How can it possibly be, that an ISP, which I’m paying for gets to decid, which sites I’m allowed to have access to, and which not?
All the torrenting sites are restricted. I know, I can use VPN, and such… but I want to do it because of my privacy concerns and not because of some higher-up decided to bend over for the lobbying industry.
While on the other hand, if there’s a data breach of a legit big-corp website (looking at you FB), I’m still able to access it, they get fined with a fraction of their revenue, and I’m still left empty-handed. What a hipocracy!!
What comes next? Are they gonna restrict me from using lemmy too, bc some lobbyist doesn’t like the fact that it’s a decentralized system which they have no control over?
Rant, over!
I didn’t even know that my router was using my ISPs DNS, and that I can just ditch it, even though I’m running AdGuard (selfhosted)
Counter rant: This is why we built encryption and VPNs many years ago. This is a solved problem, but rather than solving it you’d rather just complain ineffectually about it. The solution, the product of years of work of technical people and privacy people, is sitting right there staring you in the face available for you to use as a free service, a paid service, or your own self-hosted service. Use a VPN, that’s what it’s for.
Free VPNs should be avoided at all costs for many reasons, and the alternatives are an additional service to pay for, to fix another service you already pay for too that doesn’t work the way it should work in the first place.
I don’t see what’s ineffectual about the complaints. Of course people will, and should, complain. Loudly.
Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 is free and can be as trusted as any of their other services.
The ProtonVPN free plan is good though. There’s no reason not to trust them, Proton is a privacy company and their business model is very clear. Also, their apps are completely free and open source. Windscribe might also be an option, but they have bandwidth limits. Proton doesn’t limit bandwidth, instead they only allow you to connect to a small amount servers in only 3 countries. They also block P2P on the free plan, but it’s fine if you just want to get around censorship and browse the web.
Yeah, fair enough. My point still stands though: VPNs are a mere band-aid to the underlying issue, not a solution. You’re merely shifting your trust from your ISP to another company, not fixing the problem.
The problem is that VPNs can be a lot slower (for example large downloads) than a “normal” connection, at least iny experience.
There are many ways to solve this problem, with different degrees of acceptance: legally (arguing for personal freedom granted by basic laws, depends on jurisdiction), or technologically (tools to evade or deceive censorship techniques, could require technical knowledge for proper use).
We have the tools, but legal grounds can also play a greater role (e.g. declaring vpn/tor illegal causes a chilling effect for potential beneficiaries).
