i’ve read that many apps can be not just banned but blocked. now i don’t have a source at hand but i heard that russia blocks not just signal but also matrix, meaning that it doesn’t necessarily matter whether the app is open source. similarly i’ve read that deep packet inspection can block things like sslvpn and wireguard.
still, blocking delta chat is really quite difficult, as russia has noticed and got angry about, so there should probably still be a way unless the country also blocks all email communication
They can block Signal because it is centralized. Signal knows this and built proxies into the app for this purpose.
Similarly they can block the main matrix.org server but since it’s decentralized you can still use any of the thousands of servers they may not even know exists.
Russia’s long term plan seems to be blocking Western networks and force the bulk of domestic users to the Max messenger, which implements inspectability a la ChatControl.
Apropos: https://fightchatcontrol.eu/
They block the ip addresses for the server components of those applications. easily circumvented with a proxy outside of russia. most these communication apps have such proxy support builtin.
The only way ‘apps’ can be banned is if they cut of the internet. soon as you have a data pipe from one end to another you can encrypt whatever you send.
This is why i2p and p2p protocols are so important it makes it infinitely harder to control / ban. you end up having to have a directional whitelist (i.e. you need to only allow outgoing connections from home devices to a specific set of ip), and even then once thats in place… if any of those things allow communication we can push data through them.
i see your point, but i worry that deep packet inspection would still be a major pain in the butt in that case since it may detect your encryption and block it, regardless of the ip you’re trying to talk to
not really an issue. DPI just increases costs for enforcement and is fairly easily worked around at the application layer. annoying to implement a workaround but not hard. this is the issue with most enforcement mechanisms people try to come up with when dealing with systems, they try to prevent anything they dont like ™ and it just ends up costing them more.
in fact iirc i2p basically helps with this problem just by existing already since it inherently generates a steady stream of data.
i’ve read that many apps can be not just banned but blocked. now i don’t have a source at hand but i heard that russia blocks not just signal but also matrix, meaning that it doesn’t necessarily matter whether the app is open source. similarly i’ve read that deep packet inspection can block things like sslvpn and wireguard.
still, blocking delta chat is really quite difficult, as russia has noticed and got angry about, so there should probably still be a way unless the country also blocks all email communication
They can block Signal because it is centralized. Signal knows this and built proxies into the app for this purpose.
Similarly they can block the main matrix.org server but since it’s decentralized you can still use any of the thousands of servers they may not even know exists.
Russia’s long term plan seems to be blocking Western networks and force the bulk of domestic users to the Max messenger, which implements inspectability a la ChatControl. Apropos: https://fightchatcontrol.eu/
You can tunnel through the Great Chinese Firewall fine, if you know what you’re doing.
They block the ip addresses for the server components of those applications. easily circumvented with a proxy outside of russia. most these communication apps have such proxy support builtin.
The only way ‘apps’ can be banned is if they cut of the internet. soon as you have a data pipe from one end to another you can encrypt whatever you send.
This is why i2p and p2p protocols are so important it makes it infinitely harder to control / ban. you end up having to have a directional whitelist (i.e. you need to only allow outgoing connections from home devices to a specific set of ip), and even then once thats in place… if any of those things allow communication we can push data through them.
i see your point, but i worry that deep packet inspection would still be a major pain in the butt in that case since it may detect your encryption and block it, regardless of the ip you’re trying to talk to
not really an issue. DPI just increases costs for enforcement and is fairly easily worked around at the application layer. annoying to implement a workaround but not hard. this is the issue with most enforcement mechanisms people try to come up with when dealing with systems, they try to prevent anything they dont like ™ and it just ends up costing them more.
in fact iirc i2p basically helps with this problem just by existing already since it inherently generates a steady stream of data.
i got my fingers crossed you’re right! thank you for your kind responses :D