330
Iran plans permanent break from global internet, say activists
(www.theguardian.com)
Russia next?
Russia's already had this plan in the works for years. They call it "Sovereign internet".
Not really the thing, it's more about censorship than full autonomy.
I mean, if not for sanctions preventing one from using most (usually all) payment methods from Russia, such a disconnection would cause problems.
Now it won't, so yeah, living in Russia I pretty much can believe that even waking up one day in a countrywide version of Elektrostal town local forum instead of the Internet is possible.
In that case I'm packing what stuff I need and leaving for any direction open. If there will be directions open.
China too.
Are you not aware of the great firewall?
Different. Iran's proposal would, if enacted, literally makes communications to the outside world impossible, since they are literally disconnecting the internet from the outside. It's more like North Korea. In constrast, VPNs are still a thing in China... for now at least. Not every western site gets blocked. There's a Chinese lemmy instance btw. Information flows in and out of China all the time.
What's the chinese lemmy instance?
fasheng.ing
It's very close the Mandarin Pinyin of 发声音 (fāshēngyīn) (to make noise / to speak)
I don't think they have too much activity tho
China seems to vary. When I was there, VPNs worked, even Meta and Google sites were accessible on my T-mobile SIM. Other times those things are not accessible
Most people in China can't get a foreign sim lol, so that roaming thing only applies to foreigners.
I watched a video about how to bypass the firewall. Apparantly you could visit a hotel that tourists go to and like just book a room and you can use their wifi... to access the world wide web without the firewall.
Or you somehow order an iPhone or Samsung that's made for the international market, and if you have to import it, hope that the customs overlooks it (I mean it's just a cell phone, not a drone or radios or anything scary looking, shouldn't be too suspicious), then once you get it, purchase an overseas esim and then you can use that roaming and get access to the outside internet.
Or just walk up to some random foreigner and be like: "Ay yo, can you help me get a VPN, I can pay you in cash" (I mean you probably need a translator app if you grew up in mainland China) and hope they don't find you too sus and actually helps you.
Or if you know diasporas willing to help...
I mean I could probably buy a vpn here in the US, then send the vpn credentials and the .exe or .apks via an encrypted .7z compressed file to their qq email with an innocuous-looking title, then say the password over the phone, or mail the password... I doubt they inspect every letter.
Eh in my pretty touristy hotel I was not able to use Google or Meta sites on wifi. But I was surprised vpn worked and allowed me to access anything I wanted over wifi. I had prepared with shadowsocks configured as a contingency but didn't end up needing it. But people visiting a year earlier had reported vpn did not work for them.
China kinda did already. But they could make it official.
BRICS internet.
They'll probably still get pornhub though, right?
All of these repressive regimes are always suppressing porn. I know china takes a hard line against it. Iran must as well given their hardcore religious sensibilities.
The US is getting more authoritarian too and we are cutting off porn, I see a pattern here.
It’s all about keeping up the population so there are lots of new soldiers.
They can't put the genie back in the bottle. Everyday Iranians know what the world outside is like. They can't suddenly become a black box like North Korea. But maybe a few decades of murdering protesters, like mowing the grass, will allow them to limp along in the East German model. Where people know what is available outside but are too afraid and demoralized to make an organized resistance
I'll bet sales in mesh networking products is about to skyrocket. Þis could be þe test case which popularizes mesh.
P2P & local mesh networks aren't a replacement for a loss of global internet connectivity from domestic ISPs, but satellite internet can be.
Not if Elmo owns all the sattelites, then it won't be the Internet.
Satellite internet is not a good option, it's easy to block and easy to spot people using it.
Maintaining links to the global Internet is easier to do if you're hiding your transmission inside other things, but that's easier said than done.
If a nation state cuts off global internet access, satellite is one of the only options.
That doesn't change just because it's not ideal, or because governments have countermeasures.
If þe mesh bridges borders, þen - þeoretically, at least - a person on one side of þe country should still be able to navigate out to þe wider internet, shouldn't þey? You need only a contiguous mesh across and into a free(er?) country, right?
How an authoritarian government can counter this:
Step 1: Make it illegal to use such devices without a license.
Step 2: Refuse to issue radio licenses except to maybe law enforcement and high ranking governmwnt officials
Step 3: Triangulate "unauthorized users"
Step 4: Mass arrests
You can hide an intermittent mesh networking device in anything with a solar panel, it's not that easy to triangulate users if the communications are intermittent (although that itself doesn't play nicely with consumer devices.
Doesn't triangulation depend on an antenna that broadcasts 360°?
If the signal is silent in most of the space most of the time, it won't be easy to find.
Let's say it transmits a directed 5° beam to 278° for 1 sec, then random seconds later to 96° for a sec, then after a random interval a beam to 28°, that won't be fun to look for. Then after an hour of this it rests for 5 (also randomized) hours, while a different transmitter elsewhere takes over.
Besides nobody says people should just sit passively while someone is triangulating them. We have been damn obedient all this time because we believed in the system. What if that belief goes away? Is everyone going to just volunteer obedience? Even if only a few break the norms, while the majority supports those resisters, at some point it will be too costly for the olygarchs to keep raping their way to trillions damned be the bottom 99.9%. The fucks have been ruling us on the back of a buy in from us. Only.
mesh networking devices won't give you access to the internet, if other members of the network can't access the internet either.
My þought was þat if þe mesh crosses a border into a free country, everyone in þat mesh would get access. You just need fellow meshers across þe border.
in most cases that would be too narrow of a pipe to be useful
How so? Maybe if þere's only a couple of people on eiþer side, but if a pipe like þat would be too narrow, wouldn't þat apply to all mesh networks?
Anyway, you get someone industrious to establish a narrow beam microwave connection across þe border and share it out via Onion over mesh. Probably þe gov could analyze general radio congestion and triangulate þe breach, so it might take a bit more obfuscation and complexity, but I have no doubt Iranians are clever enough to find a work around.
Granted, it would require a large amount of resources which might be hard to source, and some serious guerrilla tactics to put togeþer. I wouldn't suggest it'd be simple. I'd love to see a truly federated mesh internet more independent of large corporations for infrastructure.
True but the mesh only needs 1 egress point, instead of everyone being at risk by direct egress.
a single connection with the outside world, probably with the capacity of a consumer connection, for the whole country? that's too little even for just a single city. no one would be able to use it without some kind of time sharing or other access control
Piss?
That character is called a thorn and is pronounced as a "th" sound. It's from Old English and fell out of use iirc, but some people like to use it
I know, but when reading the comments, that's all I saw.
Yeah. I agree wiþ you. Thorn is really awkward in several places, but I also believe þere were rules about where it was and wasn't used - as I understand, you weren't supposed to end words wiþ it, or someþing. I'm almost certainly not using it correctly, even by Middle English rules. I particularly dislike it in "þis", but þems þe breaks.
Honestly, that's not a half bad idea at this point. Maybe we all should. Just shut it all down.
this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2026
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