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Ideas for defeating internet censorship


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2018 Sep 22, 9:52pm   6,183 views  26 comments

by Patrick   ➕follow (55)   💰tip   ignore  

Now that we are in a climate of overt corporate censorship, and many sites are being deliberately made hard to find or silenced for political reasons, it is important to find new ways to speak freely, outside of the control of our owners.

One idea is to use, say, photo sharing sites to host images which do not seem special, but which contain perhaps 1K of text encoded within them. Of course the readers would need to know which images and how to decode them, and this info would eventually get back to the site, which would then delete the images.

Another idea is to create a parallel "dark web" over sftp, so that transfers would still be encrypted, but no SSL certificate would be required, and so there would be no way to revoke the certificate. I have been thinking that an http/sftp combo server might be just the thing. You'd always make requests to your localhost, like http://127.0.0.1/some/path, and a local web server would relay that to an sftp client which would get the data and send it back to the browser. A nice feature of this is that everyone who ran one of these servers could also serve a cache of the data it retrieved, so it would really be peer-to-peer. And the content could be in html as usual, so nothing special would be required to create content.

But then:
1. How would you search for things?
2. How would you eliminate spam in the search results?

Please post more ideas.

Comments 1 - 26 of 26        Search these comments

1   mell   2018 Sep 22, 10:19pm  

There's blockstack on top of which you could build a general search engine (currently you can search for users to connect through apps) and there are already decentralized search engines such as presearch. It's a matter of adoption to give the leftist/globalist/cultural-marxist internet censors serious competition.
2   steverbeaver   2018 Sep 22, 10:26pm  

Challenge accepted. I am inclined to adopt cartel / mafia tactics but will ruminate for a more elegant set of solutions. Sorry, not a networker or frequent coder so I can't be of much use in that aspect.

I think that using their own tactics against them and parallel systems will certainly be elements in the final solution this thread will converge upon. What I absolutely do not recommend is any do-what-they-do-but-better approach, given the asymmetry of the situation. My copy of AoW is stowed away in storage, but that may be a good source for ideas. Maybe the other you or one of the other regulars have other bodies of work to draw upon? I personally like TRIZ but that is more of a source for solving physical problems, not emotional ones. Anyways, TRIZ may be of use for your code-/network- based solutions.
3   Patrick   2018 Sep 22, 10:36pm  

What are AoW and TRIZ?
5   Patrick   2018 Sep 22, 10:52pm  

Another interesting idea: send yourself a payment with Etherium or Bitcoin and include a message to get the message added to all the blockchains. This has been used in China to evade their censorship.

It's pretty high-latency and low-bandwidth, however.
6   Patrick   2018 Sep 23, 12:32pm  

I was talking to a friend about the problem of getting a server to change its response somehow after you make a request of it. This could be a channel of communication.

He pointed out that cached items are returned quickly, and non-cached items are not. So, you could communicate with someone else over, say, Google's servers by hitting some obscure search, which would be somewhat slow the first time you hit it, and faster for subsequent hits because of caching. So another user could essentially "read" a bit of information by doing that same search and noting how quick the answer is.

It's only statistical, but with enough redundancy, it could be pretty reliable, and a significant amount of data could be transmitted that way, at least enough to compose something like a Tweet. Going to work on this idea.
7   tox   2018 Sep 23, 1:12pm  

https://mainframe.com?
8   Patrick   2018 Sep 23, 4:14pm  

tox says
https://mainframe.com?


Thanks, that was interesting:

https://mainframe.docsend.com/view/j39qpui

I worry that it's too complex, and too under the control of a commercial organization.
9   Patrick   2018 Sep 23, 9:22pm  

Great quote from the Freenet site:

You cannot guarantee freedom of speech and enforce copyright law.


https://freenetproject.org/pages/about.html

Maybe I should just join Freenet somehow if they have been helpful so far in thwarting censorship online.
10   Patrick   2018 Sep 24, 7:53am  

@Aphroman, If you've got something constructive to say, it's very welcome. But if you just want to insult other users or the whole site, it's not welcome.
11   doik   2018 Sep 24, 8:23am  

Patrick says
Ideas for defeating internet censorship


TOR
12   NuttBoxer   2018 Sep 24, 9:11am  

Yes, TOR is the best current solution. I like the FTP P2P idea. Getting off the ISP’s should also be a consideration, that’s where censorship starts. A wireless or satellite P2P ISP might solve this.
13   Patrick   2018 Sep 25, 6:40pm  

Lol, it's even possible to use the moon to communicate:

The development of communication satellites in the 1960s made this technique obsolete. However radio amateurs took up EME communication as a hobby; the first amateur radio moonbounce communication took place in 1953, and amateurs worldwide still use the technique.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth–Moon–Earth_communication

Would require more equipment than most people have the time or money to deal with though.
15   NuttBoxer   2018 Sep 26, 10:24am  

Aphroman says
They both still, work it seems that is disinformation that they are being censored


As usual, the false Right/Left paradigm conquers and divides so the real censorship can continue right under our nose.

If the internet isn't censored, why do we have TOR? And then there's the founder calling for a bill of rights to combat censorship:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/28/tim-berners-lee-internet-bill-of-rights-greater-privacy
16   Patrick   2018 Oct 2, 9:36pm  

I've been thinking some more about defeating Google and Facebook censorship, and concluded that plain text is actually the best format:

* being small, text can slip through cracks that images and videos cannot
* text is easier to hide in photos (steganography)
* text is much faster to transmit than any other form
* text is much easier to archive: a single terabyte drive may well be able to hold all the words ever written
* government trackers cannot be hidden in it, so it's hard to prove you or anyone else read it
* malware cannot be propagated by it
* it does not need a browser (we should assume all browsers have been corrupted by the NSA=Google etc)
17   steverbeaver   2018 Oct 2, 10:18pm  

The text idea has an elegance to it. I also think targeting kids with improved development in critical thinking is another strategy, though that one takes time. Items such as this one:

Memes have also been an effective tool, as they have humor, elements or truth, are somewhat rebellious, and are digested quickly. In a presentation I watched the other day, the emphasis on more information faster was given. Effective memes convey the message, and I am sure they certainly helped Trump get elected.
18   bob2356   2018 Oct 2, 10:24pm  

Aphroman says

Don’t trust people. Trust their incentives


Make is simpler still. Follow the money.
19   steverbeaver   2018 Oct 2, 10:26pm  


Here is a good example, though a little racist (there is that rebelliousness). Funny with elements of truth, rebelliousness and is digested quickly. You have to remember that the next crop of voters is always only a few years away.
20   steverbeaver   2018 Oct 2, 10:29pm  

I agree with both Aphroman and bob. Follow the incentives and money. And yes, I agree that compacting that wall of text into something easier to remember would be good.
21   steverbeaver   2018 Oct 2, 10:37pm  

Where does that say disdain for blacks. Serious question only. That is you projecting.
22   steverbeaver   2018 Oct 2, 10:42pm  

Aphroman says
We should not make Patrick.net a Free Speech site?
23   steverbeaver   2018 Oct 2, 11:33pm  

Correct. But it is no longer constrained to specifically, only apply to blacks.
24   MisdemeanorRebel   2018 Oct 3, 12:39am  

bitchute is a great alternative to Youtube. I think you can guess how it works.
25   Patrick   2018 Oct 3, 7:57am  

steverbeaver says
I also think targeting kids with improved development in critical thinking is another strategy, though that one takes time.


I would totally love teaching critical thinking skills to kids, but there are two strong forces that are in determined opposition to that:

1. businesses, which want "obedience school" to create the next generation of workeres who do what they are told without questioning it
2. teachers, who do have the practical problem of keeping a large group of kids under control; the last thing they want is kids questioning what they are told

So the emphasis all through elementary school is on obedience above all else.

But it is a good game to slip mistakes into lessons and ask the kids to find the mistakes. This does get them thinking critically, and gets them to pay attention a bit more, especially if they know, say, there is one clear mistake on each slide.
26   Patrick   2018 Oct 3, 7:58am  

TwoScoopsOfSpaceForce says
bitchute is a great alternative to Youtube


I like it too, and plan to use it more, but what happens when YouTube manages to get a takedown notice issued against the bitchute.com domain?

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