"Can the government PLEASE make sure that the only information journalists are allowed to receive is whatever the White House press statements say? THANK YOU GOVERNMENT"

  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I wonder if this is the death knell for vpns.

    All Biden and the dems to do is lie and barf up nonsense like lies that vpns need to be banned due to "national security". And if more juice is needed - they lie more. Tiktok something-something Chinese military. And we must ban vpns to stop child pornography. None of the "tech" stuff need be explained and the media will play along.

      • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Expectation: there will be a carveout for US companies using vpns

        Reality: the language will be so broad that a bunch of protocols and networking equipment is technically illegal

          • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Yeah, my thought was if there are any parts of the lower level networking that arguably acts similarly to a vpn. Like it would be extremely funny if everyone's router suddenly became illegal.

      • InevitableSwing [none/use name]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        The proposed Tiktok legislation shocked the hell out of me. I know what some democrats are so fucking stupid that they actually fear any "advanced" tech like vpns because of China/Russia/Iran/etc Cold War 2.0 hysteria. But also I assume that a bunch of dem senators hope to get some entertainment-related sinecures after they leave congress. The Recording Industry Association of America will piss itself laughing if anti-vpn legislation were to pass.

        ---

        An aside - My favorite go-to online grocery shopping sites makes me do two things to use it. Use Chrome. It only works smoothly with Chrome. And I must disable my vpn.

          • InevitableSwing [none/use name]
            ·
            2 years ago

            It's funny what sites block my vpn. A couple of small guitar forums do. I guess whoever manages the sites is worried about Ddos attack. Or a more colorful story would be an insane asshole kept spamming the sites via vpns. I always wonder what's happening behind the scenes.

            There's a insane asshole spammer at chess.com. He was clogging up chats with huge copy and pastes. The site blocked copy and paste for everybody. I find that super-annoying. But then he was back - again somehow spamming the huge copy and pastes. I wonder how. And then he was gone. But then he came back yet again and he somehow figured out to break the "ignore" function. If you ignore him - it doesn't matter - you still see his huge copy and paste spam.

            The site must have the most inept programmers ever. I've never even heard of that for a site people pay for with their credit cards. Does anybody there have any idea what they're doing? It certainly was one reason I decided to stick with a free account. I'm not giving them my credit card number.

              • InevitableSwing [none/use name]
                ·
                2 years ago

                Ah.

                I had a tricky question to ask so I wrote out the 50 words in a text editor to pop into the chat area and then I learned that the site intentionally broke copy and paste.

    • BeamBrain [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      And the libs, as they always do, will cheer the gutting of civil liberties because the media's given them a scary foreigner to hate.

    • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I wonder if this is the death knell for vpns.

      Going to obtain better information security by abolishing the most well-established method for safe data transfer? Uh... good luck.

      All Biden and the dems to do is lie and barf up nonsense like lies that vpns need to be banned due to “national security”. And if more juice is needed - they lie more. Tiktok something-something Chinese military. And we must ban vpns to stop child pornography. None of the “tech” stuff need be explained and the media will play along.

      We can't just "ban vpns". That's not any kind of practical solution. We made a big whiny noise about TikTok until it fell off the public radar, which suggests that this was more about doing a series of photo-ops than changing public policy. And of all the ways to combat child pornography...

      To quote Alice Coldwall-Kelly's critique of the British Parliament, "The only thing we can talk about doing is the impossible".