NationStates

So I was checking my flags dispatch, and saw that one of the CoA's and flags aren't loading, but some did load, so I didn't think much of it. However, when I was checking out a thread in factbooks and national information, the image links aren't working, when I also clicked on the image to get a look, I was greeted with a Your connection is not private error. I was weirded out, yesterday the images that I were looking at were loading fine, so how come they aren't loading just today?

For some background, I live in Indonesia, and they ban stuff that contain SARA (s**ual and ritual abuse), and already, Reddit Vimeo and Imgur are on the ever-growing list. I don't know what to do, photo bucket has these large watermarks that you can't remove, Imgbb makes things look smaller, dragging an image with the correct resolution from file Explorer, while that image already has a bigger copy means that I have to sacrifice disk space on my computer.

I've tried to look for alternatives for imgur, but they're not on the list of approved image hosting sites, I can't afford a VPN, so what should I do?

I don't know how to help but I was wondering what ritual abuse refers to.

I was going to say “Just Get Nord VPN” until I actually read the post. I’m afraid I can’t help you there.

Imgur is blocked in my country (Indonesia too), too, but changing your web browser to Opera (which has its own "VPN-ish"), or use 1.1.1.1., or things along those lines seems to work. Also, for whatever reason, Imgur is NOT blocked if you use Indihome's Wifi, at least from my experience, but it is blocked if you use mobile data. Idk why.

Nueren wrote:I don't know how to help but I was wondering what ritual abuse refers to.

SARA means "sensitive content related to tribes, religion, race, groups", so idk what ritual abuse in this context means lol. Also the Imgur ban is more due to pornography laws.

Resilient Acceleration wrote:

Nueren wrote:I don't know how to help but I was wondering what ritual abuse refers to.

SARA means "sensitive content related to tribes, religion, race, groups", so idk what ritual abuse in this context means lol. Also the Imgur ban is more due to pornography laws.

So basically it's like a blasphemy law but also defending christianity etc plus anti hate speech law?

So the mobile data I'm using is Indosat Ooredoo, which does allow imgur for me to use, so I'm curious as to why would they just block it randomly?

Kergstan wrote:

Resilient Acceleration wrote:SARA means "sensitive content related to tribes, religion, race, groups", so idk what ritual abuse in this context means lol. Also the Imgur ban is more due to pornography laws.

So basically it's like a blasphemy law but also defending christianity etc plus anti hate speech law?

Yes. You gotta remember that Indonesia is a multiethnic, multireligious (in terms of geographic distribution) society with a long history of horrific violence erupting form time to time, so I guess it makes sense that we have such laws in place.

Cereskia 2 wrote:So the mobile data I'm using is Indosat Ooredoo, which does allow imgur for me to use, so I'm curious as to why would they just block it randomly?

I have no idea, it's almost random. Indosat is privately owned, while Telkomsel (which I use) is government-owned. One would expect state-owned enterprises to be more stringent in enforcing the govt's censorship laws, but Telkomsel's mobile data blocks Imgur while Telkomsel's Indihome wifi doesn't block it.

Yes. You gotta remember that Indonesia is a multiethnic, multireligious (in terms of geographic distribution) society with a long history of horrific violence erupting form time to time, so I guess it makes sense that we have such laws in place.

Sure it makes total sense i'm familiar with he mass killings of chinese and communists of 1965-66, the violence on Chinese as reformasi was taking place, West papua violence and the former Aceh insurgency and i'm sure there's more sadly.

Guess you could switch to another of the approved upload platforms?

Kergstan wrote:

Resilient Acceleration wrote:SARA means "sensitive content related to tribes, religion, race, groups", so idk what ritual abuse in this context means lol. Also the Imgur ban is more due to pornography laws.

So basically it's like a blasphemy law but also defending christianity etc plus anti hate speech law?

To be honest, they mainly just defend Muslims (nothing wrong with that), there were a few hate speech stuff against atheists and Christians, but that was never blocked.

I can probably set you up with a proxy for free if you wanted?

Imgur is blocked? Goddammit. They blocked reddit and now they blocked Imgur.

rather a lot of us live just fine without imgur, twit or face.
only reason i'd ever be on any mundane 'social media' site,
is if i was trying to run some kind of home business,
or online storefront.

specialized interest boards are another matter,
and what the internet was created for,
engineering hobbiests, artists, et c.

i do like that imgur is a place you can put pictures where people can see them.
a long time ago i had youtube for my animations, but then out of the blue,
my pw stopped working, no reason or explanation ever given.

post them occasionally on vimeo, under my mundane name,
but only a tiny fraction of the ones i've created are there now.

Cereskia 2 wrote:I can't afford a VPN

if you can't afford a good vpn service, you should ideally ask a friend who has a service or can afford one, or try another image sharing platform as onox said, of course both options have their own risks

if all these don't work, then i can only hope for someone to help you out

UPDATE:

I just got on my PC a few hours ago, and Imgur is working fine..... what..?

So maybe it's just a fault in the system I suppose, at that time, before I hopped on my Computer, I was using my phone.

Cereskia 2 wrote:UPDATE:

I just got on my PC a few hours ago, and Imgur is working fine..... what..?

So maybe it's just a fault in the system I suppose, at that time, before I hopped on my Computer, I was using my phone.

must be a blocked ip address that got unfortunately assigned to your phone

You could use ProtonVPN in the future, it's free and designed by security researchers specifically to circumvent censorship.

I have a strange way of using images in my factbooks - I paste them into a Discord chat that's private to me, and click "copy link" onto the image in Discord. Then I paste the link into the [img] section and it seems to work...

(if someone would like to confirm, this is how I have pretty much all my images...)