being jailed. It is as much a human right as the right to freedom of expression. Some places you have the former and not the latter. Other places you have the latter and not the former. But human rights are important! Every one of them!
- FilosofumRex 8mo ago[flagged]
- weikju 8mo ago… while every other country waits to see how it goes while drafting plans to emulate this
- ajsnigrutin 8mo agoI mean... EU already blocks eg. some russian sites (some countries more effectively than others)... plus all the chat control pressures every year. Spain is blocking whole blocks of internet during football matches. UK is making you "show your ID card" to jerk off. But every such country likes pointing fingers at others, "hey, our censorship is not bad, they have more of it!". edit: considering the downvotes, HN is not bothered by our censorship either
- buzzerbetrayed 8mo agoWhy during football matches?
- ajsnigrutin 8mo agoSo people wouldn't stream the games ilegally... the private entity that owns the rights to broadcasting the games can arbitrarily ban whole subnets. the end result is well... not good: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45323856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45323856
- sigmar 8mo agoA company using legal action to protect their IP rights is so different from a theocratic dictatorship shutting down the entire Internet to prevent their overthrow. Perhaps you don't follow the news about Iran but these comments are incredibly daft.
- ajsnigrutin 8mo agoBut that's even worse... Iran is a stuck up country with huge political issues, internal and external pressures, outside countries attacking it while internally they're at the cusp of a civil war. Of course they'll shut down the internet, what else do you expect them to do? It's not like they have many options, nor the government trying to stay in power and crush a coup, even if that means blocking the internet, nor the people who are protesting against it and risking their lives. But EU countries should be a bastion of freedom, free speech, free access to information, democracy, human rights, rights to this, rights to that... Why do we, the EU countries have to use the same playbook? Yes, banning the whole internet is in one way worse and in other easier, than just banning a list of sites where people can find a way around it, but again, the difference is just in the quantity, the censorship factor is the same. The government gets scared people will see some other propaganda from the other side, and censors it... and even that is done very selectively (daily mail is still accessible from over here, so are fox news and cnn) With spain it's even worse, because it's not even the government doing it, but the government giving the right of censorship to a private company which clearly abuses that right and the government tolerates this... no court orders, no judges, no way to complain, no fair use, no nothing, a private company decides and the government gives them a blank stamped paper to aprove that. Yes, i know iran has it much worse, but there's nothing we can do about it here, assuming the internet is banned for iranians and they can't read this or comment here. But EU is doing the same, and we've been tolerating it for years... a site here, a site there,... not everything, but censorship is still censorship, no matter how many sites are censored, and there are people from EU here that should argue against censorship, even if it's just a few sites and not all of them.
- mrtksn 8mo agoDo they have something like intranet with some local services, like in DPRK&Cuba? is this the case of completely losing connection and devices practically bricked for anything other than displaying the time?
- siev 8mo agoWe do. It's not very good. As in, there isn't even a properly functioning domestic search engine that can match the quality of anything past AltaVista. The only local platforms worth a damn are the ones you'd be using anyway. (the local equivalents to Uber, Maps etc.) All other platforms (instant messengers, social media, news) are massively unpopular for being horrid to use at best, and government spyware at worst. To slow down the immediate damage the government has rolled back a few of the recent restrictions, hence why I can access HN. Among Google and a handful of other basic websites. But they are obviously experimenting and trying to figure out how much censorship they can get away with. There is talk of a planned "whitelisting" of the country's internet. Where almost all but a few big important services are blocked completely. This would have the bonus effect of making circumvention using VPNs and other methods even more difficult than it already is.
- breppp 8mo agofor someone with a tech background, how hard is it to setup your own tunnel? I'd assume cloud providers are whitelisted due to economic reasons?
- e-khadem 8mo agoLol. That was _before_ these new restrictions. And don't assume that you could setup a simple wireguard server and be done with it. No, it had to be a proper low fingerprint method (e.g., you had to hide the tls-in-tls timing pattern and do traffic shaping). Now, something like dnstt sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. You may be able to open gmail in 10 minutes if it does, and you explicitly have to block the fonts.
- 8mo ago
- nntwozz 8mo agoIf I were a betting man I'd wager that technological determinism wins in the end.
- AndrewKemendo 8mo agoDo you think they have a better shot than any other country with an explicit firewall (Eritrea, China, NK, Cuba etc…)
- Symbiote 8mo agoI don't think Cuba belongs on that list. They have limited service because they can't afford anything better, and the USA prevents installing additional undersea cables, but only a small number of sites are blocked by Cuba itself, such as a few Spanish language news sites run by Cuban-Americans. Many more sites are unavailable in Cuba because their USA owners refuse access to Cuba, but that's not Cuba's fault.
- fragmede 8mo agoThe companies block access to Cube due to sanctions, which there because of Cuba's communist government, which is their fault.
- tryauuum 8mo agoYou could've at least tried to put the blame on both parties in this scenario
- C6JEsQeQa5fCjE 8mo agoI am more powerful than you, and I come to you with a request to act against your own interests in order to serve me. You refuse. The harsh consequences for refusing me that I am about to unleash against you are your fault. I am going to starve you for resources for decades, and any bad outcomes for your economy are your fault. You should not have refused me.
- jobgh 8mo agoNo shot. The economy is already in the gutter. The productivity hit of a total internet cutoff would be a death sentence
- bpodgursky 8mo agoNorth Korea unfortunately has given them a path forward. If you're willing to murder your own citizens en masse, you can get away with about anything.
- _wire_ 8mo agoYes, just start small
- reeredfdfdf 8mo agoNorth Korea has nukes though. Iran doesn't, and probably never will.
- bpodgursky 8mo agoIran has 90 million people and a giant conventional missile arsenal that deter neighbors from allowing military action against it. Invading Iran would be enormously difficult. It will also probably get nukes sooner or later. But it doesn't need nukes to be nearly untouchable.
- reeredfdfdf 8mo agoConsidering America and Israel accomplished total air superiority over Iran in matter of days just few months ago, they're obviously pretty damn far from being untouchable. Invading Iran would be difficult, but totally destroying IRGC and military (as long as they side with the former) wouldn't be that hard. Dropping communications equipment and weapons to Iranian opposition groups wouldn't be hard either.
- bpodgursky 8mo ago
- hahahahhaah 8mo agoCan ROTW sanction Iran by giving it zero internet access even to "elites" by refusing to peer.
- vlovich123 8mo agoYou’re proposing a world wide agreement even by their allies? Like they can just tunnel their traffic through Russia or China. You could try to bifurcate into allied and non allied, but even that would be flawed, especially in countries like the USA where it becomes a first amendment right to try to ban such connectivity. It’s very hard to kill the Internet in terms of connecting peers - that’s kind of the point of its design.
- johncolanduoni 8mo agoIPs owned by Iranian entities could be blocked straightforwardly by network operators at various levels. They could probably fudge the paperwork via Russian or Chinese entities and obfuscate the routes with cooperation from Russian/Chinese network operators, but that would take time.
- Maxious 8mo agothey're fudging the paperwork with oil tankers that everybody can see https://www.reuters.com/graphics/IRAN-OIL/zjpqngedmvx/ https://www.reuters.com/graphics/IRAN-OIL/zjpqngedmvx/
- tucnak 8mo agoThey said "tunnel"
- johncolanduoni 8mo agoIf they mean a real proxy, that’s even more involved - you can’t just do that with BGP configurations and will need someone running what is basically a country-wide VPN in Russia or China (which will probably be very identifiable).
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- cryptoegorophy 8mo agoSpacex satellites blockage was the surprise. How did they do it? I thought it would be the best dooms day kind of insurance. Turns out not.
- alephnerd 8mo agoRF and GPS jamming has been a solved problem for decades. As a SWE, we are all expected to take Physics E&M, Circuits, and CompArch in our CS undergrad - think back to those classes.
- merelythere 8mo agoGenuine question, is it that easy to deploy these tools over a country that big?
- alephnerd 8mo agoYes in most population centers. Any country that has the ability to stand up a cellular network has the ability to deploy jamming at scale. The components needed to build jammers and EW systems have been heavily commodified for a decade now (hell, your phone's power brick, car, and TV all have dual use components for these kinds of applications), and most regional powers have been working on compound semiconductors and offensive electronic warfare for almost a generation now.
- fc417fc802 8mo agoI don't think it's as easy as you're suggesting. GPS L1 jamming has been done routinely enough but the satellite bands (X/Ku/Ka) appear to be much more difficult to pull off. Iran was reported to have mobile units with a fairly short range that constantly roamed around, only hitting 2 of the 3 bands (Ku/Ka). They're also reported to have received mobile Russian military units capable of jamming all 3 (X/Ku/Ka) over a much wider area. (I'm not actually clear the extent to which X band is associated with either Starlink or Starshield. Starshield also reportedly operates to at least some extent in parts of the S band. [0]) So the technology clearly exists but it doesn't seem to be something you can trivially throw together in your basement. That's quite unlike (for example) a cell phone jammer which a hobbyist can cheaply and easily assemble at home. I assume the extreme directional specificity of the antennas plays a large part in that. [0] https://www.npr.org/2025/10/17/nx-s1-5575254/spacex-starshield-starlink-signal https://www.npr.org/2025/10/17/nx-s1-5575254/spacex-starshie...
- veqq 8mo agoBut they unblocked it on Wed/Thur, I've been talking to friends normally since then.
- namirez 8mo agoAstroturfing much? I haven’t been able to talk to my family for three weeks. Friends who manage to connect are hopping from one workaround to another because IPs are routinely blocked.
- veqq 8mo agoDo not immediately jump to such disgusting accusations: > Astroturfing much? I have been involved in antiregime activities for years. You can easily find many posts of mine evangelizing the cause in the oddest places e.g.: https://www.themotte.org/post/2196/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/338253?context=8#context https://www.themotte.org/post/2196/culture-war-roundup-for-t... > I just want the regime to change I run one of the biggest defense forums where I post about it a lot: https://www.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/1q09y6q/active_conflicts_news_megathread_december_31_2025/nx1uqj0/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/1q09y6q/ac...
- namirez 8mo agoGood for you! Then you must know that the internet connection in Iran is not back to normal [1]. [1] https://x.com/netblocks/status/2015695423000756250?s=20 https://x.com/netblocks/status/2015695423000756250?s=20
- michelsedgh 8mo agoThey already have uncensored unfiltered sim cards they issue to their own people, we found that out when X (Twitter) started showing which country you made the accout from and thousands of people had Iran which normal people can't access X without VPN. Its just that they shut off the internet for normal people now, which they hadn't done before.
- yolkedgeek 8mo agoNo, This is different. In "normal" filtering situations, we can connect to most VPNs and do our stuff. When blackouts like these happen, EVERYTHING is blocked. It gets almost impossible to connect to a VPN. They have advanced tech that detects and blocks all VPNS and proxies. The internet speed is also now at crawling speed so you really can't upload download anything. Also, in each blackout, people find ways to work around the censorship. And each time, they detect them and patch them. We have almost ran out of ways to prevent the censorship now.
- xvxvx 8mo ago[flagged]
- siev 8mo agoI guess it's time to check "be accused of spreading psyops" off my internet bucket list. Because I guess you're not interested in my own personal experience of witnessing said people get killed either. Or not exiting my home because I feared for my life. But you seem to have a loose definition of "unconfirmed" [1] so I won't dwell on that. Here's all I have to say: > When the Israeli government claims that Iran needs to be toppled to protect the Iranian people, while they simultaneously commit genocide in Palestine, I have to stop and think about their real motives. The Iranian government is evil. The Israeli government is evil. Both are, believe it or not, true. Conservative ruling systems often dislike other conservative ruling systems. > Trump wants to bring democracy to Iran _Iranians_ want to bring democracy to Iran. And as one of them, I sincerely don't give a shit about what Trump or Israel or anyone else outside of this fucking country wants. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_massacres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_massacres
- esolyt 8mo agoIf you get a chance to talk to an Iranian, try explaining them why it's fine that they're losing access to internet because the internet was brainwashing them to hate their government. Also tell them their government isn't killing or jailing protesters and these are just made-up by Israel and America. While you're at it, you can try explaining Ukranians why it's fine that Russia is invading them because America is bad.
- bigDinosaur 8mo agoPass on some of the worst analysis of Iran I've ever read...it's up there with Chomsky on Cambodia on the level of delusion just because 'US bad' or whatever biases the thinking.
- xvxvx 8mo ago'Your analysis is as bad as Chomsky' is probably not the burn you think it is.
- Jhater 8mo ago[flagged]
- gambutin 8mo agoI’m curious if it’s possible to somehow retrieve the whitelist to see who’s on it?
- 4gotunameagain 8mo agoMossad is curious as well. They might want to indiscriminately make people's devices blow up in public again.
- derektank 8mo agoThere are a lot of words one could use to describe the Israeli pager attack on Hezbollah, but indiscriminate isn’t one that leaps to mind, particular when compared against other contemporary military strikes
- 4gotunameagain 8mo agoComparing the lack of humanity of military strikes surely is a slippery slope. Let me remind you that many civilians died, including two children. Don't take my word for it: The following quote can be attributed to Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa Director at Human Rights Watch: “Customary international humanitarian law prohibits the use of booby traps – objects that civilians are likely to be attracted to or are associated with normal civilian daily use – precisely to avoid putting civilians at grave risk and produce the devastating scenes that continue to unfold across Lebanon today. The use of an explosive device whose exact location could not be reliably known would be unlawfully indiscriminate, using a means of attack that could not be directed at a specific military target and as a result would strike military targets and civilians without distinction. A prompt and impartial investigation into the attacks should be urgently conducted.” https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/09/18/lebanon-exploding-pagers-harmed-hezbollah-civilians https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/09/18/lebanon-exploding-pagers...
- derektank 8mo agoThe affected equipment was C2 infrastructure and distributed by Hezbollah itself to its members for use in conducting military operations. Again, if you’re familiar with the use of military force today or really any military history since the invention of artillery, a handful of civilian deaths from an attack on several thousand combatants, while always tragic, does not represent an indiscriminate use of force.
- feverzsj 8mo agoIt actually surprised me that they didn't do it before. China already achieved this in 2010s.
- culi 8mo agoHave they though? Everybody I know who grew up in China has told me its trivial to bypass restrictions with VPNs
- p0w3n3d 8mo agoThe question is what do you win when found using VPN?
- bspammer 8mo agoThere is pretty much no risk. It’s expected you will use a VPN, you can talk about it openly in public. Now, if you’re doing something unrelated that the administration doesn’t like, you can expect VPN use to be included in the long list of charges.
- feverzsj 8mo agoYou phone and computer will be checked thoroughly using automated tools. If they didn't find any sensitive keyword, you'll be fined and recorded in the system. If they find something, a detention for at least 3 days or ... forever. That's the standard procedure. But polices in developed areas usually treat them like antragsdelikte(no trial without a complaint).
- QianXuesen 8mo agoIt’s a deliberate “pressure valve.” China tolerates access for productivity but retains a kill switch for sensitive periods: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/how-china-tames-dissent-on-the-internet/2017/07/18/43d29b1a-6bf3-11e7-9c15-177740635e83_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/how-...
- HDThoreaun 8mo ago
- random123346 8mo agoThere is active discussion on net4people about using DNSTT, but as more of these tunnels go up, I'm sure it will be blocked. Given the denied environment the Iranian people see themselves in. I believe its worth mentioning asynchronous networks[1]. For example, they could use NNCP[2] in sneakernet style op[3]. Couriers could even layer steganography techniques on top on the NNCP data going in and out on USB drives. This can all be done now, and doesn't require new circumvention research or tools. NNCPNET[4] is now active which provides email over NNCP and therefore can be done completely without internet. Once a courier gets to a location that isn't as denied, they can route it over the internet via a NNCP relay. Both for getting information out, and getting data back in. For those wanting to get information to new agencies, you should consider SecureDrop. Here[5] is a list of securedrop locations. Like all operations, please consider your OPSEC. Good luck [1] www.complete.org/asynchronous-communications/ [2] www.complete.org/NNCP/ [3] www.complete.org/dead-usb-drives-are-fine-building-a-reliable-sneakernet/ [4] www.complete.org/nncpnet-email-network/ [5] https://docs.securedrop.org/en/stable/source/source.html https://docs.securedrop.org/en/stable/source/source.html
- iamnothere 8mo agoThanks for mentioning NNCP, it doesn’t get enough attention. I am hoping more tools will be built on top of it, with good tolerance for asynchronous/offline networks, particularly for communication and social. We may need it soon elsewhere. Mail over NNCP works well as you mentioned because mail is already asynchronous. Maybe Delta Chat over NNCP is worth a try.
- littlecranky67 8mo agoThere must be so much video footage from smartphones during the demonstations that show gruesome killings and masacres, the iranian elites have to make sure this footage never sees the rest of the world. They have to ban the internet forever.
- dist-epoch 8mo agoNah, just for a year or so, after they will say all the footage is "AI generated".
- RandyOrion 8mo agoSadly, this already happens in China. After many years of heavy censorship on 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, there are a lot of accounts on Chinese BBS who say all the footage "AI generated".
- randomNumber7 8mo agoThey likely try to find and remove a lot of these videos (and their owners) before turning on the internet.
- littlecranky67 8mo agoFrom the phones, computers, usb sticks and SD cards of millions of people?
- danparsonson 8mo agoThey certainly wouldn't be the first regime to violently suppress millions of its own people.
- tsss 8mo agoThey don't have to. In two weeks nobody will (pretend to) care anymore.
- dominicrose 8mo ago
- inlined 8mo agoIf the weak link is GPS, could they not accept an override for the time and spherical coordinates to connect?
- m4rtink 8mo agoIt should be possible to switch the terminal to use the satellites themselves for positioning (Starlink positioning) but it needs manually switching to that option.
- mahdi7d1 8mo agoI've been moderately happy this morning to find out I can open hackernews. Also Gmail is working. After attempting to get bridges using email and configuring an dozen of them I got 100% connection but then it disconnected without me being able to connect to anything. I would assume some sort of tunneling must be possible cause the services available are varied and not limited to a few websites (We only had access to Google Search for about a week and nothing before that) now even Nintendo Store opened to my complete surprise.
- SturgeonsLaw 8mo agoIs there anything people outside Iran can spin up in order to get more routes out?
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- bananasandrice 8mo ago[flagged]
- m-p-3 8mo agohttps://reticulum.network/ https://reticulum.network/ with LoRa-based directional antennas pointed toward Iran near the border? Don't expect sending anything massive such as video recording, but should be enough for text-based communications.
- _ink_ 8mo agoI there anything the outside world can do? Like are the people relying on https://snowflake.torproject.org/ https://snowflake.torproject.org/ and adding bandwidth there actually makes a difference?
- mohsen1 8mo agoUnfortunately if it's public the government can also see it and block it :(
- nroets 8mo ago[flagged]
- M95D 8mo ago> how peaceful and prosperous the most other Muslim countries are. Which coutries are those?
- 3rodents 8mo agoUAE, Indonesia, Malaysia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey among many others.
- u_sama 8mo agoThis doesnt fit either the peaceful nor prosperous except Malaysia/Indonesia maybe. UAE directly finances the sanguinary RSF in Sudan and CTS in Yemen, Saudi Arabia/Qatar has financed institutions behind the expansion of the Muslim Brotherhood/Salafism in the worlld and Turkey has a shaky economy with a large underbelly as well as engaging in their own brand of imperialism abroad.
- joe_mamba 8mo ago[flagged]
- mschulze 8mo agoTake your hate elsewhere
- joe_mamba 8mo agoWhich of those words classify as "hate"?
- bigyabai 8mo ago> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- kumarvvr 8mo agoGood luck trying to take something back from the populace once already given for decades, even if it is in a limited form. It's a desperate attempt, that really shows how cornered the administration is. Any power that fears information, has to have a highly fine grained, high level control of information to maintain power. This is absolutely difficult, in a country as culturally diverse and with a long history as Iran.
- adrianwaj 8mo agoIt not just information, but capital (crypto) - think prediction markets and their influence: https://polymarket.com/event/khamenei-out-as-supreme-leader-of-iran-by-march-31 https://polymarket.com/event/khamenei-out-as-supreme-leader-... "In addition to the central bank, it seems as though regular Iranians are seeking the perceived safety of cryptocurrencies as unrest disrupts the country and the economy collapses." https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/01/21/iran-s-central-bank-bought-usd507-million-usdt-to-underpin-rial-report-finds https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/01/21/iran-s-central-...
- morajabi 8mo agoThis has been the administration's response to such events for multiple times over the last 6 years (3 times to be exact, plus during the time of war with Israel) and the claim has always been Iran wants to shutdown internet forever. But in all those cases the access was re-enabled after a few or several weeks. Right now the internet access is widening and some areas are already back to normal internet — but it hasn't been stable over the past week. https://radar.cloudflare.com/traffic/ir https://radar.cloudflare.com/traffic/ir
- ReptileMan 8mo ago>Good luck trying to take something back from the populace once already given for decades, even if it is in a limited form. Like the right to not wear scarf? Seems they had the good luck with that one.
- jraby3 8mo ago[flagged]
- bigyabai 8mo agoIt's all over American national news, competing for airtime with the domestic executions.
- SSLy 8mo agoit's also being relentlessly flagged here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46760329 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46760329
- greazy 8mo ago[flagged]
- nosianu 8mo agohttps://honestreporting.com/message-to-the-media-stop-publishing-fake-hamas-casualty-figures/ https://honestreporting.com/message-to-the-media-stop-publis... > Weeks after it was exposed that Hamas’ so-called “Gaza Health Ministry” has been circulating false casualty figures, much of the media are still reporting them without a hint of skepticism. > In April, research by Salo Aizenberg, a board member of HonestReporting, revealed that thousands of previously “identified” deaths — including more than 1,000 children allegedly killed in Israeli airstrikes — had quietly disappeared from Hamas’ own tallies. > Aizenberg’s findings echoed a December report by the Henry Jackson Society, which documented how Hamas had systematically inflated civilian casualty numbers to suggest that Israel targets non-combatants.
- lukan 8mo ago"to suggest that Israel targets non-combatants" Anything coming from Hamas is certainly not trustworthy, but according to the ICJ, there were quite a few more indications that Israel did this. Just the blocking of food alone is proof of targeting non combatants.
- aquir 8mo agoThis should not be possible in 2026...
- dist-epoch 8mo agoThis will be entirely possible in 2027 when AI will be able to individually profile each connection for "disident" risk.
- ZoomZoomZoom 8mo agoI've seen unconfirmed reports of strange blocking patterns in Russian Federation that suggest individual profiling has at the very least been tested already. No need to wait a year.
- mdavid626 8mo agoNorth Korea 2.0
- dust42 8mo agoPrepare to go back to newsgroups with NNTP / UUCP. With today's uSD cards that should create a pretty decent, offline store and forward national discussion platform. No programming needed, it's all there already, just forgotten...
- CrzyLngPwd 8mo agoJust imagine how much we'd all get done if the internet were switched off.
- samus 8mo agoSwitch off yours and see how well it works for you.
- CrzyLngPwd 8mo agoI do, often, and it works well. You should try it.
- samus 8mo agoIt sucks when you have to keep in contact with your family and your acquaintances during a, let's say, developing situation, and the government decides to shut it down.
- CrzyLngPwd 8mo agoWell, a common theme here is don't rely on third parties for services. So, maybe, if it ever happens to you, have a backup in case of such emergencies. I guess, next will be; but what if...and that's for you to fugure out. Heck, a meteor might hit, and you won't be able to blame the government for your lack of backup.
- samus 8mo agoSure, I'll use psychic powers then /s
- Departed7405 8mo agoI really hope the next iPhone with Satellite connectivity not limited to SOS will help for that. At the same time, I can see Apple caving to Iran governement - or China's - and restrict this feature to countries where it is legal.
- 9dev 8mo agoApple devices are pretty much unobtainable to most of the population of Iran due to a variety of reasons
- morajabi 8mo agoUntrue — there is a large market for Apple devices, iPhones are super popular in Iran. Fun fact, IRL stores use iMacs because it looks good but they install Windows on them to be able to use their legacy Windows accounting software :)
- blahgeek 8mo agoFun fact - back in 2009, iPhone 3GS sold in China does not have WiFi feature. If that's possible, I can totally see a new iPhone model with restricted satellite feature selling in Iran and China.
- noduerme 8mo ago[flagged]
- uwagar 8mo agotrump could do similar in usa one day to stop drugs and illegals...what a tragic day that'd be!
- yanhangyhy 8mo agothats sad... this kind of blackout only works for china because china has a massive internal market and the gov has a way of check things like: "we know you are using VPN, but as long as you dont do or say terrible things about CCP, we dont care". so this model works. but even with his, i still feel angry when i want to check something on google/ins...when i dont have a realiable VPN. i remeber when we start working on golang dev, and because its under google domain so many sub sites is blocked including golang ones, its very time consuming for chinese devs to develop golang projects, you have to figure out the VPN/goproxy... stuff..
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- cranberryturkey 8mo agoPost Iranian protests to http://icemap.app http://icemap.app anonymously.
- nroets 8mo agoHere's crazy idea: Instead of the US spending all this money on restraining the Iranian government through military build ups and sanctions, rather drop hundreds of thousands of Starlink kits by drones. Firstly the protesters will be able to communicate in private. And secondly, Iranians will continue to be reminded of the freedoms most other Muslims enjoy: As in free speech and free trade. One of the reasons the Berlin wall fell was that East Europeans saw on TV that how prosperous Western Europe became.
- stratocumulus0 8mo agoOne major difference is that it was extremely difficult to leave Eastern Europe. Borders with the West were fortified and even in the unlikely event of getting a visa issued, the government would make sure that your loved ones were left behind, forcing you to eventually come back. The citizens of Iran, in turn, are free to leave the country as they wish. In fact, the official policy is that if you don't like it here, then you are are supposed to move out.
- exDM69 8mo agoStarlink was also blocked by radio frequency interference. Granted that can't possibly cover the entire area of the country.
- fma 8mo agoWhat good is the free Internet when the government can use it push false narratives and obvious lies and the people just believe it (talking about America in this case).
- scyzoryk_xyz 8mo agoWhat? No. There are countless reasons why the wall fell but TV wasn't one of them. East Europeans didn't 'see' anything 'on TV' that would suggest anything other than what was endorsed by local authorities. Trade was a big factor though. As the collective quality of life in the East was deteriorating, efforts were made by authorities to save the dire situation by opening trade and some degree of freedom of movement with the West. As this plan failed economically, a side effect was that it only became common knowledge across society how big the gap in quality of life really was. The idea that free internet access will magically change the situation for Iranians on it's own is naive.
- egorfine 8mo agoI don't see any drawbacks on this. Recent protests demonstrated that: a) protests can and will be crushed by the government forces and people will be ultimately defeated; b) people have no means to force government to enable back freedoms; c) control is much easier with no internet available. Russia is on the same path by providing white-list only internet access "during Ukrainian attacks" and a bit longer every time until ultimately internet will become whitelist only. Also as we have seen specifically in russia, there is no shortage of senior software developers and network engineers truly putting in their best work to block VPNs better and deeper. Thus Iran's (and russia's) internet blackout may indeed become permanent. Update: obviously in this comment I am looking at this from the standpoint of an oppressive government.
- gryfft 8mo agoDo you have a different definition of 'drawback' than I do?
- ktallett 8mo agoAs in the total opposite meaning?
- Telaneo 8mo agoThey presumably mean drawback from the government's perspective. For the average citizen it obviously sucks.
- egorfine 8mo agoI'm speaking from the standpoint of an oppressive government. Freedom of internet access is something that they would rather never allow.
- AnimalMuppet 8mo agoDrawbacks are that your population loses contact with progress. Your people become less skilled for the modern world. That's fine if you want a country of agrarian peasants or factory-working drones, but it cripples your country if it's in a technological arms race. I mean, North Korea does manage to produce rockets and nuclear warheads. They aren't exporting technology, though.
- alsetmusic 8mo agoI think that'd only further cause people to push back. I think this could only backfire. Imagine if all the conveniences of the internet were taken from you. Not that you'd never had them, but that you'd come to rely on them and then they were gone. Feels like some palpable oppression to me. And it has nothing to do with your political views. Everyone will feel the squeeze and nobody is gonna be dismissive about it.
- amai 8mo agoSo Iran becomes a second North Korea...
- amai 8mo agoThis doesn't help. The prophet has seen what they did to their own people.