> This gives governments an excuse to ban VPNs in the name of 'thinking of the children'. That might be the point though.

...then the rest of the world will see what the people of China and Russia already know: bans on VPNs cause them to explode in popularity and development pace.

There's a reason that the most sophisticated VPNs and tunneling tech are built to evade the GFW.

I recently visited a remote part of Siberia, and I was amazed at the ubiquity of VPNs. Grandmothers who grew up in shamanic traditions knew how to get around apparent traffic shaping (even on youtube!) to listen to their traditional music. It was quite inspiring.

I'm not saying bans are a good idea - I'd much rather the adults in the room read the writing on the wall and bring about peaceful dismantling of legacy states in favor of a censorship-resistant internet.

But it is coming either way.

"in favor of a censorship-resistant internet"

At least that's a good incentive to build censorship-resistant internet.