Mastodon is not easy for regimes to completely block, and most instances won't block you for using Tor. Mastodon saw a huge migration from Brazil when X was blocked there.

https://joinmastodon.org/

▲

barbazoo 9 days ago | parent | next [-]

Wouldn't it be easy to block the individual servers, e.g. https://mastodon.social?

▲

evulhotdog 9 days ago | parent | next [-]

There are many instances of Mastodon, and due to its federated nature, you can use any of them to access it, and even host your own.

▲

Ray20 9 days ago | parent [-]

What's stopping them from just blocking them all and continuing to block new ones?

▲

evulhotdog 9 days ago | parent | next [-]

Nothing is stopping them, but like most things in blocking free speech, it’s a game of cat and mouse.

▲

mayneack 9 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The long tail is very long

	▲	beeflet 9 days ago \| parent [-]
		It's not that long. You could probably these servers with an automated process.

▲

kragen 9 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Sure, but if you have an account on a different server, you can still see things posted on mastodon.social if you have followed someone there.

	▲	barbazoo 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		That’s the context I was missing I think.

▲

int_19h 9 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It would be easy to block on protocol level. Countries that block VPNs usually progress to that level pretty fast once they discover that simple IP blocks don't work.

▲

jszymborski 9 days ago | parent [-]

The traffic looks like any other web page.

	▲	int_19h 9 days ago \| parent [-]
		I doubt that is the case once you do statistical analysis of it. Advanced VPN tunneling protocols, for example, have to take a lot of special measures to conceal their nature from China's and Russia's deep packet inspecting firewalls.