13:59:24 <ggus> #startmeeting Community Team meeting - April 11 2022
13:59:24 <MeetBot> Meeting started Mon Apr 11 13:59:24 2022 UTC.  The chair is ggus. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot.
13:59:24 <MeetBot> Useful Commands: #action #agreed #help #info #idea #link #topic.
13:59:29 <ggus> hello everyone!
13:59:30 <championquizzer> hello! o/
13:59:35 <ggus> Community Team meeting is starting now o/
13:59:42 * gman999 lurking and working
13:59:43 <nina13[m]> Hi!
14:00:53 <raya[m]> o/
14:01:04 <ggus> here's the meeting pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-community-team-2022-keep
14:01:09 <ggus> please add your updates :)
14:01:17 <rhatto> hey :)
14:01:23 <ggus> and feel free to add other topics on the agenda
14:01:57 * nah lurking
14:10:14 <ggus> i think everyone is done, let's get started!
14:10:23 <ggus> * Bridge usage in Russia is going down: https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-country.html?start=2022-01-10&end=2022-04-10&country=ru
14:10:55 <ggus> i noticed that the estimated number of bridges users in russia is going down in the last days ^^
14:11:01 <championquizzer> interesting
14:11:49 <ggus> i believe roskomnadzor people did another round of blocking bridges
14:12:34 <hiro> my bridge was blocked like last week
14:12:47 <gman999> do you see any ru traffic anyways hiro?
14:12:57 <gman999> metrics lists my bridges as blocked in ru...
14:13:10 <gman999> but i still see ru traffic in the stats
14:13:15 <hiro> didn't check to be honest I just saw the ru blocklist flag
14:13:50 <ggus> in december i added a bridge in this forum thread, and only shared there - https://ntc.party/t/ooni-reports-of-tor-blocking-in-certain-isps-since-2021-12-01/1477/29
14:13:57 <ggus> and it's now blocked
14:14:05 <ggus> it seems RKN is busy reading forums :)
14:14:32 <raya[m]> :)
14:14:38 <gman999> sneaky
14:14:41 <ggus> ;)
14:15:21 <ggus> and it still has some users, but it will soon propagated to the other TSPU devices
14:15:44 <nina13[m]> I shared this bridge but only once or twice
14:15:47 <ggus> (i mean the block)
14:16:25 <ggus> this bridge: https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/49EF0BBC31E7DD0607BED3A8BB80368808FE64AA
14:17:26 <ggus> so i think the dip on this metrics graph is about sad users that can't use tor because RKN blocked more bridges
14:18:58 <ggus> nina13[m]: have you seen more bridge requests from RU in the last days?
14:19:00 <nina13[m]> I can't say that I get some extra amount of bridge requests. But maybe they use bot to request new ones
14:20:20 <ggus> the @getbridgesbot is distributing some blocked bridges, but irl is working on this
14:20:57 <nina13[m]> yes, once or twice users complained that the bridge they got was blocked
14:21:25 <championquizzer> is there a way to check stats from the TG getgridgesbot?
14:21:39 <championquizzer> ggus: ^
14:22:24 <ggus> yes, how many requests and how many unique IPs per bridge
14:22:41 <ggus> the first is exported to grafana
14:22:41 <championquizzer> ok
14:22:50 <ggus> the latter only irl can share
14:24:29 <ggus> another interesting thing to share is that we didn't have many requests on moat in the last days: https://metrics.torproject.org/bridgedb-distributor.html
14:24:42 <ggus> last spike was on april 5
14:24:49 <ggus> 107445 requests
14:25:28 <irl> we're not auto updating the telegram bot yet, there's not been a manual update for a while, and i think meskio is away
14:25:57 <ggus> option a: this could be censors trying to enumerate all the moat bridges. option b: could be users trying to get a bridge as the one that they are using was blocked.
14:27:59 <ggus> i will reach out to some bridge operators and ask them to rotate their bridge IP
14:28:22 <ggus> anything else that someone would like to share or discuss about this topic?
14:37:08 <ggus> *crickets*
14:37:27 <championquizzer> lol
14:37:37 <raya[m]> haha
14:37:59 <gman999> zzzz
14:38:24 <gman999> i do think the issue we discussed aerlier on tor-project might be of interest
14:38:24 <ggus> let's move to the other topic then
14:38:30 <gman999> ah, ok.. sorry!
14:38:41 <ggus> * Tor censorship in TM:
14:38:41 <ggus> - https://twitter.com/CloudflareRadar/status/1513510448762695687
14:38:41 <ggus> - https://telegra.ph/V-Turkmenistane-pochti-polnostyu-zablokirovali-internet-04-11
14:38:58 <ggus> and these tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/censorship-analysis/-/issues/40024
14:39:29 <ggus> https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/censorship-analysis/-/issues/40029
14:40:10 <ggus> it spent a lot of time last year trying to find users in TM that could run some tests for us
14:40:16 <raya[m]> it seems they started blocking individual vpn servers mid to late feb, and now most vpn's aren't working (i'm relying on info from an online translator).. almost complete internet shutdown
14:40:16 <ggus> but it's very hard
14:40:54 <ggus> https://www.rferl.org/a/turkmenistan-vpn-koran-ban/31402718.html
14:40:57 <nina13[m]> I had only one meaningful chat with the user from Turkmenistan
14:41:07 <ggus> ^ specially because of that law against VPNs
14:41:35 <gman999> let me look through my 'rolodex'... i had some central asian contacts in the far past
14:41:46 <raya[m]> ggus: hmm...
14:42:38 <nina13[m]> I was told "everything is very strict with VPN"
14:43:14 <ggus> since february, tor was working fine again - https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-country.html?start=2022-01-11&end=2022-04-11&country=tm&events=off
14:43:56 <ggus> but the situation with the new president might change
14:45:47 <nina13[m]> but there is still some information exchange with russian-speaking sources as they use our telegram bot and emails
14:47:10 <ggus> it's interesting to see that telegram is unblocked there (or at least before the shutdown)
14:48:50 <ggus> i remember talking with some TM users that only wanted to access Youtube for free. in that occasion, unlisted obfs4 bridges were working
14:50:02 <ggus> alright anything else about TM ?
14:50:12 <nina13[m]> I suppose bridges they get from bridges@ can probably work too, as user mentioned that way
14:50:24 <raya[m]> ooni shows lots of anomalies in telegram measurements in turkmenistan.. could be attempts to block it? https://explorer.ooni.org/chart/mat?probe_cc=TM&test_name=telegram&since=2022-01-01&until=2022-04-12&axis_x=measurement_start_day&axis_y=probe_cc
14:52:06 <nina13[m]> I read they use LINE and some local messenger, Telegram is popular in Ashgabat maybe because there is russian-speaking community
14:52:36 <ggus> interesting, i never heard about LINE
14:53:44 <nina13[m]> and this messenger is also mentioned as popular imo.im but very insecure
14:56:21 <ggus> nina13[m]: if you see more TM users, let's ask them to test this snowflake workaround: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/censorship-analysis/-/issues/40024#note_2768313
14:57:26 <nina13[m]> yes, I hope I'll see them
14:57:43 <ggus> thanks! :)
14:57:47 <ggus> alright, let's wrap up the meeting. if you have other topics, let's discuss on #tor-project
14:57:50 <ggus> #endmeeting