[liberationtech] Shouldn't Browser Vendors provide useful suggestions to bypass censorship?

[Patrick Schleizer]

Fabio Pietrosanti (naif):
> Greetings,
> 
> shouldn't Browser Vendors provide useful suggestions to bypass censorship?
> 
> All browsers (Firefox, Chrome, IE,etc) do provide specific error
> messages when an hostname does not resolve, if a connection is resetted
> or if timeout while connecting.
> 
> When a censorship event happen, unless for traffic-redirection, specific
> errors are shown to the end-users.
> 
> Those "error messages" represent the first experience of the end-user
> that censorship is happening.
> 
> For sure the reasons behind a connection-timeout error could be many,
> effectively the browser vendors provide suggestions on how to try to
> debug/fix the problems like:
> - Check that you typed the name correctly
> - Check that your internet connection is working
> - Check that your proxy settings are valid
> 
> Screenshot:
> https://twitter.com/fpietrosanti/status/450303350735532033/photo/1
> 
> Shouldn't Browser Vendors consider that a connection problem could be
> due to censorship, providing to the end-user also a tip to bypass
> censorship?
> 
> Something like:
> - "Check that in your country there's no internet censorship, if so
> consider using a circumvention bypass technology. Click here for further
> information"
> 
> That way hundreds million of users, whenever they get impacted by
> internet-censorship during their browsing activity, could have a
> valuable path to look at to "fix the problem" .
> 
> I don't see many difficulties, but we should likely ask to Mozilla
> Firefox and Google Chrome team?
> 
> Opinions?

Hi,

this is a good idea.

I read a discussion of Mozilla to integrate Tor as an option a while
ago. Don't remember where anymore. Anyway.

I would speculate, they prefer to stay neutral.

A browser suggesting to use circumvention technology could make them as
non-neutral as if they had built-in circumvention technology.

Censoring countries may decide to ban the download locations of that
browser over other more neutral browsers.

Anyway. I'd appreciate if you raised this in public places with browser
vendors. I'd be interested what they think about this.

Cheers,
Patrick