Slashdot Mirror
Is Slashdot Blocked In Parts Of India? (slashdot.org)
Long-time Slashdot reader davesag writes:
I'm a regular long-term Slashdot reader and have been living in Delhi for the last 9 months. As of last Friday 25th August the only way I can access Slashdot at all is via a VPN. It appears that Slashdot has joined the growing list of websites the Indian Government finds threatening.
The Indian Government is deeply paranoid over internet access, with many sites being blocked, jail sentences for viewing blocked URLs, and bans on open wifi networks.
In 2015 the Indian government blocked access to over 800 adult web sites, and earlier this month they reportedly blocked access to Archive.org. "A block on Slashdot is over the top," davesag writes, "and makes me wonder what it is about this news site that the government here finds so terrifying."
The Indian Government is deeply paranoid over internet access, with many sites being blocked, jail sentences for viewing blocked URLs, and bans on open wifi networks.
In 2015 the Indian government blocked access to over 800 adult web sites, and earlier this month they reportedly blocked access to Archive.org. "A block on Slashdot is over the top," davesag writes, "and makes me wonder what it is about this news site that the government here finds so terrifying."
Asking about a site the government has blocked with a post on that site seems like a good way to find out if jail has better WiFi than the local coffee shop.
Just outsource your browsing to Americans.
Table-ized A.I.
I'm vpn'd into India and accessing it just fine, in fact I'm even using it to reply to stories that... well nm
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
you don't want to cause a revolt among your population when they visit Slashdot and start discussing such sensitive matters.
"and makes me wonder what it is about this news site that the government here finds so terrifying."
Maybe the grammar ...
I suppose if my code sucked badly, I'd want to hush up my critics, too...
I am accessing slashdot through a major ISP/telco here in Mumbai, and there doesn't seem to be a block at all. Usually blocked sites return an error message that says that the site is barred due to orders etc. Did OP see a message or did the site just fail to load? Could be ISP incompetence.
It's the openness, that people can communicate, share ideas, build structured plans.
There's an inherent problem with governments: they're made up of people, all of whom have faults such as egomaniacal thirst for power and control. USA's founders tried to fix the problem, but it's all been undone by the power mongers. Many countries have gotten it figured out. None are perfect, but some do very well. It gets fixed by people communicating and keeping a watchful eye on govt. Prevent the communication, you hold onto power.
Maybe he has some important click data and sales figures that he can parse with a script! He'll tell us if he sells anything in India!
Quick! Everyone! Make a sound like a donut and creimer will show up!
Maybe they'll cut off access to international calling so I stop getting calls to lower my credit card debt I don't have!
Nope, working fine in Pune India. No VPN required. ISPs - Tata Communications and You Telecom.
The sirens are going at full force in several countries of the world.
A whole lot of countries are tumbling into the cycle of dictatorship and tyranny after enjoying a good time of democracy.
It's already happened in several middle eastern countries, it's happening in South America and some Asian countries, and it's spreading out.
Enjoy while you can folks, and leave stories of hope behind. Because our grandkids might need it.
You can't install statcounter or something on the site and go check?
Seesh.
Telling ANY users within a culture consisting largely of people which places importance on karma that they have bad karma when they don't conform to your ways isn't exactly the best and most societally respectful approach, now is it?
If Slashdot wised up and abandoned it's 'karmatic' approach to influencing contribution value based on collective 'upvoting', being a tad more sensitive to the Indian culture and the importance of Karma to them, MY bet is you'd see Slashdot removed from the filtered list.
Political correctness means not devaluing a culture's religious beliefs, which Slashdot's effectively done.
Obviously a slash fiction site?
It's 9AM in Delhi, get to fucking work, quit reading fucking Slashdot.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
You're not missing much.
Just call in and have a senior level Windows technician run "dir /s" so that they can clean the viruses and hackers from your system. You'll be back on /. in no time; for a fee, of course
nt
I'm in Mumbai right now and can access Slashdot just fine without the need of a VPN. For fun, I tried going to archive.org with no success. The India government should "do the needful" and unblock it unless they have some problem with nostalgia.
As soon as you start censoring anything at the ISP level mistakes and policy will be made...
this is not a option that can be disabled by users/citizens but by companies....
why browser manufactures dont simply give the option of pulling a blacklist as a standard and pull from gov mandated site then the user/citizen can decide...
welcome to the new world order where you dont decide if you can break the law only companies can do that...
The infamous Slashdot comments.
All the H-1B stories contain so many ignorant comments it hurts national interest...
I am from Mumbai, India. I have been on Slashdot since 1999, and never faced any blocking.
The internet censorship in India is more about porn than political views.
Can't he just use the Slashdot app?
That's the only way I access /. these days. I don't like the fact that I have to give Slashdot access to my camera, microphone, contacts list, location data and biometric information, but it's convenient as hell.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I work from Bangalore and I don't see it blocked, able to access it
I live in New Delhi, India and its working properly. It's not blocked over here.
If the url is blocked the app wont work either. The app doesnt go to some different url to get the data.
Slashdot is not blocked. Also you are wrong in other cases. Adult sites which were blocked by India was in response to court order to block Child porn sites not normal porn sites. Similarly archive.org got blocked by error while clamping on piracy sites, not by government, but by a movie media company whose new movie was launched. No such Censorship is taking place.
I just tried 2 ISPs to check this: BSNL (government ISP) and Reliance Jio (private). Slashdot is working smooth on both. Other users also report the same. As of last Friday 25th August, perhaps your Internet usage quota has got exhausted. Get it recharged. And quit spreading fake news.
America has democracy to anyone who can afford it. God bless the USA!
I'm not saying something that most users here don't already know, but not every IP reachable from your local host across the Internet is either an equal number of hops away or an equal amount of time per hop. It might be the case that the paths negotiated by the routers between your ISP in India and the servers that host Slashdot are lengthy, circuitous, slow or maybe all three. The VPN might help the problem because the VPN provider might have better interconnections with the networks between you and Slashdot than your Indian ISP is able to get directly. Think of it like using the toll lane on the highway to bypass all of the people stuck in gridlock in the regular lanes. Incidentally this is one of the side benefits of having a good VPN provider on top of your ISP. They have to pay more attention to customer service than your local monopoly ISP provider, especially here in the United States, because there's *gasp* actual competition between VPN providers who know how easy it is for you to switch to a competitor and treat you like a valued customer so that you won't. Compare this with the typical US telco or cable monopoly ISP who has you by the balls, knows it and doesn't let you forget it either. They give you a fraction of the advertised speed, charge a premium price for it and get back to you at their convenience whenever there's a problem. Yeah, the market for Internet access is all f***ed up here in the US unless you live in a major city and don't mind paying $300 per month for the same level of service that can be had for less than $30 per month in many other countries.
Could be worse, at least slashdot.org domain still officially exists. Increasingly, thoughts and ideas others find offensive result in the domain names of such sites being deleted / suspended. Various corporations that control much of the internet have much power, and can censor more extensively than many governments.
The OP is a frigging idiot. There is absolutely no problem in accessing Slashdot. I've been in Delhi for 10 years and have never seen this site blocked.
YHBT. YHL. HAND.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
why browser manufactures dont simply give the option of pulling a blacklist as a standard and pull from gov mandated site then the user/citizen can decide...
Let the users decide? Can't you see that the users have already made the wrong decision? Obviously the government knows better! /sarcasm:off
"A block on Slashdot is over the top," davesag writes, "and makes me wonder what it is about this news site that the government here finds so terrifying."
You mean besides the fact that we pretty much trash the skills of their entire software development workforce on a regular basis?
It is well deserved, of course, but they probably have taken a page from Trump's handbook and blocked it as "fake news".
I have been seeing it frequently from 2001 and almost daily in Chennai from 2006. What block are you talking about?
Are you sure you're not just experiencing high lag? Recently, these days, I'm getting tremendous lag to slashdot and have to reload pages just to connect. Ping times are 66ms or above.
Maybe you installed the APK bullshit?
I am long time Slashdot reader, all I can say it is not blocked once in my whole 10 years of Delhi residency. May I know which ISP davesag is using?
I am using Airtel, Vodafone as well as a local wifi provider. All seems fine in Delhi.
To Slashdot moderator,
Don't post anything without verification.
It's really funny how the websites are blocked by the Indian government.
In the past, when a huge list of websites where blocked in a single day (which included Github and others), the block was just at DNS level. So if you were using some public DNS (eg.: Open DNS), you were still allowed to visit those websites.
Several other websites are blocked only when non https websites are visited. Say for example http://archive.org/ is blocked, while https://archive.org/ is not (try it with lynx or w3m, you might get redirected to https in the popular browsers)
And not all providers block, only some.
Do the needful on your pc and fix your tcpip stack.
As you guys all have natural stem skills and are going to be a superpower in 2020 it's time to put up
I've had the issue at some customers with URL filtering (especially those useing zScaler cloud proxy services). It seems that Slashdot was added to the "Blogging" category, which some places block. How unfortunate, I should have been working rather than reading Slashdot - maybe that's the reason ?
The question is designed to favour negative answers.
It works from Bangalore very well.
88 replies and not a single NO CARRIER j
Yes slashdot is blocked in India, and hundreds of people are jailed everyday for accessing the same through VPN. I had to fly everyday to China to access slashdot without legal issues.
This is what happens when slashdot runs out of tech news, it start showing these type of nonsense spicy news.
In a democracy, your statement is actually quite circular.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Sanjeet needs to poo in the loo, not in the designated shitting street.
OMG, think about India in summer, just try to imagine the smell !! *retch*
Hi, Slashdot friends. Slashdot is accessible from two major ISPs in Delhi. No problems at all accessing Slashdot.
. . . to find out how many Indian readers of "SloshedDot" there are ;-)
The public should understand that world wide governments are collaborating in spying on elements that may threaten the social order. They make sure your minds cannot be polluted by dangerous knowledge from free thinking individuals. They only do it to keep the populace in its proper place.... I.e. under the boot that stomps on their face for eternity. But remember dear public, we do this only to keep you safe from the Boogeyman of the hour and we do it for your own good. So Nothing to see here citizens... move along.
Have you tried unplugging your router then plugging it back in again?
Tried from three different ISPs. No block.
Because they can see what pols are really up to.
Clearly not, or how would the editors do their work?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Not just Slashdot. Countries around the world outside N. America and Europe block different sites all the time.
I run a few small technical blogs and sometimes get notified that my sites aren't available in India, Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, China ...
My sites aren't very important - not a money making effort - none have offensive content, unless you consider how to setup VPNs offensive.
Out of all the countries doing the blocking, Turkey, India, and Thailand were the most unexpected. I experienced these myself during travel. Oddly, as long as I didn't use the domainname, everything worked. But that means that name-based virtual hosts aren't available.
I expected better from the largest democracy on the planet. Disappointing.
So if we only see "No" answers from users in India we then definitely know that there a places that it is blocked, right?
Fake news, works absolutely fine
Productivity of programmers in affected region increases 43%.
Quick, everybody post how they really feel about Indians!
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
In a democracy, your statement is actually quite circular.
It stops being circular when you consider what money does to otherwise democratic elections.
Thanks for the information. Based on your comment and a few others, it doesn't sound like India is blocking Slashdot.
Betteridge's Law of Headlines is something that most Slashdot users don't seem to understand, and routinely apply incorrectly in the comments. However, this is a good case of precisely what Ian Betteridge was criticizing with his law. The story is based on the history of India blocking other websites and the anecdotal report of a user. Rather than doing a bit of additional work to determine whether India is actually blocking Slashdot or not, the story asks whether India is blocking Slashdot. The headline and story insinuate that India is blocking Slashdot without doing the work to get more evidence or determining whether it's actually true or not. It's running with a story when you don't actually have a story to run with, and that's poor journalism.
Betteridge's Law of Headlines states that the question in the headline can be answered with 'no.' Comments in the story like yours support that the correct answer is, indeed, no. This is terrible editing, even by Slashdot standards.
#suddenoutbreakofcommonsense
Folks,
I have been reading /. for the past decade in India, every day, there is absolutely no blockage.
The information post is completely wrong, mis-leading and irresponsible IMO.
The censorship is mostly on the websites that enables you to download copyrighted content.
Thanks.
-Bhaktha
Including when a "techneecian" takes "suppoat" calls about phony "wiruses" on your "dextop"? (Source: Each&Everything; Lewis's Tech; Thunder Tech)
The country that gave us the Kama Sutra and has buildings covered with statues and art of people f*cking has a problem with porn websites.
the country is developing far faster than we could have ever imagined
It seems that some posters run crying about censorship rather than calling their ISP. I am on the partly state owned ISP and /. has never been blocked here.
Sounds like very insecure system for goverment control... How would you even start enforcing that on an open source browser?
There's so many reasons you might have trouble accessing a website. It's not always censorship. One person says he can't access slashdot, and with nothing but that, we've got a discussion thread full of people denouncing India. Seriously?
Lots of other folks in India say it works fine for them. So it's not censorship, just one person having network problems. It happens. It's not a big deal.
Don't jump to conclusions. Take your time, get the facts. And seriously how did the slashdot editors let this through? They're totally not doing their job when they post rumors and wild speculation as if it were news.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
Yet.