this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2025
47 points (96.1% liked)

Privacy

32978 readers
291 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

That's it, I get an error message whenever I try to post or comment if I'm connected to my VPN, butnot trouble if I just get disconnected. Does not fit the idea of decentralized social media I had, but overall I'm mainly curious as to the reason why it is so.

top 35 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

Its because you're on lemmy.world

Join us lemmy.dbzer0.com

We do not discriminate, I use Tor just fine.

Alternatively you can try my recommended instances:

sh.itjust.works

lemmy.ca

sopuli.xyz

(I have not tried these over Tor yet, so test it for yourself)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago

I left lemmy.world for these reasons. Haven't had any issues with lemmy.ml yet though 👍

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 hours ago

Don't use Lemmy.world server it is the regime front on fedi.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Lemmy has nothing in its code that blocks VPNs. Unfortunately a lot of instances use cloudflare and other man-in-the-middle services that do block VPNs.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 hours ago

man-in-the-middle services

*Threat actors

[–] Tiger 15 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Aye good to know some instances block VPNs , didn’t know that. As a user from China who has to use a VPN always that would be problematic. Guys I got lucky with my instance.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 hours ago

Shit really just works

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 hours ago

I just reconnect and hope for an unflagged IP lol

[–] [email protected] 33 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

I believe Lemmy.world blocks VPNs. You could try a different instance which doesn't have that policy

[–] mnemonicmonkeys 4 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I comment on Lemmy.World all the time via a VPN though. Maybe they don't allow it for accounts on their instance?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 hours ago

You are commenting on a lemmy.world community, but your connecting to sh.itjust.works, who then talks to lemmy.world. Your VPN isn't connecting directly to lemmy.world

[–] [email protected] 22 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

Because so many bad actors use VPNs for ban evasion or span sources, blocking the VPN endpoints from posting or commenting is a low hanging fruit way of dealing with some spam. This is Lemmy.World stance.

There are many others instances that work over VPNs so in the spirit of decentralization you can use another instance to access lemmy.world content.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

It also prevents normal people from using Lemmy at all...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

lemmy.world is NOT "Lemmy"

Hell, during the great reddit migration, if I recall correctly, lemmy.world had to cap sign-ups.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

It is a massive portion of Lemmy. And it doesn't just stop people from signing up, it stops people from participating in any way.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

Does .World think it’s their content?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

They host it, so they can do as they please.

Vote with your feet.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 14 hours ago

It's hosted in their servers. Dunno about the content licenses, if any.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

It might depend on the lemmy instance you are posting to (lemmy.ml) and/or where you have your account (lemmy.world), because I don’t think that this is built into the AP protocol.

I suspect at least one of these uses some kind of filtering mechanism that blocks VPN users, like cloudflare’s CDN.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

btw, I think you may have mixed up the instances. The user is on .world and the post is on .ml

Other than that, you're probably correct

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 hours ago

Oh yeah, hahaha.

Thanks, I’ll fix it.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

One of many reasons to change instances

[–] [email protected] 16 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Lemmy.dbzer0.com for the win

[–] [email protected] 6 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

That's where I went when I left .world. :)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

Why did you leave .world, if you don't mind my asking, and just out of curiosity?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 hours ago

Dbzer0 was a better fit for me. I like the way it's ran.. just all around a better experience for me.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago

Not OP but I left because of the proposed change in moderation policy to allow "free speech" that basically would negate the anti-hate-speech policy.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

I used to have the same issue with lemmy.world - it’s the instance

[–] [email protected] 9 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

This is it! Instance blocks it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 15 hours ago

.world is a fickle bitch in general. It would be good if more users and communities balanced out amongst other instances.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 17 hours ago (3 children)

Get a free VPS from Oracle cloud in whatever region you want, run Wireguard on it. There, now you have a VPN that you control, and since it’s hosted by Oracle, and not a VPN company, there’s no way to “detect” it.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 14 hours ago

I assure you that's detectable. The VPN detector I know, classifies all cloud providers as VPN as a matter of course, because no normal user would be coming from a cloud network.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 16 hours ago

Like basically all cloud providers, Oracle publish their public-facing IP address ranges.

https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/General/Concepts/addressranges.htm

Many services block these because, as you are pointing out, standing up VPN tunnel routing on a cloud instance is sort of trivial. Cloud providers publish these ranges specifically so anyone can block them easily. If lemmy.world is not blocking Oracle Cloud already, it's only because they just haven't come around to it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Or better, run your own instance, rather than a VPN.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 16 hours ago

Yup, good point. One can run a private instance for “selfish” reasons.