Is there an uncensored intetnet, because i dont think there is. if there is any, it can be turned off because its being routed on the censored net wrapped in encryption.

that being said, that makes me pretty interested in this talk. outside of hacking sattelites and such things and/or infra i really dont see any opportunities to break free of the will of corporations as they can simply pay infra providers to do their bidding.

I dont think software can solve all problems because internet exists essentially as informaiton transported over infrastructure. the software surely helps enable that but its a helper not the actual network.

happy to learn otherwise from anyone here ofc :-)

▲ aktenlage 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's not black and white though. There's a scale from "easy to censor without collateral damage" to "need to take the whole nation offline to suppress information flow".

And there is a scale from "trivial to circumvent, if only (you know) you want to" to something like "need to be very tech-savy and use custom hardware"

▲ cowlevel 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

As Spain, Italy and now France are showing us though, states have no hesitancy to take the whole country offline to block just one piece of unwanted information.

▲ M_bara 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

OTOH, third world or dictatorships won’t blink when it comes to turning off an entire country - example is Tanzania in the recent election.. are there solutions for communication when international links are cut? A lan like solution scaled to cities or an entire country that is disconnected from the rest of the world?

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Pifanjr 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You can receive data over radio waves, which would be pretty hard to block country-wide I think. Sending data would be a bit trickier without being caught.

	▲	saidnooneever 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		this does require quite some expertise. as u noted sending can be triangulated. Also because this sending issue, it wouldnt really be an internet since only few parties would have the resources for mobile or ship-based transmitting systems that are harder to pin down or stop

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setopt 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> are there solutions for communication when international links are cut?

How far can you scale wireless mesh nets?

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kmacdough 2 hours ago | parent [-]

In theory, there is no reason it can't scale indefinitely using something similar to IP. It's already a self-building network. The hard part is how you incentivise transit nodes. Currently that's what ISPs and backbones provide. They are incentivised to interconnect because that's their core business model. So a truly decentralized Internet requires a decentralized incentive system.

This would enable circumvention, but it's also pretty easy to triangulate radio signals, so it's fairly easy for a belligerent organization to track that someone is sending something.

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solyin 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> In theory, there is no reason it can't scale indefinitely using something similar to IP.

I'm sorry, that just wrong. Gupta-Kumar capacity scaling law (2000) says that as you add participants, each participant gets less bandwidth, until it becomes impractical. Imagine a room with 10 people talking in it. Easy. Now imagine 10,000. Hard to have a conversation if it's still all ad-hoc.

	▲	hdgvhicv 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You have to increase the width of the mesh.

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teiferer 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> are there solutions for communication when international links are cut

There are, but currently the most promising one is under control of a very rich and very politically opinionated person who is not afraid to use that power in any way he pleases.

A truly distributed version (with multiple tech stacks, ownership and control) would be the real solution but I don't see any way this could ever manifest.

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brightball 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is essentially the case for Starlink

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dachris 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

On the one hand, yes. That's why possession of a starlink terminal can get you killed in Iran.

On the other hand, Ukrainians are finding out that someone else is in control of that starlink infra.

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saidnooneever 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

i don't think anyone with enough money for shootin clusters of sattelites into orbit will be a free open internet builder. ofc thats an assumption. This network of sattelites would also need to join in and coordinate with other stuff up there, as far as i can tell its pretty crowded and theres collision risks etc.

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3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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root_axis 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Except Starlink won't hesitate to censor you as well as the Ukrainians are discovering.

	▲	hdgvhicv an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It’s only censorship when a democratic government does it. When an unelected businessman with no oversight and more power than most counties does it isles just property rights.

▲ retrac 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've been reading about the early history of the Internet.

The first ARPANET link to the United Kingdom required an exception to UK law. The traditional interpretation was that the state telecom monopoly (the General Post Office) had a monopoly on data transport. It was assumed that national governments have an absolute sovereign right to inspect data packets at the border, just like they do mail and parcels. That includes searches and seizures of foreign propaganda, material illegal under domestic law, etc.

> In early 1971 Larry proposed to break the circuit and connect in the NPL network to the ARPAnet. Unfortunately for that plan (but not for me), at this time the British government was trying to get the United Kingdom into the European Economic Community (EEC). The EEC governments, particularly France, were in any case suspicious of U.K. links with the United States. It was therefore politically impossible for NPL to be linked directly to a U.S. defense project. [1]

But the Internet was an experimental network. An exception could be made. Everyone would pretend that they were inside the United States legally speaking. This sort of worked when everyone was an academic restricted by network access policies of their institutions.

> I set up a Governing Committee, with the funding partners on it: Ann Letts represented the BPO, Donald Davies represented the NPL, and I was the Chair. Because of the questionable legality of what we were doing, all proposed users had to be approved individually. I put in security procedures so that all users had to log-in, with a password, on our relay.

[2]

This is related to the protocol wars of the 1980s. The X.25 protocol that was supported by all the established telecoms providers, included mechanisms for packet authority, automatic packet billing, and political boundary packet inspection mechanisms. [3]

X.25 was decried as too centralized, too complex, and too centred around the interests of the established telecoms. (Which it was.) TCP was better for both technical and political reasons. But the Protocol Wars were not a permanent victory. It was a wonderful moment in world history but the underlying tensions have resurfaced.

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/224386328_The_early...

[2] http://www0.cs.ucl.ac.uk/research/darpa/internet-history.htm...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Internet-OSI_Standard_War...

▲ armchairhacker 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Except they're not taking the whole country offline. AFAIK even simple VPNs work without issue. Iran took the whole country offline, because their country barely functions, and still some people managed an external connection.

	▲	WarOnPrivacy 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Iran took the whole country offline, because their country barely functions Iran took their whole country offline because they locked the country behind CGNAT - which is an ideal tech for offlining an entire nation.
	▲	GeorgeWBasic 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		They managed the external connection because they were being provided with one by outside nations trying to topple the government. They were promptly arrested and the "protests" fizzled out. Trump then bombed them anyway.

▲ reaperducer 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

As Spain, Italy and now France are showing us though, states have no hesitancy to take the whole country offline to block just one piece of unwanted information.

The whole country of France went offline? When did that happen?

	▲	SahAssar 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It didn't. They are probably referring either to Quad9 being ordered to block resolving certain hosts (and therefore deciding to not offer service in france) or the french prime minister sending a notice to ISPs to prepare DNS blocks for twitter, facebook, etc. In both cases this is not taking the whole country offline, and for both of them you can easily bypass the "block" by using any other DNS provider. You don't even need VPN/TOR or anything else complicated.
	▲	cowlevel 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Soon. Because of the protests again the government, the government ordered the ISPs to set up a nationwide block that the government can enable at the flick of a switch. See here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50229861

▲ watwut 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

At this point, I worry about censorship of American Tech CEOs a lot more. Because it is both very real and deliberately destructive.

▲ Arodex 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What are you talking about? When have Spain, Italy and France cut their Internet?

▲ mikestew 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Every time there’s a football game? At least that I’m hearing in the case of Spain. No, they don’t throw a switch, but they turn off enough CDNs to effectively turn off the internet.

Again, no personal experience, but have heard enough from folks here to believe it.

	▲	Galanwe 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Some folks on internet are not representative of a nationwide issue...

▲ mmh0000 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

  Spain: https://www.euronews.com/2026/09/18/in-spain-football-matches-knock-thousands-of-websites-and-services-offline

  France: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_France
        : https://codekhabar.com/post/france-orders-isps-to-ready-dns-blocks-for-major-social-platforms-on-oct-24

I haven't been keeping up with Italy, so you can look that one up yourself.

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reaperducer 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Like most LLMs, the links you cite don't back up what you wrote.

If you don't know the difference between preventing a group of sportsball fans from watching illegal streams and actually taking a country offline, delete yourself.

	▲	jp_sc an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I know the difference between blocking individual sites and every site hosted at Vercel or behind Cloudflare

▲ majicDave 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I absolutely agree, and it isn't even a scale, it's multi-dimensional. There are many different little problems that the internet solves, and they could also be solved with many different little alternatives.

▲ saidnooneever 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

cant you just disable resedential and non critical connections? ISPs etc. know whos who right? no need to take the nation offline. only the people in it (civilians, medium/small businesses etc)

u could likely also readonable tell if someone would be enabling others via their access without even inspecting the actual traffic

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entropyneur 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Russia is trying that (white lists) and it's proving costly enough that even they have to back off. They'll probably get there eventually but it requires serious investment of money and time and inevitably hampers the economy.

	▲	saidnooneever 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		interesting thanks. i guess its a drastic measure, which costs a lot, so there would be some potential tippingpoint in which the risks to the censors or the costs they are racking up by not doing it outweighs the costs of cutting it all off. Also ofcourse, 'they' need their populations somewhat with them. if an entire nation stands up you have a revolution, so maybe its a balancing act to prevent that. cut it here n there but keep the main perception its all temporary or localized etc

▲ weinzierl 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I sometimes think mid to end of 90s was peak freedom. Never before had there been so much mostly uncensored world wide communication. Unfortunately most likely there never ever will be again.

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iugtmkbdfil834 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I would argue that.. despite much greater attempts at control, the internet is much more wild now. Not because it is not being surveilled, monitored, botted, manipulated or any combination of those, but because the pace of change is getting a little hard to keep up with.. not just by orgs and govs ( they normally struggle with those ), but by even by above average humans. I miss the 90s, but the feels are the same now man ( minus the hope;p ).

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theK 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Man, 90s hope was really peak!

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shoobiedoo 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I watched Hackers for the first time in decades recently. Maaaannnn what amazing times they were. Like cowboys exploring the west or something

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iugtmkbdfil834 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Fuck man, even if you watch early apprentice tv show, it is just different. I initially just thought it was just nostalgia ( I briefly got into old arcade games and VF2 didn't age that well ), but man.. even the stupid reality shows were better.

	▲	whoanoway 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		[dead]

▲ pixl97 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> informaiton transported over infrastructure

Even building your own internet, say over wireless is easily detected and jammed.

About the only thing that could save us (though likely cause so many new problems we won't feel saved) is some kind of more sci-fi technology involving the non-locality of the universe for devices to communicate (not even talking about FTL communication, just different topologies within universal limits).

▲ m4rtink 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It really depends on what ypu are dealing with - if you are worried about communication being too centralized and monopolized, it might be a good idea to start building and alternative. Doing that might avoid the situation getting worse, slow it down or even reverse the trend.

If you are at a stage of "we shoot people on suspicion of them being against The Cause" then indeed, this will not help.

Still, if you are not at that stage, doing something is better than nothing.

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adrianN 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Building an Alternative internet seems like a fools errand to me, like building an alternative road network. How are you going to reach a critical mass of users? What should stop the powers that control the old internet from taking off your network as soon as you beat the odds and gain popularity?

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ciefa 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's the thing though, no? Depending on the use-case, do you >really< need a global network?

Don't get me wrong, an uncensorable and free internet for everyone is something I am very much for, but when we start to talk about nations limiting access while information has to flow, the question is not about mass-adoption anymore, but rather seeing the right tools reaching the right people.

A good example of this, imho, is the situation in Iran, when they cut off the internet. Some people were able to help themselves thanks to VPN-like apps and outside help, but that is not the majority of people.

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saidnooneever 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

this is the thing. an alternative internet is often suggested but whos gonna host a global switching network and put cables in the seasnfor that, and will it be allowed? what about cables in the ground or antenae everywhere to spread the network? it could simply be made illegal if it isnt already

	▲	ciefa 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I mean it would be amazing if one day access to the internet could be truly free (from costs for users, and censorship). But as the world is now, it's not feasible in any sense yet. The current internet is the best we have and it >can< work, we have to find solutions inside the current possibilities until tech is advanced, cheap and accessible enough for everyone interested to easily host their own infra. But this is not easy, because what is the real goal... really? It feels like most of the internet is about making money or involving money, even from the end users. Is there even something to fix when most people don't care enough to ditch knowingly harmful products like Facebook, TikTok, etc?

▲ TJSomething 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's possible that any such technology would be too complicated to ensure a clean supply chain or have weaknesses that would allow it to be tracked or jammed. Real devices have some kind of engineering tradeoff.

But I generally think that trying to solve social problems with technology is a futile endeavor. Someone will always have violence on their side. And violence is the ultimate weakness.

▲ saidnooneever 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

i like this idea. it does sound scifi, maybe quantum entanglement? i know nothing about this stuff tho :)

▲ saidnooneever 5 hours ago | parent [-]

this got downvoted, ofc because i know nothing.

but in the scifi mindset, what if you have an entangled ram bank with someone else. i write to mine and they can read it from theirs. that could create a sort of entangled ram bank mesh network network? (i know, maybe super stupid thought.)

▲ pixl97 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's not super stupid, but you'd have to find a quantum effect that actually does this while transferring information. If it transfers information it can't do so over the speed of light. As long as it follows that rule it may be possible, but if we had found anything like that yet we'd almost certainly be using it.

▲ NetOpWibby 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

   this got downvoted, ofc because i know nothing.

It’s the StackOverflow effect. If you aren’t an expert you’re punished for having the audacity to ask questions.

▲ root_axis 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It gets downvoted because it's a common trope that is explicitly impossible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-communication_theorem

	▲	pixl97 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Hence one of the key points I stated that whatever effect cannot work FTL.

▲ cowlevel 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Or, hear me out, optical laser mesh

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pixl97 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Very easy to detect and deal with, especially when you're talking about fixed positions like your home.

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cowlevel 5 hours ago | parent [-]

But impossible to detect if you aren't standing in the beam path. Or use fiber, and it's impossible to detect if you don't trip over the fiber.

	▲	pixl97 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Man, I don't think you've ever actually built free optical laser networks, they are kind of a pain in the ass and everyone is going to notice you've got one stuck up on a pole. The next time its foggy or raining a tuned photon sensor to the spectrum that these devices run at will light up like a Christmas tree. If you're really intent on catching said people, you'd have drones flying around sprinkling light chaff and detecting where it detects optical scattering.
	▲	adrianN 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		It seems relatively simple to me to detect fibers hanging around cities as soon as the network is bigger than two nerdy neighbors. Same for lasers and telescopes.
	▲	saidnooneever 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		ud need tons of beams tho do maybe its easy enough to segment the network badly by finding bunches of them?

▲ Almondsetat 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

People seem to be oblivious to the fact that the internet infrastructure has been government controlled since its inception. No cable laid under the sea between two nations can exist without the government approval and without the governments tapping into the link. IP addresses, MAC addresses, domain names, all managed by "super partes" international organizations swore to neutrality and fairness.

Unless you make your own physical network, it's trust all the way down

	▲	pocksuppet 19 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Trust... and encryption. That second one's quite important.

▲ ge96 32 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

they can't block the ionosphere

but what if they could... they dump chaff in the air

	▲	nirui 13 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		If you don't know, China runs censorship program against radio signals beginning from the cold war time and it's not officially stopped yet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_jamming_in_China. Of course it's not blocking ionosphere level, but not that different than chaffing the air (at the receiver side).

▲ m4rtink 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What about a solar powered mesh network build on commonly available LoRa chips and micro controllers ?

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easterncalculus 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Does this exist already? Meshtastic doesn't do IP.

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m4rtink 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Sure does - MeshCore for example:

https://meshcore-analyzer.eu/#map

Quite active here in Czech Republic for example.

As for the IP protocol - maybe its too much overhead for this use case ?

MeshCore uses PKI and public key prefixes as addresses & for routing/repeating.

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easterncalculus 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Did not know this, thanks for sharing.

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radec 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Or Reticulum. Nomadnet over lora works pretty well.

	▲	m4rtink 14 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, MeshCore works impressively well but definitely there is a huge space for many nice improvements and novel use cases. Only time will tell if they will come MeshCore, the other LoRa mesh projects or something completely new. :)

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cowlevel 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Who owns the spectrum?

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m4rtink 5 hours ago | parent [-]

In Europe it is using the 868 MHz ISM band with some duty cycle rules (maximu of 10% of every hour can be used for broadcasting).

In the US apparently 433 MHz is used instead.

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happosai 4 hours ago | parent [-]

These bands are trivial to jam should any adversary want.

	▲	m4rtink 5 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Sure, but there are some issues with that: - LoRa has actually quite a long range if done right (tens of km, upt to hundred+) so you would have to jam all that. - This kind of jamming would be actually illegal, so you would have to make it legal first/tollerate it & expend non-trivial respurces to jam tiny repeaters from Aliexpress on random trees. - The 868 MHz hand is actually used by a lot of IoT stuff like sensor networks, water/gas/electricity meter monitoring, some alarm systems - so if you did effectively jam the band, those things would break as well. - Also if things went as far as active jamming being used, things might be heated up enough that whoever is running the mesh won't be playing by the reules as well - like, using a different, notmally ilegal fregvency or even triangulate and attack the jammers.

▲ swed420 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why is the prevalence of typos increasing in the past year or so? I don't mean to single you out; your comment was just a convenient example.

Do people (and AI bots) think this makes them seem more human? Or is it yet another symptom of civilization in decline?

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SugarReflex 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Before 2021 I hated typos etc but now I like seeing imperfect text in this new age. I wouldn't have considered it could be a bot (and I don't think it is) but it would certainly have worked on me (to what end, who knows..)

	▲	swed420 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I tend to think the latest models know that "how do I make XYZ more human?" would include making typos. Seems pretty basic.

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2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

▲ netbioserror 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Reticulum. Encryption-required mesh-routing alternative to the IP stack. Can route over just about any medium (piggyback IP, Lora, WiFi, Bluetooth, USB, microwave P2P, anything). Also future-proofed with support for high-bandwidth persistent connections.

▲ tourmalinetaco 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There was, once, but that has decayed rapidly alongside the centralization of the Internet. There are very few websites people even use nowadays, and many of them block legal expressions due to ideological and economic pressures. Payment processors and banks regularly restrict businesses and individuals from legal commercial activities, examples are Pornhub/MindGeek, Steam, and firearm dealers.

There is also now a precedent for T1 ISPs to block whatever legal websites they wish, and there is little recourse to be had there either. Not to mention arbitrary legal pressure for ISPs is also precedent now due to Judge Katherine Polk Failla.

On top of that, several EU countries have been using DNS blocks to prevent piracy and access to “bad” websites for ages, which has further been eroding the Big-I Internet into various separate internets.

https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2026/nr-occ...

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/isps-should-not-police...

https://torrentfreak.com/dns-resolver-quad9-will-leave-franc...

▲ stackghost 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In the late aughts and early 2010s I and a few other people came up with the `darknet plan` aka `project meshnet` which was a subreddit and adjacent communities dedicated to creating a completely parallel internet using 802.11s mesh networks akin to the Athens and NYC meshes that span a huge portion of those metros.

The movement eventually got coopted by the CJDNS project and its fans. Instead of a completely separate internet they were advocating more of an overlay on top of the existing internet (because that didn't require solving interurban/intercontinental backhaul), which to my mind addresses essentially none of the problems we set out to solve, so I eventually lost interest.

But today we have things like LoRa and a greater hacker community around the ISM bands, which might be just what's needed. I have hope one day we can achieve global interconnectivity without rent-seeking ISPs.

▲ swozey 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think this this the perfect time to bring back old 90-00s webhosting, web rings and all and get them to be trendy and viral if some celebrity could pull people in and get them off this dirtyweb, bot-ridden and dead-internet-theoried. People have been veered hard into content creation and running their own little merchandise dropship etc businesses and all of the options are dinosaurs now.

Wordpress is getting its popularity nuked from orbit, there is definitely room for another "internet" that isn't walled garden social media app slop. Might even get kids into computers again.

But in this admin, economy and no startup capital and a million other things going on right now I don't think it will ever happen.

▲ ThrowawayTestr 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Do you consider removing illegal content censorship?

	▲	cowlevel 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Of course it's censorship. In china you can't talk about a certain quadrangle, and when they remove content about it, that's censorship.
	▲	pixl97 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		You might be confusing two different things. Censorship itself doesn't mean right or wrong, good or bad. It's very likely that you would censor your young kids from watching violent videos of real murders and would consider that a good thing, as an example. Removing 'illegal' content is censorship in your example. If this is a good or bad thing depends on a great many considerations.

▲ 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]