cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/55094411

How do you "ban VPNs"? That's not how software works, and VPNs are... you know, a key part of a bunch of online infrastructure. I get that they mean "ban them to bypass restrictions", but the entire point of a VPN is you can't tell from the outside what it's being used for. You may as well ban thinking about butterflies. You can write it down, but you can't enforce it.

I actually want one country to ban VPNs just so every other country can see the fallout or complete lack of enforcement

VPNs are banned in some countries. At least in practice. China comes to mind and please nobody tell me „I have a friend in China and they use one!“ That friend is either breaking the law, or a state agent or foreigner where that law doesn‘t apply. Hotels have that as part of their service for tourists because why the hell would anyone travel to a country with basically no internet? Of course they are exempt. But Chinese citizens are absolutely not allowed to use VPNs to break through the great firewall. The overwhelming majority wouldn‘t even know how. But of course most of them know at least one person who can. So in theory the law is useless but in practice it‘s very effective to control information. Whatever the case it‘s nothing a democracy should pursuit. Ever.

Let me tell how how much people actually follow laws in China. I was born while the One Child Policy was in effect. My mother already gave birth to my older brother. Basically, my existence is illegal. As you can see, clearly I’m not dead. They didn’t kill me, just demanded my parents paid a massive fine and denied legal papers until they did so. Honestly if you just browse and don’t post anything too serious, are they really gonna go after everyone who use a VPN. I mean, say even if just 1% uses a VPN. That’s 1,400,000 people. Are they gonna lock up a million people? Really? Surely they have bigger fishes to catch. As for control of information, internarional phone calls aren’t blocked, you can send letters. My mom regularly call my aunts (aka: her sisters) in China. I heard the Covid QR codes being mentioned, afaik, the didn’t lose their teaching jobs nor ever got arrested. The overwhelming majority wouldn‘t even know how. It’s like adblocking. Do you know anyone irl that use adblockers? Seriously, I don’t know anyone that does except like maybe 1 perdon. But here we are, on a platform where practically everyone uses adblockers. Or in another analogy. Mainstream social media is like inside the GFW and Lemmy is like using VPN to bypass it. TLDR: Okay sorry if my point isn’t concise, I guess my point is: NPCs will just follow the wind, those who have the will to dig deeper will probably be able to bypass the censorship (provided that it’s not completely cut off from the outside internet)