TPM censored?
Just some days ago LOF told me that Vodafone in Germany was blocking TPM.
I'm not in Germany now so I couldn't check it myself, but LOF is Internet savvy, so it's not like he was mistyping URLs or has his whole Internet down -and he had the same issue with his phone connection, also on Vodafone, and at his office-.
He made me smile when he said:
although a conspiracy theory of gov trying to block your site because gettng the genPop 'in the secret' is too pretty to not think about it 🙂
Well, yes, I think it would be a bit of a stretch.
And indeed, today it started working again for LOF.
But as far "stretches" go, it's not too far out there either.
Especially in certain countries, places, companies and... Potentially with our changing cultural/political climate.
Low risks of cancel-culture
I think TPM is less likely to fall for a cancel culture attack.
It wouldn't be the lowest target on the list, but neither the #1.
And it would be easier to defend against, since the attack would have little legs to stand on.
For every article or post on feminists or low quality women, there's one on misogynists/abusers and low-quality men (and the other way around is true).
And the same bipartisan and balanced approach can be found in articles on manipulation / dark psychology, etc.
Plus, the ultimate aim is obviously win-win and value-adding.
Moderate risk of censoring from high-power organizations
TPM is for individual empowerment.
That will always stay that way.
Still, I plan on doing more resources going forward for entrepreneurs and founders because it's not like we're against organizations or groups here.
It's just that it was more important to first highlight the dangers to the individuals, since most people are aware of the benefits, but not of the dangers.
TPM explained corporate manipulation, political manipulation, military manipulation, leadership manipulation... And it reviewed several great resources that framed corporate life as something to get out of, and governments as repressive.
So, so far TPM can come across as "individuals above (or against) groups, organizations, businesses, or governments".
Also, there is an issue that TPM might never be able to bridge:
From a power dynamics point of view... Well, some companies and governments often prefer a dormant, naive, and disempowered population.
Especially when they're turning more autocratic, repressive, manipulative, and predatory (value-taking).
And today I've noticed that someone else tried to reach out to me saying this:
I can't access thepowermoves.com after an update of the site. I am interested in social dynamics and I was visiting the site to pay for the material but the site is blocking Tor IP addresses. It is necessary for me to use Tor to bypass censorship in my country. I cannot disclose my country for my safety. I have found thepowermoves.com to be a good site, and all I ask is to remove Tor from the blacklist. I hope you understand my necessity and circumstances.
As of now, I wasn't considering cancel-culture or censoring to be major threats to TPM (not in the strict sense, at least: Google pushing TPM down is always a real risk).
But it's something that from now on is at least on the map.
Moderate risks from some enemies who didn't like honest reviews
TPM did make some people angry with some straightforward and not highly positive reviews.
They wouldn't mind delivering a push or nudge, if they had the chance.
Higher risk of puritanical censorship
As of today, I think the biggest risk is from puritanical censorship.
Especially with the addition of "Seduction University", TPM now deals and ranks high on many of what some might consider "dark arts", including:
- Seduction
- Machiavellianism
- Manipulation
- Dark psychology
And:
- Games people play
- Corporate politics / political savvy
- Social strategies
- Power awareness
If one read articles or watched they may agree that TPM is more likely to empower people and add value to the world.
But many wouldn't look that deep -probably not an algorithm-.
And some more extreme purists wouldn't even care about the content: you simply don't talk about certain topics, no matter which angle you take.
I recently noticed something related, but basically the opposite:
You can't access the site with the Tor Browser anymore (this was not the case some months ago).
Access Denied - Sucuri Website Firewall
Block reason: Your IP address is listed in our blacklist and blocked from completing this request.
Very rarely (like one out of 15 tries) it may work, but that is most likely because the used blacklist is slightly out of date.
Now this actually makes a lot of sense, since the tor-network actually works, it's also used by bad actors and a whole lot of traffic from tor exit nodes is actually malicious. So from a strict security standpoint, this is reasonable.
However one of the biggest uses and advantages of the tor network is the ability to circumvent digital oppression like censorship inflicted upon people. And the people who value their privacy a lot like to use it as well, which could also be more intelligent folks.
So I think this is something to be aware of in the context of censorship of TPM as well.
I didn't know that and it's very helpful, thank you for the news, Anon!
So I suppose losing the traffic of the oppressed countries is a price to be paid for the security -but even more than the traffic, it's about not giving some people the opportunity of learning and growing-.
Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on February 25, 2022, 2:43 pmI didn't know that and it's very helpful, thank you for the news, Anon!
So I suppose losing the traffic of the oppressed countries is a price to be paid for the security -but even more than the traffic, it's about not giving some people the opportunity of learning and growing-.
It's not an easy decision for sure.
Though people in surpressed countries can still use a VPN instead of the tor network to circumvent the censorship, and they'll probably know how to use one.
What also works with the Tor Browser is the use of a simple web proxy, as described below in the solutions post.
Regarding the topic of the OP, one could also ask Vodafone Germany:
You are the owner of thepowermoves.com and a customer of yours reported what looked like a ISP block of your site (tested both on vodafone cable and mobile network, while other traffic worked fine) and if they can confirm or deny such a block.
While it now works again, you are concerned about what appears to you as a temporary ISP block of your site and the impact of such on your business.
I would also include the time the incident happened and the rough physical location.
Solving the described issue of potential censorship (right now or in the future)
To understand the problem, here is explained how ISP blocks are actually implemented.
- DNS-Level Block
Disclaimer: Do not rely on the described method if your threatened with serious consequences for visiting a particular site - your ISP (Internet Service Provider) stills sees and logs which server you are connecting to!
In many cases (like thepowermoves.com) it should be fine for most people, but you shouldn't feel falsely anonymous and unobserved.
In most cases it likely is a mere DNS*-level block and can be easily circumvented by using a free (as in freedom) DNS Server, which is recommended anyway, as your ISP doesn't get to automatically aggregate even more data about you and combine it with all the data they already have.
("Huh the last few days Anon didn't watch 2 hours of niche porn after work, that's strange. He also didn't visit this cancer treatment site for a while, interesting." - of course this is not actually done by hand, but such data is often sold).
*DNS (Domain Name System) translates domain names like thepowermoves.com into actual IP addresses of the server of the site you want to reach.
AdGuard lists here lots of such DNS servers, even though they offer themselves one of them.
They explain here with pictures how to quickly and easily change the DNS server manually for all common operating systems:
-> "Method #2: Configure AdGuard DNS manually" -> choosing the target operating system
- IP-blocks and Deep-Package-Inspection
Everything else other than DNS level blocks would either need a proxy or a VPN (or theoretically the Tor Network).
A neat little web-proxy that also works with the Tor Browser:
When using the startpage.com search (one of the pre-defined search engines in the Tor Browser) one can simply click on the little mask symbol in the top left of every search result ("Anonymous View") and it will open the window with a proxy and that works just fine for thepowermoves.com as well.
Thank you so much, Anon!