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