16:02:23 <meskio> #startmeeting tor anti-censorship meeting
16:02:23 <MeetBot> Meeting started Thu Jun 13 16:02:23 2024 UTC.  The chair is meskio. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot.
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16:02:27 <meskio> hello everyone!!
16:02:34 <meskio> here is our meeting pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/r.9574e996bb9c0266213d38b91b56c469
16:02:36 <meskio> ask me in private to give you the link of the pad to be able to edit it if you don't have it
16:02:38 <meskio> I'll wait few minutes for everybody to add you've been working on and put items on the agenda
16:02:45 <theodorsm> Hi!
16:03:35 <meskio> I have removed all the topics from last week, I think there was nothing left to discuss on those
16:03:37 <meskio> theodorsm: hello
16:04:38 <ggus> hello
16:07:07 <gaba> hi
16:08:43 <meskio> I guess we can start
16:08:50 <meskio> we have an announcement:
16:09:05 <meskio> bridges running 0.4.7.x (EOL) were rejected by Serge: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2024-June/021678.html
16:09:18 <meskio> it looks like we've lost 12% of the bridges with that rejection, not that bad
16:09:37 <meskio> I did count ~280 bridges
16:10:23 <meskio> let's move to the discussion:
16:10:29 <meskio> what's the plan for: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/142
16:10:34 <meskio> ggus: is it you asking?
16:10:38 <ggus> yes
16:11:13 <meskio> TL;RD: we've lost a lot of webextension snowblake proxies
16:11:18 <ggus> we know that we lost snowfflake proxies by introducing the consent page
16:11:25 <meskio> proably due to people not noticing the new consent page
16:11:36 <cohosh> i'm taking that on, there are a few things we can try
16:11:56 <cohosh> luckily the rise in orbot proxies (probably from the v17 rollout) makes this not as urgent as it otherwise might be
16:11:57 <meskio> at the same time orbot has staterted being distributed with kind mode (aka snowflake proxy) so the users are not noticing it that much
16:13:36 <cohosh> my plan right now is: 1) do some debugging of the update prompt to see if the consent page is even opening on update,
16:14:04 <cohosh> 2) look into whether we can use a popup rather than just opening a page in a tab
16:14:37 <cohosh> 3) work on a better indicator for the icon to show that it's not working (https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake-webext/-/issues/94)
16:14:41 <ggus> the popup idea sounds a good idea
16:14:58 <cohosh> 4) work on the consent page layout and text to draw attention to the user interaction
16:15:39 <meskio> I wonder if we should wait for cohosh improvements to start talking about it in the forum/social media/...
16:16:13 <ggus> yes, or people will come to report the same things that we already know
16:16:16 <meskio> as in nagging users to accept the policy
16:16:41 <cohosh> well, rolling out updates takes time
16:17:49 <cohosh> i mean, this isn't so urgent because our ip pool is still doing okay
16:18:07 <cohosh> but i was wondering if a post about how to open the consent page would be useful while we work on this
16:18:42 <meskio> I guess the low hanging fruit here will be to post something in the forum about it
16:19:34 <gaba> or involved pavel to communicate this out to users in the blog and social media
16:20:21 <meskio> if we are planning to change the consent page I wouldn't do a blogpost, about our current page
16:20:22 <gaba> involve*
16:20:58 <cohosh> we didn't involve the UX team when we worked on this before because mozilla forced us into a situation where we had to react quickly while our extension was taken off the store
16:21:28 <cohosh> it might be worth getting feedback from them, but that will take more time
16:21:57 <ggus> the consent page is also needed for chrome/chromium?
16:22:06 <cohosh> no
16:22:37 <cohosh> we've had users request it, but the chrome webstore does not require it
16:23:59 <cohosh> i'm not sure how i feel about making the consent opt-out for chrome and opt-in for mozilla
16:24:02 <ggus> is is possible to disable it for chrome and see if we will get more webextension proxies? that would confirm that the issue is the consent page and its ux
16:24:27 <ggus> ok
16:24:57 <cohosh> our reasoning before was that installing the extension itself was opting-in (moreso than the snowflake badges embedded in a web page)
16:27:00 <cohosh> let's consider it as a future option if the above improvements don't work
16:27:16 <ggus> ack
16:27:22 <meskio> sounds good
16:28:05 <cohosh> i can write up a forum post while i work on things but i agree that wider communication can wait until we figure out a UX plan and timeline
16:28:43 <ggus> cohosh: i added it to the tor relays meetup agenda, but i can remove
16:28:55 <meskio> nice
16:28:59 <meskio> anything else on this topic?
16:29:06 <cohosh> oh i think it would be good to mention to tor-relays
16:29:22 <cohosh> at least, i don't see a downside there
16:29:24 <meskio> +1
16:29:25 <ggus> ok!
16:29:25 <cohosh> ggus: when is that?
16:29:33 <ggus> june 22, at 19utc
16:29:40 <meskio> saturday next week
16:29:49 <cohosh> ok i will have a forum post by then that you can link to
16:30:32 <ggus> cool! let me know if you need help drafting the post
16:30:44 <cohosh> great, i will probably run a draft by you
16:31:06 <cohosh> thanks for bringing this up ggus
16:31:16 <ggus> thanks for working it :D
16:31:20 <ggus> *on it
16:32:02 <meskio> we have a couple of interesting links:
16:32:05 <meskio> https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/the-censorship-circumvention-extension-has-disappeared-from-the-russian-version-of-mozilla-addons/130914
16:32:07 <meskio> https://ntc.party/t/several-proxy-firefox-extensions-are-blocked-in-russia-by-mozilla/7943/1
16:32:16 <meskio> mozilla is blocking censorship circumvention addons in russia
16:32:33 <meskio> it should not affect snowflake, I hope, as it can't be used to avoid censorship
16:33:03 <meskio> is the snowflake bridge blocked in russia? are snowflake proxies useful there?
16:33:29 <dcf1> There's a statement from Mozilla on the thread: https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/the-censorship-circumvention-extension-has-disappeared-from-the-russian-version-of-mozilla-addons/130914/26
16:34:35 <meskio> good to know at least they will warn developers when they block extensions
16:35:05 <nina13[m]> meskio: I guess it depends on ISP, but users often say snowflake does not work for them
16:35:45 <dcf1> nina13[m]: I believe meskio is talking about people running snowflake proxies in Russia, not people using snowflake to get access.
16:36:12 <meskio> yes
16:36:18 <cohosh> from https://snowflake-broker.torproject.net/metrics:
16:36:20 <cohosh> snowflake-ips IR=19958,US=17129,DE=15869,IN=4588,BR=2698,RU=2175
16:36:33 <cohosh> proxies shouldn't be polling the broker unless they can reach the bridge
16:37:02 <meskio> ohh, those are proxies? so it doesn't look to be blocked :D
16:37:05 <cohosh> not sure how accurate the geolocation on some of these IPs are
16:37:10 <meskio> at least in soem ISPs
16:37:41 <cohosh> i am always surprised when i see these numbers
16:38:28 <meskio> nina13[m]: there has being reports in the past of fingerprinting of snowflake in russia, maybe there is still some fingerprint that do work to block snoflake clients in russia :(
16:39:27 <meskio> anyway, the other interesting link:
16:39:30 <meskio> Myanmar: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/censorship-analysis/-/issues/40043
16:39:48 <meskio> there is a surge of usage of Tor in myanmar related to the blockade of VPNs in the country
16:40:18 <meskio> looking at OONI they might be blocking some dirauths, but it seems that a lot of people is still able to connect directly tor
16:41:52 <meskio> anything else for today?
16:42:17 <ggus> later today or next week, we'll add some insights about tor usage in UZ
16:42:39 * meskio tries to parse what country is UZ
16:42:42 <ggus> nina13[m] followed up with local partners to understand what's up
16:43:07 <ggus> https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-country.html?start=2023-01-15&end=2024-06-13&country=uz&events=off
16:43:13 <meskio> Uzbekistan
16:44:42 <meskio> interesting to hear why that decrease to loose 2 thirds of the users
16:44:51 <nina13[m]> it seems that last days problems are due to the hot weather and electricity shortage
16:45:33 <nina13[m]> local partners haven't noticed any problems with tor, but our website is blocked there
16:46:27 <meskio> wow
16:47:35 <ggus> meskio: https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-country.html?start=2021-01-15&end=2024-06-13&country=uz&events=off
16:47:42 <meskio> dcf1: I see you have in 'help with' the restart of the broker, shell is AFK this week and next, so I guess this will wait for a bit
16:48:15 <meskio> ggus: what happen in 2021-2022?
16:50:15 <ggus> meskio: i don't know, we only know for the last year/weeks
16:50:32 <meskio> I see
16:50:40 <meskio> thanks for investigating
16:50:45 <ggus> but something huge happened hehe
16:50:52 <ggus> in 2021-2022
16:51:13 <meskio> yes, a spike of 150k users, when now there is varely 5k looks like something
16:51:48 <ggus> https://ntc.party/c/internet-censorship-all-around-the-world/uzbekistan/35
16:52:33 <ggus> anyway, i'll open a ticket on censorship-analysis repo
16:52:40 <meskio> thanks
16:53:07 <meskio> one last thing, I plan to deploy https, moat and email distributors in rdsys next week
16:53:16 <nina13[m]> in 2022 they unblocked social networks - probably that's why
16:53:17 <meskio> to be able to retire bridgedb
16:53:28 <meskio> I'll write something about it in tor-relays
16:53:43 <ggus> :D good news!
16:53:44 <meskio> ggus: maybe something to mention in the relays meetup, I don't think I'll be able to be there, sorry
16:54:38 <ggus> meskio: i can briefly inform and tell operators if they notice something unusual with their bridges to let us know
16:54:41 <meskio> but let's see next week if I manage to do that or is the following one
16:54:49 <meskio> ggus: thank you
16:54:58 <ggus> ok!
16:55:16 <meskio> something more to discuss today?
16:56:18 <meskio> I guess we are done for today
16:56:21 <meskio> #endmeeting