Threads usage drops as Meta blocks VPN access in EU

arstechnica.com Threads usage drops as Meta blocks VPN access in EU [Updated]

Move comes as Meta tries to avoid violating privacy laws.

Threads usage drops as Meta blocks VPN access in EU::Move comes as Meta tries to avoid violating privacy laws.

35 comments

I still hate the fact that the same people who said that no one is going to adopt a whole new social network in regards to mastodon suddenly changed their minds when the zuck made a worse version of it.
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- The marketing of the fediverse is not as good as Zuck's
  
  Someone needs to piggyback off Metas marketting machine and create a glorified Mastodon instance for Europe called something like OpenThreads. Licence a Mastodon client and customise it to look (and behave) like Threads and federate with Threads.
- How do you know it's the same people?
  
  I follow them on Twitter :/
As someone who doesn't use threads, how does it stand up to something like Lemmy or Reddit? I doubt it's worth using a VPN to use Threads, but that's just my assumption.
- About as well as Twitter does. It’s literally a Twitter clone. Not really good for micro blogging.
- Omg your avatar nearly gave me a seizure.
  
  It's just red squares for me what does it look like to you?
I'm in the US, and I hate Meta, so this doesn't impact me, but can you disable location access on your phone to circumvent this?
- They check your IP address for geofencing, and it's not something you can "not give a permission to look at"
  
  Doesn't a VPN give you a different IP address?
- Without a VPN your IP will indicate your location, irrespective of GPS settings. In layman's terms, a VPN will allow you to appear to be using [in this case] a US IP, regardless of your actual location.
Incredible how thirsty europeans for the Zuck are that they bypass good intentioned privacy laws...
- Meanwhile I'm so happy being in EU and not having this data-stealer app anywhere in my vicinity for the foreseeable future. Life's relatively good
  
  Yeah sometimes I'm also glad being an EU citizen.
Is it possible for other apps or sites to block VPN access in this way? I was under the impression (possibly incorrectly) that using one would help to avoid such issues.
- By using a VPN you are essentially routing your internet traffic through another computer and another ISP. So you have one of the VPN provider's IP addresses. So what they have to do is find out which IP addresses are used by VPNs and block those. It's very hard, but for the biggest companies somewhat doable.
- It depends on what type of VPN you have as well, because if you have one that gives you a dedicated IP, chances are it wouldn't be detected. But most of your regular cheap VPN packages will have you sharing the same IP as hundreds (thousands?) of others.
- BBC iPlayer does this all the time
  
  Smartdns is your friend for iPlayer and other UK geo fenced public tv services. Been using it for years and years..
  
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Wouldn't this block VPN access from anywhere, not just EU?
How does that work? IF (VPN detected) THEN (fail)? Do apps even have access to that information?

Or maybe they have mandatory geolocation, compare that with IP location and if it doesn't match (=VPN), then refuse to work?
- Known VPNs use a limited amount of IP addresses, which result of easily being able to flag them as VPN ones. When a bunch of users (like, hundreds of them) use the same IP address to connect to a given social network, either it is a VPN one, either a company’s CEO might have to put a proxy at the office.
  
  Ah! Thanks
ok so people want to access treads and will a vpn to do so

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