Blahaj.zone has been blocked by ISPs in the UAE probably for being too queer.
this seems like a huge benefit of federation - unless the UAE blocks every server that federates with blahaj.zone, you can still view all the content on a different federated server (except for non-federated content like blahaj-only images)
Agreed! Although it still sucks to have to VPN just to look at 196 memes :sadpepe:
WHAAAAAT. And probably you can’t connect to it from a different instance, isn’t it?
I can see posts and the text in a post using this lemmy.world account, but content hosted on lemmy.blahaj.zone like images/videos/memes won’t load.
I’m assuming that it was blocked on the DNS level. Did you try changing to CloudFlare’s 1.1.1.1 or Google’s 8.8.8.8?
Not blocked on the DNS level. I have tried to use a DNS other than my ISP’s. They even go out of their way and use DPI (deep packet inspection) to scramble all internet traffic that resembles VoIP (which is banned here) and VPNs.
It’s a constant game of cat and mouse with VPNs to find one that works only for it to be scrambled/blocked shortly after subscribing to it. :(
I’ve even tried renting a server, installing CentOS and running OpenVPN but that got identified and scrambled like 5 days into running that server.
First of all, don’t use CentOS, it’s 2023 (and EOL)
Second of all, you can abuse the AWS free tier to host your VPN since they assign a dynamic IP for all the ec2 instances, so turning it off and on again gives you a new IP.
Also, don’t use OpenVPN, use WireGuard.
EDIT: Additionally, I believe that when they notice all traffic originating from your IP is going to a single IP somewhere else in the world it’s automatically marked as a VPN and then blocked. You should try running a split configuration where traffic to lemmy.blahaj.zone (23.20.240.121/32, 54.81.97.116/32) is routed through your VPN and everything else leaves as usual.
The OpenVPN project was many years ago on CentOS, I haven’t dabbled in Linux distros for many years now and have no idea what distro would be ideal this kind of project today.
Duly noted about WireGuard! If they have a windows client that supports split tunnelling then I am definitely going to try AWS + WireGuard. Will look into it when I’m home.
Thank you for the advice!
