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!
Not posting on Lemmy about how you disagree with their censorship of a Lemmy instance might be a good first step.
I guess watch out for shit that can get you doxxed since there are probably like 3 Saudi Arabians tops in the thread side of the Fediverse.
There are only two Arabs I know of here, and none of them are Saudi. Must be a lurker…
There’s a few I’ve spoken to in the German speaking communities, but they live in Germany, so idk that that’s relevant to you.
Proton works in China if you set the protocol to “stealth” in the setting, maybe that works for Saudi as well?
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).
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 :)
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).
It is not realistic to think the saudi government cared that much about this. The way it works is someone send a request to block the site. If there are banned words including “sex” then it will be block. You can request for it to be unblock and say it’s a social media site. They have different rules. Remember reddit is not blocked.
I didn’t know Saudi can block fediverse instances
A lot of websites are blocked here.
Porn (60,000 BLOCKED PORN SITES!), alcohol/drug stores, Gay sites (from blogs to forums, anything), anti islam websites like wikiislam, and just non-muslim religious shit in general. we have a lot of banned christian sites. And news sites like middleeasteye.net
VPNs + tor is also banned too.
For some reason, israel.com + idf.il are also blocked. weird considering saudi-israel’s relationship.
Thats even worse then i Live(Which most of the stuff are blocked are Vpns,Porn sites and some lgbtq sites i am pretty sure btw am not in saudi am living in a country bordering it)
Tor isnt blocked hereOh, are you in the UAE or Qatar? Saudi arabia has the most strict censorship in the middle east, i think.
And يا هلا, دحين متأكد في على أقل 4 عرب على ليمي :)
Am living in qatar and am from Syria so it counts am Arab (am literate at the language tho)
Use Tor if you can, and people outside of these restrictive countries can help by running Snowflake in their regular browser.
Love tor, it’s a lifesaver (literally :) ) and thank you for the tip!
Installed Snowflake, thanks for the heads-up. Pretty simple way to try to be a little helpful. Was like two clicks.
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.
Great job!
I quickly threw together a script to check which other Fediverse instances are blocked in Saudi Arabia by using Globalping. I know it’s horrible, but it works so far. Will share the results once it’s finished running. I’ll probably also rewrite the script later.
I got the list of instances from lemmy.world:
curl -s https://lemmy.world/instances | rg -o 'href="([^"]+)"' | rg -o 'https?://[^"]+' > instances.txt#!/usr/bin/env fish set INSTANCES "./instances.txt" set OUTPUT_FILE "./output.txt" set COUNTRY "saudi arabia" for instance in (cat $INSTANCES) if globalping http $instance from $COUNTRY --method GET --limit 3 | rg 'Blocked URL' 2&>1 echo "Blocked: $instance" >> blocked.txt end endI’m running
tail -f blocked.txtin another terminal to monitor the results in real time.(Yeah I know the script sucks. Don’t judge me, I use fish and prefer its syntax over bash. I also use ripgrep, because I like it.)
Edit: so far I only got 3 blocked instances:
Blocked: becauseimbored.com Blocked: mamot.fr Blocked: federotica.comI need to rewrite this to use the REST API, create an account and use the authentication token, because it runs out of credits and fails.
I can run it for you if you want. I’ll post the results here
It’ll be faster for me since I’m in the country itself
EDIT: This won’t work. You can “ping” blahaj successfully, but only because it redirects to a gov page, and not an error. I’ll have to revise the script because of that.
EDIT: This won’t work. You can “ping” blahaj successfully, but only because it redirects to a gov page, and not an error. I’ll have to revise the script because of that.
Globalping has an HTTP method, which I use in the script:
globalping http $instance from $COUNTRYI then use ripgrep to check if the HTTP response contains the string “Blocked URL”, as you can see in the script:
| rg 'Blocked URL'The if condition uses the exit code from ripgrep to add
$instancefrom theforloop to theblocked.txtfile.I tested this manually and it works as intended. The script could use some optimizations though. And if you intend on running the current version, you need to lower the limit of the globalping command from 3 to 1, otherwise you will run out of credits before all 8100 instances are checked. I will rewrite this to use a globalping auth token though.
Btw I also removed the
https://part from the instance list. Just opened it up in Vim, selected everything using V-Block mode and deleted it. I don’t know if that makes a difference, but I’m not sure if the Globalping command can take URLs, or if it only works with domains.Ah, it works for me now. I just ran it with ping instead of globalping, since i had no need to run it with that. And the script didn’t work after i did that, i’m not great at shell-scripting.
I made a modification that prints the status, but it’s painfully slow to check each site.
What do you use now? Curl? wget?
Globalping, just as you wrote it with the limit being 1
That should work.
I started working on a rewritten version in Rust that uses the REST API instead of the CLI tool. Once it’s done, it should be a lot faster, since it can make multiple requests simultaneously. I also plan to use this for other stuff in other countries.
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 🇸🇦 🇸🇦 🇸🇦 🦅 🦅 🦅
So now if i want to see a post by a user on blahaj, i have to turn on my VPN just to see it. Fuck this place. 🙄
One of the first conversations I was on when I joined was one between Ada, the lemmy.blahaj.zone admin, and some guy in a Middle Eastern country. Apparently his country had blocked lemmy.blahaj.zone at the national network level.
The Threadiverse is federated, so one could view posts from lemmy.blahaj.zone elsewhere, but not images, which did not propagate.
I thought that at some point, lemmy servers had started also storing images posted on other lemmy servers, but upon checking, it looks like they have not. I did run into one – no longer up – that had, according to the description, had apparently been modified to do this, probably to afford its users more privacy and not expose their IP addresses other than to their home instance. In theory, if you could find one that did so, you could make that your home instance and just rely on propagation of images through the network.
EDIT: It sounds from this year-old post like a lemmy instance can at least be configured to cache remote images:
https://futurology.today/post/6440
I suppose it’d be possible to go look and find out exactly what the current situation is.
If i remember correctly after the downfall of reddit and the mass migration to Lemmy happened, A big issue was CSAM spreading across the Lemmy servers. Wouldn’t surprise me that that is the cause that images are no longer stored across servers.
Why would someone use an Afghanistan TLD for that, given it’s illegal to be LGBTQ there? If course the domain is going to be removed.
Why? Because “queer af” is funny as a domain, and people sometimes don’t realize that tlds can be under certain jurisdictions
It also wasn’t a problem until governments changed
also the majority of people don’t know TLDs are country based
This makes me feel old
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…
They must have thought that admin defending a troll was the last straw as well.
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
I’m trying, hopefully one day i can.
Getting citizenship (particularly in the EU, and any country for that matter) is insanely hard, and that’s just the citizenship (even asylum is turned down often). You need a stable job in that country, a place to live, and above average skills to prove your worth. And you have to leave everything behind, including your family since it would be dangerous to go back. Can’t forget 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 spy and even harm dissidents, even if outside the country.
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
Use Tor snowflakes. They are very resistant to censorship and many of us in the western world run the extension so that you can get access to accurate information.
I’m not aware of how exactly blocking works there, but if it’s similar to China and Russia, consider subscribing to a VPN provider that supports stealth proxies (e.g. Shadowsocks or VLESS); that’s harder to block.
dw, proton works just fine for me :) though i have to jump through hoops to get it installed, since they blocked the official website too, but i just use a package manager to get it for me as a proxy
I’ll have to check out stealth proxies out though, thank you! :D
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.
That sounds worse, what country are you living in? Sorry to hear it. And thanks for the wishes :)
The Motherland, of course. I was born into her teenage phase of 90\00s and now I see her rapidly becoming one young and salty widow (:
Oh dear, hearing anything about russia almost makes me proud to a saudi :).
Through our suffering, we are brothers 😂
Hell yeah. We a cockroaches in their kitchen, never surrender and always persist whatever they like us or not 😉
How’s life for you besides internet censorship, if you don’t mind me asking. I’m just curious. Good luck out there!
Thank you.
For me, it’s edging on absurdity and feeling like I’m the one who feel like we are going insane, but luckily for me I found my close knit circle of friends who share that feeling and I myself adapted to see everything through some lense of satire. Even though I live in it.
What still hurts tho is how my relatives and people around are so uninformed and hostile to everything ukrainian or just european, even if they talk about relatives there, and then they are just like ‘why they don’t like us’ lol. Yeah, like, no reason. And then they order IKEA-like furniture for their flats because it’s of european quality!
My sanity is saved by my partner, my friends and my still intact trust in people, even if they are dumb af.
I appreciate you sharing and getting to read about your experience. I really wish you, your friends, and loved ones luck. Do your best to get through it and hopefully someday things will change for the better. My fingers are crossed for you.
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.
I know a Saudi in the United States that got asylum because they are gay.
If I may ask, how was their experience applying for asylum? And what do they think of the US as a place to live?
I think they chose to request asylum in the US. They are part of the gay community here. They only provided a short, funny version of their asylum experience, claiming they told whoever that they are very gay, and we’re granted asylum.
Thanks, it seemed easy for them being a discriminated minority, hopefully I will have the same experience. Not gay, but other undisclosed stuff that makes me a minority in danger.
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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.
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.
If you are a native regardless of royalty, dont you still get a lots of benefits and stuff like welfare? This all based on hearsay, the few whom i personally know that immigrated to work there have said so
Welfare such as healthcare, education, and shelter? Besides shelter (they claim they provide for the homeless, they lie) healthcare & education is free. I can’t complain about the healthcare, but i definitely can about the education: It’s so bad, it doesn’t even matter. Beatings are still practiced in schools, the textbooks are filled with propaganda of all kind, they are completely unsanitary and unfit for a healthy environment. They don’t even get school-paid lunches for the children.
And for shelter, i’ve seen homeless people completely naked, only covered by a blanket, sitting in the blistering heat, starved to the bone. It’s BS like everything else.
If i have to give away good healthcare for just not living in Saudi, i’d pay it twosome.
but i definitely can about the education: It’s so bad, it doesn’t even matter. Beatings are still practiced in schools, the textbooks are filled with propaganda of all kind, they are completely unsanitary and unfit for a healthy environment.
So basically like every other south asian school prior to 2015
And for shelter, i’ve seen homeless people completely naked, only covered by a blanket, sitting in the blistering heat, starved to the bone. It’s BS like everything else.
I know most countries try to hide their homeless population(even the goody-two-shoes countries like japan) butThis is the first time i have heard of this, how exactly do you become homeless in a welfare state? Its an easy process in a capitalist society but barring political dissenters (who are likely to be executed outright) what must go wrong that you find yourself on the streets.
Also i dont know if its okay to ask but are you a native or there due to circumstances (like a child of first generation immigrants or your parents are working in the country and you just happened to be there)
We’re a western asian country, but i’d say we have the opposite problem of other asian countries; they work too hard, we neglect our children. India is the worst of both worlds lmao
Homelessness is a problem here, unfortunately. We don’t have homeless shelters [at least in my city].
Here’s some news articles about homelessness: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200130-saudi-making-10000-saudis-homeless/
https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/saudi-arabia-women-girls-shelters-where-abused
https://gulfnews.com/world/gulf/saudi/83000-homeless-children-roam-saudi-streets---study-1.171725
And I am a native. My family has been here for centuries, since the ottomans ruled the hijaz.
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
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