A couple of days ago i noticed something off with blahaj.zone. I couldn’t see images posted by users on blahaj, so i thought it was a problem on their side.
Well guess fucking what? After 3 days, it was STILL broken, so i opened it and…
Blocked. They fucking blocked blahaj.zone. Actually beyond parody🤦♂️ Why? What was the point? there’s trans content literally everywhere on lemmy. what’s next, block them all? So now if i want to see a post by a user on blahaj, i have to turn on my VPN (protonvpn.com is also blocked in saudi, jfc) just to see it. Fuck this place. 🙄
I swear a couple of days ago it worked. This is a mild annoyance (hence the community) but still.
It’s so over guys, MBS said no more 196 😔
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It sucks, but it’s also one positive thing about the Fediverse - if Lemmy was a central platform, it would be completely gone for you now.
Yeah, thank god. I’m more baffled on why fucking saudi arabia would care about a tiny trans-ran instance on a niche software. must’ve been a slow day there, i guess.
youre kidding right. one of the most oppressive shitty, religion-based garbage of a country that subjugates 50% of its population and you wonder why its acting shitty?
I’m more suprised at the fact that they blocked such a small website, but i guess they really leave nothing left behind. I gotta be more careful on lemmy if that’s the case.
And i know KSA is shitty, i really do, but i can’t do shit about it. I’m not suprised they’d block a trans instance, just such a small one.
its what happens when horrible people have money to burn
Only a small percentage of saudi arabia live luxuriously, guess who’s most of them? (Hint: they’re a royal family) meanwhile, i’ve seen homeless people, starved to the bone (literally), without a single piece of clothing, sitting in the sweltering heat.
yep. evil people with way too much money
You are very naive, and should probably be a lot more careful when in Saudi Arabia.
That’s the thing, I thought Lemmy was too niche to be known about by the gov. I was wrong. I should cool it on the anti saud, pro republic stuff, this can get me in serious trouble.
Ye, this shit is no joke if you’re actually inside the Kingdom! Exercise tight OpSec please!
I ought to. Do you know any general tips, or places for me to ask about making my social media presence as secure as possible?
https://libcom.org/article/infosec-101-preventing-doxxing
Other than that, I would suggest always using proxies or VPNs when accessing fediverse services from your location.
Do a search on yourself - try to find out your real identity based on information online, and do it as thoroughly as if you were searching for your worst enemy.
If you can find who you are yourself, chances are they will.
Make sure you don’t have anything “hairy” tied to an email with an email address you’d use for anything uncompromising. E.g. keep the email you use to login on Lemmy and the email you use to login on netflix separate.
Use 2 factor authentication and a password manager. Treat your password leaks seriously and consider any leaked accounts burnt - assume the details you had in there are now known.
Avoid using your real name on anything you can.
Best wishes. Take care my friend!
Additional advice from a cybersecurity professional that’s good for you and anyone else reading: under no circumstances should you use SMS 2FA if there’s another option.
Yes, having another app sucks (google/Microsoft have pretty universal apps if they’re supported) but it’s trivially easy for an even slightly well funded and motivated attacker to redirect your texts/phone calls so it’s well worth the pain.
Hope this helps!
Hey at least Lemmy is becoming popular enough for the authorities to block us.
Can’t have shit in Saudi, not even Lemmy 😤
The good thing about Lemmy is that due to its distributed and federated nature, it can’t be fully blocked. You can just use a different instance and see all the same content (assuming instancea that don’t block the other instances).
Is it weird this makes me proud to be a blahaj user?
Like when a transphobic government starts hating, you know you’re doing something right.
I guess MBS didn’t like 196 😔
Dude was like
“Small community of queer people. Not on my watch”
what if innocent Saudis Arabians had no choice but to turn transgay on Lemmy??
When I was on blahaj zone, a pair of thigh highs and HRT appeared in front of me. The woke mind virus almost made me trans…
Thankfully, our benefactor, Lord and savior MBS protected us from 196, and those woke, non binary, trans, gay he-she-theys 🤮🤮🤮. God bless MBS and Saudi Arabia 🇸🇦 🇸🇦 🇸🇦 🦅 🦅 🦅
Proton works in China if you set the protocol to “stealth” in the setting, maybe that works for Saudi as well?
It works without stealth here, too. It’s a little slow, tho. granted, i am using the free version.
Ah ok, I’ve got the paid version. If you happen to be or know a student, they offer a 50% discount through studentbeans.com, only $2.50 a month.
Good advice, thank you :)
Proton works in China if you set the protocol to “stealth” in the setting
With or without alternative routing?
Without.
Wait so the “great firewall” doesn’t block Proton VPN IP addresses? That’s interesting.
They don’t blacklist IP addresses generally, though some are certainly blocked. But normally they run deep packet inspections and block traffic that is identified as VPN traffic based on certain header data. That’s what makes the firewall “great” in the first place; many other countries simply block a range of IP addresses, and all it takes is for the VPN provider to switch the IP in their data warehouse. That’s trivial and takes seconds, and many providers rotate their IPs on a regular basis to prevent blocks in the first place.
Because of the deep packet inspection, OpenVPN and wireguard as protocols are entirely useless in China whatsoever, for example. Stealth mode AFAIK is using a modified wireguard protocol that obfuscates certain headers and thereby avoids detection (for now).
If I were in Saudi Arabia I’d be using a VPN anyways.
Also, if I were in Saudi Arabia, I’d be trying to leave Saudi Arabia
Easier said than done. At least, for the second one.
What are the obstacles in the way of leaving?
Getting citizenship is hard, (even asylum is turned down often). You need a stable job in that country, and above average skills to prove your worth. If not, you’ll be deported back.
You also need to stay in that country for [upto] 10 years.
And you have to leave everything behind, your culture, your family, and your friends. It would be too dangerous to go back. And they might not even accept you, immigration is brutal.
Even after you become a citizen, many people will never truly accept you as your own, and see you as an immigrant, never as a citizen.
And Saudi Arabia is well known to harass, spy on, and even kill dissidents. There was a scandal with twitter, where the Sauds bought up large amounts of stocks, then ordered 3,000 Saudi dissident’s private info. Even in other countries you aren’t safe.
And money. You need money. A shit ton of it.
Just my 2 cents but it’s better to be seen as an immigrant in the wide world than to be seen as a threat to the kingdom in SA. Most middle eastern immigrants in the US do very well as long as they respect the social fabric they integrate into.
True, but it’s still annoying how it’s a lose lose situation for me anyway. I’d rather be seen as abnormal than killed.
Who’s giving you asylum exactly for “I’m from Saudi Arabia”? A refugee camp in North Africa if you’re lucky?
Believe it or not, it’s possible. If you’re gay, trans, atheist or a whistleblower you are eligible for asylum. But you’re right that just being born in Saudi isn’t a free ticket to Berlin.
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Also, if I were in Saudi Arabia, I’d be trying to leave Saudi Arabia
Probably not, as long as you are not openly queer, you wont see any reason to leave co sidering the ridiculous amounts of perks you get, its not a 3rd world country or a backwater nation, it is a rich monarchial regime.
Would those perks be extended to most people, or only to a certain subset of people (ie straight, male, religious)? Like, would a bisexual, atheist woman receive the same perks? I get the impression that a lot of people still wouldn’t feel accepted there.
I’m genuinely curious. Your comment prompted me to do a little research. I found that Saudi Arabia has been making strides toward women’s equality in the past few years. It’s doing a lot better than it had been even just six years ago! At the same time, this thread exists, so… I’m skeptical that Saudi Arabia would have enough benefits to outweigh the restrictions that someone like myself would have to live with.
Faux-liberalisation, don’t believe MBS’s lies. It’s better under him, but he’s still a dog.
Even straight arab males don’t get the best treatment here, but it is the highest amount of priviledge a citizen can get (better than being a lesbian, atheist pakistani woman. Basically guaranteed death). You’d need to be a millionaire or a saudi royal to get the stereotypical gulf priviledge.
Thank you. As I said, I was skeptical. I’m pretty sure I’d hate living there.
I mean, tonight I’ll be going out to dinner with both my boyfriend and my girlfriend, as well as all my coworkers. Everybody knows my lifestyle - I can be open in public, with my two favorite people, and know I’m safe and accepted.
I can’t imagine a single perk the Saudi government can give me that would be better than that.
You can’t imagine, because there isn’t :/ Only healthcare is probably better than most countries here for free, but i’d rather be in debt than lose my life or at best, live like a slave.
Have a good date, btw :D
Rich… But only to the royals/businessmen.
Most of us live normally if not a little worse off than the average westerners.
The only perk I have at all is healthcare. The west is basically better at everything other than that.
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Use Tor if you can, and people outside of these restrictive countries can help by running Snowflake in their regular browser.
Ooooh this is a pretty cool tool, I’ll set up the docker container on my homelab
You can also run a full Tor relay: https://community.torproject.org/relay/setup/guard/
There are tutorials on YouTube:
I set up a bridge on my home network. I’ll put the relay on my Hetzner VPS.
lmao, what’s with islamists and gay sites??
The Qur’an?
It’s not like they really care about it anyway.
Yeah, i hate gay people just as god intended, but i literally break every single law in the quran beyond that.
- Every Saudi royal
I also don’t remember a verse in the quran mentioning hacking a man then dissolving his corpse in acid, must be in surat al-baqarah…
Pro tip: Don’t “click here”!
man that page is so fucking annoying, everything i try to open anything it’s just blocked. All sites critical of islam/saudi/sauds, and alcohol/porn/and anything that they hate. Even tor and vpns are blocked, i need to use a mirror to get them, which may not always be safe (atleast for the VPN, tor has trusted mirrors)
ngl i think of running a vpn on my router, literally just not to see that fucking page anymore (and security too, ofc :) )
Just as a heads-up: What you just wrote is an admission of a crime in SA. Everything you post on the fediverse is public. And you now know they’re aware of Lemmy.
I hope you are absolutely sure whatever you’re using to hide your identity is bomb-proof, and that you’ve never posted any identifying info under this account or any other one with the same username.Edit: I found enough info about you in 10 minutes to dox you if I had access to SA government resources (birthday, -year, and -country, area in SA you currently live in, and very niche knowledge which at your age is likely what you’re currently studying at a SA university). Be more careful, Tor doesn’t do shit if you dox yourself.
In turkey, you don’t even need to bein the government to have access! They give out their private databases for confidential citizen data out like it’s Christmas and they’re a charity for orphaned kids with leukemia!
Simply put, never reveal anything if you’re a Turk, I can be doxxed from revealing where I even lived or which day my birthday is
So, I actually lie! I lie about my real name, where I’m born and my age and birth date
I blocked blahaj.zone voluntarily. Same as the tankie-zone.
There is a difference between state censorship and preference. One is good, the other is a symptom of corruption.
I can see that. How about not living in a country with laws like that? It is always easy to complain, but what is it that you have done so far?
hateful lmao “have you considered the obvious?”
my condolences fxomt, earmuff at dbzero doesn’t think you’re trying hard enough from their cozy armchair
My fuckers blocked catbox.moe, most western news sites and slowed down youtube traffic, but lemmy still flies under radar thankfully. I wish you still have your ways to choose what content you want to consume.
Tor with Snow flakes is probably what you want.
You could even use Tails to avoid leaving a trace.
