#vpns

[lokiinmediasideblog]

Protect VPNs from governments

Defend VPNs from government bans!

You can sign this even if not in the US.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

There’s no such thing as “age verification”

My next book is The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI, out next month. Pre-order it now, including as a DRM-free audiobook or ebook, at my Kickstarter, and help me continue to prove that DRM-free isn't just the right way to reach an audience, it's also the best way to reach them.

"Object permanence" is the ability to understand that even if you can't see something, it still exists. Most toddlers acquire a thorough sense of object permanence by the age of two. But when it comes to technopolitics, object permanence eludes even full-grown lawmakers. These motherfuckers would lose a game of peek-a-boo.

Over and over again, politicians are warned about the ways that their pet policies will a) produce enormous collateral damage, and; b) be easily evaded by the people they're seeking to control, giving rise to a cascade of ever-more extreme measures. And yet, they swallow a spider to catch a fly and then act baffled and hurt when we tell them it's their own damn fault that they now have to swallow a bird to catch the spider:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/13/wanting-it-badly/#is-not-enough

The foreseeable and foreseen consequences of bad technopolicy are all around us, but in the eternal now of a politics utterly devoid of object permanence, no one is allowed to remember what happened the last time we did something stupid, especially not when we're on the verge of doing that same stupid thing again, only worse:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/07/foreseeable-outcomes/#calea

Technopolitics are defined by Bruce Schneier's "security syllogism," which goes, "Something must be done! There, I've done something." "Something" doesn't have to fix the problem, and "something" doesn't have to anticipate what will happen next. So long as "something" is done, the issue is resolved and the politician can chalk up a win.

This gives rise to some genuinely bizarre consensus hallucinations, in which we pretend that the reality decreed by policy matches up with actual reality. Take "streaming." There is no such thing as "streaming." A "stream" is just "a download that is transmitted to an application that doesn't have a 'Save As…' button":

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/01/fulu/#i-am-altering-the-deal

Once you decree that there is such a thing as a stream, you must bend heaven and earth to ensure that no "Save As…" buttons are added to the "streaming" program. You have to pass laws that make it illegal to inspect code. To modify code. To report on defects in code. To index information about defects in code. To index information about mods. To link to indices that compile defects and mods. You have to swallow the fly, the spider, the bird, the cat, the dog, and the whole damned horse:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

Then there's that perennial fave, "bans on working cryptography." To ban working cryptography, you have to outlaw free/open source software. You have to inspect every device that comes into your country. You have to erect a Great Firewall that blocks every site that might carry working cryptography. You make it impossible to reliably update the software in pacemakers, anti-lock brakes and nuclear power plants, and you make it easy for identity thieves, foreign powers and corporate spies to raid your government, your corporations, and your households – and it still won't work!

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/09/04/oh-for-fucks-sake-not-this-fucking-bullshit-again-cryptography-edition/

The latest consensus hallucination to take over our political classes is "age verification," a thing that manifestly does not exist. You can't "verify the age" of an internet user – you can only attempt to attribute every byte that traverses the entire internet to affirmatively identified persons:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/14/bellovin/#wont-someone-think-of-the-cryptographers

This comes at enormous cost. It is a gift to every future dictator, every identity thief, and every would-be sexual exploiter of children, who will have access to the hacked, leaked, and badly secured troves of data that this doomed effort produces.

Yes, doomed. Because even when it comes to kids, "age verification" is just a way of convincing young people to familiarize themselves with VPNs. This was entirely obvious from the very instant that "age verification" was mooted, and yet our policymakers pretended they couldn't hear the chorus of people who pointed it out to them. When cornered on the issue, they were affronted: "Can't you see that something must be done? How dare you attempt to stop me from doing something?"

And now, every single one of these chucklefucks is proposing bans on VPNs, from Utah:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/utahs-new-law-regulating-vpns-goes-effect-next-week

To the UK:

https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/05/18/mozilla-warns-uk-breaking-vpns-will-not-magically-fix-britains-age-check-mess/5241770

They were warned that this would happen. We told them not to swallow that fly. Now we're telling them not to swallow whole bucketloads of spiders. I fully expect that next year, they'll be telling us that once they swallow this herd of horses, it will all be OK.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/19/shes-dead-of-course/#consensus-hallucination

Image: Fir0002/Flagstaffotos (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Calliphora_augur_whitebackground.jpg

GFDL 1.2 https://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-1.3.html

[hannahhook7744]

You know what to do.

Spread awareness.

Make some noise.

Write letters, send them faxes, email them. Correct misinformation.

[pokabrows]

Hey since more sites are wanting people's personal information I thought I'd bring up VPNs, a great way to get around having to give all your personal information to a random website.

Even when people know about VPNs it can be hard choosing one. So here are some charts people on reddit have put together (links in comments because tumblr is weird about links sometimes).

Go to the links in the comments to see the charts in more detail. There's also communities on reddit dedicated to vpn discussions so if you google your question and include reddit in your search you can probably find other people discussing it. If you want to look around some specific subreddits there's /r/VPN and /r/VPN_Question , There are also subreddits for specific vpns that may be worth checking out before purchasing.

[tarragonthedragon]

advertisers are Not Happy about the online safety act because people are using more vpns and similar tools to get around it, making them harder to target. i can only say i hope they tear each other to pieces

[tuttle-did-it]

Fuck-- and I cannot say this loudly enough-- google.

Use adblocks, vpns, and alternative browsers like Firefox.

Stop using Chrome, switch to a privacy-focused browser (like Firefox.) DO NOT USE BRAVE as he suggests. It's created by a MAGA piece of shit.

Avoid google apps (maps, health, gmail, chrome, etc)

alternatives for search engines- DDG is probably the best alternative out there right now that isn't run by a piece of shit. And you can turn off the AI options for DDG.

when you do use google

--turn off personalised ads

--turn off location history

delete search history

turn off suggestions on youtube

turn off youtube history

[meret118]

A free, built-in VPN is coming to Firefox – and you won't even need an extension

Firefox's new privacy feature offers 50 GB of free browsing protection.

The new feature arrives in Firefox 149 on March 24, and routes browser traffic through a proxy to hide your IP address and location while you browse. Unlike many of the best VPNs, the protection is built directly into the browser interface. Users won't need to download a separate app or extension to enable it, and it's built around Firefox's privacy principles.

The VPN will initially be available in the US, UK, France, and Germany, and users in those regions will receive 50 GB of free data each month.