Gm.
It seems that it will be very hard for Brazil to identify and enforce the fines on VPN usage for Twitter/X. But it’s a powerful scare tactic.
When the United States banned gold ownership in the1930s (which lasted for four decades all the way into the 1970s btw), they didn’t really enforce it at the household level. They just had large prison terms that were rarely ever applied, which effectively dried up liquidity in the gold market.
Some people have pointed out that Nostr relays could be blocked by Brazilian internet providers if Nostr was big enough to matter. However, more relays could spin up, so they’d have to keep adding to the list.
Brazil’s government could then say it’s illegal to use VPNs for any Nostr app around internet censoring. The defense against that is to make Nostr as ubiquitous as possible. The more apps that tie into Nostr in some way, the harder it is to ever ban it in practice. Some people might not even know their favorite app uses Nostr. Imagine if everyone’s favorite short form app, long form app, podcasting app, reviews app, wallet app, recipes app, picture app, music app, and tons of other stuff are tied into Nostr, and how hard that would be to ban.
If Nostr becomes big enough to really matter, it’s because it’ll be tied into so many different things. That’s super powerful. And the devs keep building rapidly.
Replies (100)
GM! ☕ ☀️ 🫂
If users would build and run their client then it would be extremely costly to enforce the ban. Unfortunately this seems to be rather complicated to do on phones so maybe web app clients that are locally hosted would be better way to go.
Nostr is hope. 💜
But that goes to my final point. Imagine in the future if normies used all sorts of apps that tie into Nostr. Like it just becomes normal, because the interoperability makes them better apps over time. It becomes very hard for a government like Brazil to ban something like that. Imagine countless popular apps and websites across multiple categories going dark at once.
Mullvad VPN. Tails OS. Orbot.
Usem Mullvad VPN e Orbot. Tails OS e Tor.
For now if you keep us updated here with the economy insights you usually post on X I’d already be very grateful 🇧🇷
GM lyn
Nostr is Future and nothing else
The other guys should Go Home and Watch tv 📺😂😂😂
But it’s not just one thing in that scenario. It’s a Gordian knot of a bunch of things using some particular communication protocol among many other communications protocols. Government bans work best on the public when they have one clear thing to propagandize. Like “cannabis is really really bad!” or “Musk isn’t above the law, so we will ban X until he complies to prevent disinformation!” It’s much harder to play perpetual whack-a-mole with a bunch of different things. The propaganda narrative becomes diffused and unclear, the cost to enforce goes up, people might not even know what underlying technologies different apps use, etc.
Fear is their main weapon.
Just as here in Venezuela they imprison some people if they are caught with certain messages that do not please the regime. Thus giving more fear.
The tools to combat these arbitrariness are there. And only some will take them. Maybe even some will come to NOSTR
Agreed. Nostr will be the account of record, and other apps will be feeds off of it.
Very insightful, Lyn.
Thank you and GM
Ancient communist trick
Good points and GM
This can be a good test on the censorship-resistant aspect of #nostr! #grownostr
Won't running relays like Citrine Android on mobile devices be enough?
The cost of enforcing regulation will be the downfall of regulation. Bitcoin fixes this.
GM PV Fren
Have a froggy fun day.
Detecting VPN usage is really easy. Most VPN protocols and services are trivial to detect based on packet analysis.
Banning VPNs is an extremely serious threat to a free society.
But Brazil didn’t ban VPNs. They banned using VPNs to access Twttier/X.
As always precise and on point!
Great point about the fuzzy definition of the network
A mercy for freedom tech is that governments tend to be technologically illiterate to a surprising degree
They just need to identify that you might have a Twitter account, and then show that you've been using a VPN. Which given their judicial standards, probably won't be hard...
Also, good chance they move on to banning VPNs outright anyway.
Actually, the first court order demanded google and apple to remove vpn apps from their app stores, and the wording about fines is ambiguous about using vpns to access X or using them in general.
The demand for vpn apps removal was rolled back, though.
Why not just abolish the state? I really doubt the idea that technology per se can lead to liberty, we've been saying that for decades since the internet came out. I just don't think "hide and seek" is the way forward.
inverse skynet
Good morning.
With normal people you just make an example out of one person and give them whopping fine, put it on the media and everyone will then falling line.
Quite simple really. Its very little about enforcement anyway. More about signaling. I got a VPN and opened twitter/x for the first time in a while. VPN is set to Brazil naturally. 😂😂😂😂
Implement DNS over HTTPS (DoH) or DNS over TLS (DoT) into primal?
@jack @miljanTor or Nostr. Both work
Tor and I2P time
But why would Brasil ban nostr?
It is a powerful scare tactix but I believe the main point is to scare large Brazilian accounts, like influencers, politicians, jornalists, etc to not post on X bc their identity is known and if they keep posting then it must mean they are using a VPN...
I suppose the hope is that if those people flee the platform to threads, bluesky, facebook, etc, then most Brazilians will too.
Curiously, the fact that dictator Moraes ordered people be fined 9K a day for using a VPN to use X, is proof that it has nothing to do with X, but that rather the goal is to control what the Brazilian people can and can't see. Truly scary times.
Unfortunately, it will be very easy to identify and fine people for using a VPN for Twitter. If someone has a public profile, a single post is all it takes for a judge to make an example of them, and I think the media would be happy to show it in the news.
For people who are just browsing, nothing will happen, that's for sure.
Wack-a-mole unto critical, decentralized mass.
This argument applies to decentralized platforms as well if you're posting with your identity. It'll have to be with nyms no matter where you post
E.g. 0xChat :)
As the Chinese have said, “May you live in interesting times”
Exactly
Control is addictive
True
Perfect 👌🏼
Expecting many users to use our because a restriction happens on their favorite social network as X is far from being an efficient reality for the protocol to grow.
The huge challenge that the protocol must achieve is that it is invisible to users who do not even know they use it, because their favorite app X (or whatever it is called) continues to work without having to switch to another.
That would be brutal.
They want to ban people being able to post things that they deem to be disinformation. If Nostr becomes big enough, it becomes a target.
many posted VPN / block restriction in X from list of countries - it is bogus info. since real users in those places with protech knowledge always able to access.
exactly like official gazette ban means noting except normie cannot access,
it affects large accounts which should be the most terrifying act yet…. They only care if your voice is amplified.
Censorship is an all or nothing game. Either we, as a tech community, stand against this right now, collectively, together because we are able to truly decipher the signal from the noise.
Or, like the collapse of the Soviet Union… we watch as the oligarchs (those who had access to information during the fall of the wall) usurp power for the next cycle while the plebs lack the resources to do so after we are defeated individually.
A choice in timelines. Hopefully we see each other on the other side. 🫶🏼
For now… wait and you will see
They rolledback in a second order… for a moment
GM Lynn!
I wonder whats the limitations for scaling nostr at a technichal level 🤔
👆 this but for mining pools
👇 this but for mining pools
View quoted note →There's TOR too.
at first they banned all VPNS but they went back
This. ☝️
We are seeing that nowadays a platform can be banned, but it's very hard to ban HTTPS or SMTP...
Nostr must become a ubiquitous protocol too.
🫂
Moar nostr.
This builds a strong use-case for true DePIN Infrastructures.
lets all use X from wherever in the world using a VPN connection through Brazil.. Just for LOLS
I'm Brazilian and I just created my account here. What is GM?
Good morning! :)
Good morning Bom dia
Indeed. But shouldn't we welcome that attack? If Nostr cannot hold its own against such an onslaught then its reach exceeds its grasp, and a better decentralised protocol needs to be developed.
Unfortunately my country is going down by these fucking communists on the government and judiciary! Fuck them all! 🔪💀🔥🔥
Good Morning weirdo’s
It makes me sad that profile pictures are not standardized between nostr clients. Lynn‘s profile picture shows up fine in Primal, but in Damus I get a default profile picture. The same thing is true for banner images. I just wish there were some kind of a standard for this kind of thing.
Brazilians voted for their government. Maybe they should remember this next election.
In times like this adaptation is key. I am very happy to see so many Brazilians on Nostr already
at some point you realize that, generally speaking, a stiff penalty for a minor infraction is often a sign of the known difficulty of enforcement (on the government's part)
View quoted note →I thought no one can ban nostr because it is decentralized..
In this case nostr becomes the new internet and Everything is done inside of it
@Lyn AldenPeople always say #Brazil or #America or #France like they're really cohesive units but that hasn't been the case in quite a while now.
There are two Brazils, two Americas and three Frances, politically speaking.
It's just who steers for the next few years.
Gm☕️☕️🌞🌞
Nostr is being discovered in new perspective. It's much more than what we believe it can be because of what we bring to it.
Go devs
The persecution of those who use VPNs will likely not be against ordinary citizens, although some may suffer, but rather against relevant opponents of the current government.
GM. Is there any precedent to being able to ban a protocol even if only on paper? Like, I’d assume they can’t legally ban TCP/IP without crossing some sort of constitutional line
Our judges don't give a F about constitution anymore. Not even the people do.
I’m currently working on creating a webapp hosted on ipfs that will be a frontend to access both Nostr and the Hive Blockchain. You could choose to post to one or the other or both. Brazil would struggle to ban content like this.
I’m sorry to hear that
Bom dia
If they outlaw VPNs how will I get all my movies from PrirateBay?
great thought. Thank you for sharing
The election suffer fraud
Take time but with it they show in others distros
Lora is next
^
It's a democracy from minority, Jewish, Lebanese, Dutch, Arabic and others foreign thats runs Brazil.
dictatorship of minorities
Good point, but how do you abolish the state?
Of course it's not an overnight change, but we need to put someone like Milei in office.
mf named himself bitcoin samurai
Could you Clarify what you mean?
On another note, I think that any short-form or long-form app, podcasting app, review aggregator, wallet app, recipe app, photo sharing app, music streaming service, and numerous other platforms will need to integrate with Nostr if they hope to remain relevant. Without such connectivity, these apps risk becoming obsolete, akin to a brick-and-mortar store without an online presence.
the main difference between NOSTR and X is that Nostr doesn't ask you to verify your phone and e-mail ...
so they can never prove it was you ... well unless you're a face-fag
@fiatjaf @Prince AlephAbout Proton :
https://www.weforum.org/organizations/proton/
Proton and the WEF are connected and it's public - no conspiracy here, this is probably a good thing for the world. The WEF objectives are noble and Proton VPN can help through anonymized data to further shape their policies and identify key influencers.
"Proton was started in Switzerland in 2014 by scientists who met at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). Its vision is to build an internet where privacy is the default through an ecosystem of services accessible to everyone, everywhere, every day. Over 50 million people from over 180 countries have signed up to use Proton products such as ProtonMail, ProtonVPN and Proton Drive."
🧡
With time you profile get updated to others clients
100%
