13:59:24 #startmeeting Community Team meeting - April 11 2022 13:59:24 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 Useful Commands: #action #agreed #help #info #idea #link #topic. 13:59:29 hello everyone! 13:59:30 hello! o/ 13:59:35 Community Team meeting is starting now o/ 13:59:42 * gman999 lurking and working 13:59:43 Hi! 14:00:53 o/ 14:01:04 here's the meeting pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-community-team-2022-keep 14:01:09 please add your updates :) 14:01:17 hey :) 14:01:23 and feel free to add other topics on the agenda 14:01:57 * nah lurking 14:10:14 i think everyone is done, let's get started! 14:10:23 * 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 i noticed that the estimated number of bridges users in russia is going down in the last days ^^ 14:11:01 interesting 14:11:49 i believe roskomnadzor people did another round of blocking bridges 14:12:34 my bridge was blocked like last week 14:12:47 do you see any ru traffic anyways hiro? 14:12:57 metrics lists my bridges as blocked in ru... 14:13:10 but i still see ru traffic in the stats 14:13:15 didn't check to be honest I just saw the ru blocklist flag 14:13:50 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 and it's now blocked 14:14:05 it seems RKN is busy reading forums :) 14:14:32 :) 14:14:38 sneaky 14:14:41 ;) 14:15:21 and it still has some users, but it will soon propagated to the other TSPU devices 14:15:44 I shared this bridge but only once or twice 14:15:47 (i mean the block) 14:16:25 this bridge: https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/49EF0BBC31E7DD0607BED3A8BB80368808FE64AA 14:17:26 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 nina13[m]: have you seen more bridge requests from RU in the last days? 14:19:00 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 the @getbridgesbot is distributing some blocked bridges, but irl is working on this 14:20:57 yes, once or twice users complained that the bridge they got was blocked 14:21:25 is there a way to check stats from the TG getgridgesbot? 14:21:39 ggus: ^ 14:22:24 yes, how many requests and how many unique IPs per bridge 14:22:41 the first is exported to grafana 14:22:41 ok 14:22:50 the latter only irl can share 14:24:29 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 last spike was on april 5 14:24:49 107445 requests 14:25:28 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 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 i will reach out to some bridge operators and ask them to rotate their bridge IP 14:28:22 anything else that someone would like to share or discuss about this topic? 14:37:08 *crickets* 14:37:27 lol 14:37:37 haha 14:37:59 zzzz 14:38:24 i do think the issue we discussed aerlier on tor-project might be of interest 14:38:24 let's move to the other topic then 14:38:30 ah, ok.. sorry! 14:38:41 * Tor censorship in TM: 14:38:41 - https://twitter.com/CloudflareRadar/status/1513510448762695687 14:38:41 - https://telegra.ph/V-Turkmenistane-pochti-polnostyu-zablokirovali-internet-04-11 14:38:58 and these tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/censorship-analysis/-/issues/40024 14:39:29 https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/censorship-analysis/-/issues/40029 14:40:10 it spent a lot of time last year trying to find users in TM that could run some tests for us 14:40:16 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 but it's very hard 14:40:54 https://www.rferl.org/a/turkmenistan-vpn-koran-ban/31402718.html 14:40:57 I had only one meaningful chat with the user from Turkmenistan 14:41:07 ^ specially because of that law against VPNs 14:41:35 let me look through my 'rolodex'... i had some central asian contacts in the far past 14:41:46 ggus: hmm... 14:42:38 I was told "everything is very strict with VPN" 14:43:14 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 but the situation with the new president might change 14:45:47 but there is still some information exchange with russian-speaking sources as they use our telegram bot and emails 14:47:10 it's interesting to see that telegram is unblocked there (or at least before the shutdown) 14:48:50 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 alright anything else about TM ? 14:50:12 I suppose bridges they get from bridges@ can probably work too, as user mentioned that way 14:50:24 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 I read they use LINE and some local messenger, Telegram is popular in Ashgabat maybe because there is russian-speaking community 14:52:36 interesting, i never heard about LINE 14:53:44 and this messenger is also mentioned as popular imo.im but very insecure 14:56:21 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 yes, I hope I'll see them 14:57:43 thanks! :) 14:57:47 alright, let's wrap up the meeting. if you have other topics, let's discuss on #tor-project 14:57:50 #endmeeting