Mastodon is not easy for regimes to completely block, and most instances won't block you for using Tor. Mastodon saw a huge migration from Brazil when X was blocked there.
Mastodon is not easy for regimes to completely block, and most instances won't block you for using Tor. Mastodon saw a huge migration from Brazil when X was blocked there.
Wouldn't it be easy to block the individual servers, e.g. https://mastodon.social?
There are many instances of Mastodon, and due to its federated nature, you can use any of them to access it, and even host your own.
What's stopping them from just blocking them all and continuing to block new ones?
Nothing is stopping them, but like most things in blocking free speech, it’s a game of cat and mouse.
The long tail is very long
It's not that long. You could probably these servers with an automated process.
Sure, but if you have an account on a different server, you can still see things posted on mastodon.social if you have followed someone there.
That’s the context I was missing I think.
It would be easy to block on protocol level. Countries that block VPNs usually progress to that level pretty fast once they discover that simple IP blocks don't work.
The traffic looks like any other web page.
I doubt that is the case once you do statistical analysis of it.
Advanced VPN tunneling protocols, for example, have to take a lot of special measures to conceal their nature from China's and Russia's deep packet inspecting firewalls.