13:59:36 <ggus> #startmeeting Community Team meeting - February 28 2022
13:59:36 <MeetBot> Meeting started Mon Feb 28 13:59:36 2022 UTC.  The chair is ggus. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot.
13:59:36 <MeetBot> Useful Commands: #action #agreed #help #info #idea #link #topic.
13:59:39 <championquizzer> hello! o/
13:59:41 <ggus> hello everyone
13:59:43 <nina13[m]> hi!
13:59:52 * donuts is lurking 👀
13:59:57 <ggus> here's our meeting pad - https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-community-team-2022-keep
14:00:10 <nah> o/
14:00:19 <ggus> please add your updates
14:00:25 * nah is lurking as well
14:00:33 <rhatto> o/
14:01:56 <ggus> i added a topic to discuss the ongoing situation in ukraine/russia and what the Tor community is doing.
14:04:28 <championquizzer> welcome, raya[m][m]! \o/
14:05:38 <raya[m][m]> hello! :-)
14:07:09 <emmapeel> yes! good to have you with us, raya!
14:07:36 <raya[m][m]> very happy to be here among you :)
14:10:05 <championquizzer> miko[m]: i know that feeling when the internship comes to end :):/
14:10:46 <miko[m]> championquizzer: haha yeah :,D
14:11:15 <ggus> emmapeel: do you want to go first?
14:13:25 <ggus> alright, i will start then :)
14:14:17 <ggus> * Tor censorship in Russia and Tor usage in Ukraine:
14:14:27 <ggus> i added some links on the pad
14:14:32 <ggus> about the ongoing situation
14:14:40 <ggus> you can see a huge spike on tor usage in ukraine
14:14:58 <ggus> and another spike on tor bridge users in russia
14:15:24 <emmapeel> ~oops sorry i got distracted
14:15:52 <gman999> but no censorship events in ua are there?
14:15:55 <ggus> which could mean our strategy of using dynamic bridges + new moat bridges + localized user support is showing results
14:16:34 <ggus> gman999: afaik, no censorship events. but they have being hit by cyberattacks in different days
14:16:55 <ggus> which may explain why people want to protect themselves
14:17:09 <emmapeel> the president was asking for RT to be censored
14:17:15 <gman999> yup
14:17:44 <gman999> alecmuffett had a back and forth about fb, etc censoring in ru
14:17:49 <gman999> on twitter
14:17:54 <gman999> worth finding
14:18:51 <ggus> yep, the ministry of digital in ukraine is asking big tech to block of russian users. which is the same thing that RKN is doing.
14:19:34 <ggus> in other news, many community members did a huge campaign for more snowflake proxies
14:20:09 <ggus> and we have an increase of 17k proxies to 20k proxies
14:20:27 <ggus> and also more obfs4 bridges
14:20:34 <nina13[m]> interest to snowflake is high from russian users, but many complains on its speed
14:20:52 <ggus> https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#search/type:bridge%20running:true%20first_seen_days:0-4%20
14:21:28 <nina13[m]> I advertise it as a way to connect to tor without asking bridges
14:22:18 <ggus> nina13[m]: do you know if the complain is about connecting/bootstraping tor with snowflake or browsing using snowflake? or both?
14:22:25 <donuts> great news re: snowflake proxies! 💫
14:23:36 <ggus> nina13[m]: did we get more russian users on frontdesk/telegram in the last days?
14:23:40 <nina13[m]> ggus: Yes, I have such case and the user was kind enougth to test, provide logs and info on their provider. I'll sent this ticket to you
14:24:14 * nina13[m] uploaded an image: (100KiB) < https://matrix.org/_matrix/media/r0/download/matrix.org/vHwmESZwCOeEpJgucyhRTOgv/Screenshot%202022-02-28%20at%2014.24.56.png >
14:24:34 <nina13[m]> not really, everything is as usual
14:26:12 <nina13[m]> but more troubleshooting, more questions on TB for iOS
14:27:08 <championquizzer> interesting. users reporting from china have also complained about the speed with snowflake (not bootstrapping, but browsing)
14:27:48 <championquizzer> nina13[m]: i guess we are also seeing a lot of q's around little-t tor?
14:28:20 <championquizzer> i mean more than what we usually see
14:28:34 <nina13[m]> yes, that is too
14:28:53 <nina13[m]> maybe we cat make a instruction
14:30:00 <nina13[m]> and now a lot of cases with VPN
14:30:16 <ggus> the difficult part is that little-t-tor instruction will change based on the operating system used
14:30:27 <championquizzer> yeah
14:32:34 <ggus> alright, anything else about this topic that people would like to share?
14:32:47 <donuts> I have a related question
14:32:54 <ggus> go ahead, donuts
14:32:59 <donuts> I'm looking at this ticket: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/issues/46
14:33:12 <donuts> and the review will likely introduce a lot more copy to the bot
14:33:18 <donuts> that's currently only in EN I believe?
14:33:38 <donuts> I was wondering if there were any plans for localization, and if my review should take that into account when making UI recommendations
14:33:46 <donuts> (this is about the bridge bot, sorry)
14:34:04 <ggus> at the moment the bot only reply with an obfs4 bridge line, without any text.
14:34:10 <donuts> yep
14:34:23 <donuts> the only EN is the intro string
14:34:24 <ggus> and then some users go to nina13[m] and ask 'how do i use this'
14:35:38 <ggus> donuts: yes, the tg bot has only one command in english '/bridges'.
14:35:49 <donuts> but if we were to add more guidance to the bot itself (links to help docs etc.), that would increase the number of EN strings
14:35:52 <emmapeel> we could add a link to the bridges docs
14:36:13 <ggus> or a screenshot
14:36:53 <donuts> well I was thinking both, but if what you're saying is that we should limit the amount of text in general I can try and work around that :)
14:37:19 <donuts> or we could make it multilingual
14:37:38 <emmapeel> the problem of multilingual is how to know which language to give to the user
14:37:48 <emmapeel> there should also be a ay for the user to change the language
14:38:03 <emmapeel> or maybe if you ask for the german locale, it sends a little instruction on german
14:38:06 <donuts> yes, it would have to be a manual selection (or separate bots)
14:38:25 <donuts> you can do buttons and custom keyboards in TG to add UI, it doesn't need to be just text
14:38:27 <ggus> at the moment we aren't promoting these bridges in other languages, tho. but here you can see who else is using these bridges:https://twitter.com/SR2Comms/status/1498237187292291072
14:39:35 <donuts> yep I was thinking just EN and RU initially, but I'll take your and emmapeel's lead here obviously
14:40:45 <donuts> or, like I say, the alternative could be just being very careful with the amount of additional text (if it stays in EN only)
14:41:11 <ggus> in the nearby future, i would like to use for chinese users, because moat bridges are blocked quite fast there
14:41:48 <emmapeel> the problems with links, now that i think about it, is that the docs may be blocked
14:42:25 <emmapeel> so, that makes localizable bot instructions more interesting
14:42:46 <donuts> emmapeel: ah hrm good point, we could point to mirrors for RU and official pages for EN maybe?
14:43:46 <nina13[m]> If the RKS uses our bot to block bridges they probably can start block mirrors
14:43:52 <nina13[m]> RKN^ sorry
14:44:11 <ggus> donuts: if you're thinking on a bot menu, we could also have links to gettor mirrors, so people can download official tor browsers too.
14:44:26 <donuts> ggus: yep, exactly!
14:45:48 <ggus> alright, anything else about the bridges bot ux?
14:45:51 <donuts> Okay I can play around with some ideas and will add it to the ticket for review
14:45:53 <donuts> Please feel free to add your thoughts there too
14:45:58 <donuts> thanks team!
14:45:58 <nina13[m]> and tech support channel contact info?
14:46:19 <ggus> awesome donuts! thank you for bringing this topic
14:46:31 <ggus> nina13[m]: good idea
14:46:45 <donuts> nina13[m]: absolutely!
14:46:57 <ggus> i will move to the next topic as we don't have a lot of time
14:47:03 <ggus> emmapeel: do you want to share your update?
14:47:47 <emmapeel> yes! there are new languages upcoming for release, many websites are translated to Chinese(TW) and waiting for a review, and also the Khmer language!
14:48:08 <emmapeel> localization lab held a sprint for khmer language and the people was translating the manual and the main tor website
14:48:19 <emmapeel> https://review.torproject.net/tpo/web/manual/l10n/km/
14:48:24 <emmapeel> https://review.torproject.net/tpo/web/tpo/l10n/km/
14:48:42 <emmapeel> it is looking good, although there are some issues with the fonts, i will need some frontend help
14:48:49 <ggus> very cool!
14:48:56 <emmapeel> apparently is pretty common that fonts are not ready for khmer
14:49:49 <donuts> looks great emmapeel <3
14:50:11 <raya[m]> super cool work
14:50:12 <emmapeel> we are also translating lots of stuff to Russian, especially the bridges section
14:50:43 <emmapeel> and the Chinese(CN) and German translations are getting up to date after some spamming heh
14:51:04 <emmapeel> i.e. https://support.torproject.org/zh-CN/censorship/connecting-from-china/
14:53:07 <ggus> great work, emmapeel
14:53:26 <ggus> we should announce on social media when the Khmer language resource is ready
14:53:32 <emmapeel> yes!
14:54:11 <ggus> alright, anything else for today? :) we have 5 more minutes
14:55:36 <miko[m]> oh yes!
14:55:57 <miko[m]> my internship ends this week. i really enjoyed working with all of you <3
14:56:19 <miko[m]> thank you for your support
14:56:32 <donuts> miko[m]: thank *you* for all your amazing work miko! <333
14:56:39 <raya[m]> <3
14:56:53 <gman999> ty all
14:56:57 <gman999> you're ok too ggus!
14:57:01 <miko[m]> i wish you all all the best <3 you guys are doing some of the best work i have seen
14:57:28 <ggus> thank you!
14:57:32 <miko[m]> donuts: thank you so much duncan <3
14:57:35 <ggus> i will stop the bot as we have another meeting here
14:57:38 <championquizzer> miko[m]: you have done some amazing work. thank you!
14:57:40 <ggus> #endmeeting