--- title: I refuse to accept a censored Internet. Join Me at FOSDEM 27 description: FOSDEM 2027 is opening a call for participation for its 'Digital Dissident Devroom', focused on the full toolchain used by people under authoritarian... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/i-refuse-to-accept-a-censored-internet-join-me-at-fosdem-27-l4iyuniqu twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: I refuse to accept a censored Internet. Join Me at FOSDEM 27 | daily.dev og:description: FOSDEM 2027 is opening a call for participation for its 'Digital Dissident Devroom', focused on the full toolchain used by people under authoritarian... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/i-refuse-to-accept-a-censored-internet-join-me-at-fosdem-27-l4iyuniqu og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/l4iYUnIQU.png og:image:alt: I refuse to accept a censored Internet. Join Me at FOSDEM 27 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # I refuse to accept a censored Internet. Join Me at FOSDEM 27 **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 6 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary FOSDEM 2027 is opening a call for participation for its 'Digital Dissident Devroom', focused on the full toolchain used by people under authoritarian censorship. The devroom covers censorship circumvention, metadata-resistant messaging, secure publishing, device security, and censorship measurement research. It differs from the existing 'Decentralized Internet and Privacy' devroom by focusing on at-risk users rather than a technology class. Organizers plan to invite projects like Nym, Delta Chat, SimpleX, Nostr, Psiphon, and Tor-ecosystem tools. The call for participation runs until November 30, 2026, with FOSDEM taking place January 30-31, 2027 in Brussels. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How do I submit a talk proposal for the FOSDEM Digital Dissident devroom? Go to the FOSDEM official CFP portal (pretalx.fosdem.org/fosdem-2027), log in or register, click 'Submit a proposal', fill in the form, and select 'Digital Dissident' as the track. Submitting means accepting the FOSDEM Code of Conduct. The call for participation runs from October 24 to November 30, 2026, 23:59 UTC, with speakers notified on December 2, 2026. _Developers tracking open-source conference deadlines can follow CFP announcements like this on daily.dev._ ### What is the difference between the Digital Dissident devroom and the Decentralized Internet and Privacy devroom at FOSDEM? The Decentralized Internet and Privacy devroom covers decentralized technology broadly, including P2P protocols, browsers, and key infrastructure, with censorship as just one part. The Digital Dissident devroom instead organizes around a user under threat and the full end-to-end chain protecting them: circumvention, metadata-resistant messaging, secure publishing, and device security, judging talks on how they advance that toolchain rather than any single project. _Anyone weighing which FOSDEM track fits their anti-censorship work can track devroom distinctions like this on daily.dev._ ### What censorship techniques are authoritarian governments using against circumvention tools? Governments including Russia, Iran, and China now use national allow-lists, whitelist-only internet shutdowns, TLS and QUIC fingerprinting, deep packet inspection with active probing, protocol throttling, mobile internet shutdowns, app-store removal of circumvention tools, and mandatory state-run messengers with 'sovereign internet' routing. Developers have responded with pluggable transports, domain fronting alternatives, mixnets, and decentralized or email-based messaging. _Developers building circumvention tools can keep up with evolving censorship tactics like these on daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 91 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-25). **TL;DR:** The discussion is dominated by philosophical debate over whether censorship vs. moderation can be meaningfully separated, with deep skepticism about the feasibility of alternative/uncensorable internet infrastructure, alongside some genuine enthusiasm for FOSDEM itself as an event. **Sentiment:** 15% positive · 35% mixed · 50% skeptical **The case for** - Several people shared positive experiences attending FOSDEM and encouraged others to go. - Some see value in incremental alternatives like mesh networks (LoRa, MeshCore, Reticulum) even if imperfect. - A few argue decentralized/Tor-based communication can meaningfully resist takedown and censorship. **The pushback** - Many argue there's no truly uncensored internet since infrastructure can always be jammed, blocked, or physically traced. - Several say building a parallel/alternative internet is unrealistic due to cost, detectability, and lack of critical mass. - Commenters note that moderation and censorship are hard to distinguish, undermining the premise that censorship is simply avoidable. - Some accuse the post/framing of selectively ignoring censorship by Western governments and platforms, not just authoritarian regimes. - A number of comments devolve into partisan arguments about which political side is more responsible for censorship, seen by some as unproductive. **By community** - hackernews (heated): A large, contentious thread debating definitions of censorship, feasibility of alternative networks, and accusations of political bias in who gets labeled a censor, with a smaller thread of genuine enthusiasm for attending FOSDEM. **Hottest debate:** Whether a genuinely uncensorable internet/alternative network is technically and practically feasible, versus whether all such efforts are doomed to be jammed, traced, or coopted by powerful actors. **Open questions** - Is there any realistic technical path to an internet infrastructure that resists both censorship and detection/jamming? - How should 'censorship' be distinguished from legitimate content moderation? - Why does the framing focus on authoritarian regimes while critics argue Western governments and platforms also censor? **Highlights** > Is there an uncensored intetnet, because i dont think there is. if there is any, it can be turned off because its being routed on the censored net wrapped in encryption. that being said, that makes me pretty interested in this talk. outside of hacking sattelites and such things and/or infra i really dont see any opportunities to break free of the will of corporations as they can simply pay infra providers to do their bidding. I dont think software can solve all problems because internet exists essentially as informaiton transported over infrastructure. the software surely helps enable that but its a helper not the actual network. happy to learn otherwise from anyone here ofc :-) > — [saidnooneever on hackernews · 8 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50234225) > In the late aughts and early 2010s I and a few other people came up with the `darknet plan` aka `project meshnet` which was a subreddit and adjacent communities dedicated to creating a completely parallel internet using 802.11s mesh networks akin to the Athens and NYC meshes that span a huge portion of those metros. The movement eventually got coopted by the CJDNS project and its fans. Instead of a completely separate internet they were advocating more of an overlay on top of the existing internet (because that didn't require solving interurban/intercontinental backhaul), which to my mind addresses essentially none of the problems we set out to solve, so I eventually lost interest. But today we have things like LoRa and a greater hacker community around the ISM bands, which might be just what's needed. I have hope one day we can achieve global interconnectivity without rent-seeking ISPs. > — [stackghost on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50235196) > Everyone, including much of HN, was all-in with a censored Internet circa 2020. What's changed? The line usually seems to be drawn at "I don't like censorship, unless it's people I disagree with, in which case, fuck em". > — [lakeviewterrace on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50234911) > I refuse to accept a censored Internet. Around the world, people are being silenced, monitored, and denied access to information. Why now. Censorship in Russia, Iran and China has grown much more sophisticated The twenty-sixth edition of FOSDEM will take place on Saturday 30th and Sunday 31st January 2027 at the usual location, ULB Campus Solbosch in Brussels. Doing this axis of evil routine without even a token mention of censorship by "western" regimes, including your own, suggests a level of willful blindness or self-delusion. The censored internet has always been Eurasian, etc. > — [themgt on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50234856) > "Censorship" vs "Content moderation". You can't have online discussions without moderation, and that makes moderation some form of censorship. Thus you can't have online discussions without some form of censorship. Only difference is who is doing the censoring. > — [Dwedit on hackernews · 4 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50234339) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50233929) · 163 points · 91 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [FOSDEM 2026 – Open Source, Digital Sovereignty, and Europes Future](https://daily.dev/posts/fosdem-2026-open-source-digital-sovereignty-and-europes-future-vbvjli5ek) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [FOSDEM’26](https://daily.dev/posts/fosdem-26-ddins8gsj) · Jakarta EE · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [FOSDEM 2026: Open Source Supply Chains, CRA Compliance, and the Future of Software](https://daily.dev/posts/fosdem-2026-open-source-supply-chains-cra-compliance-and-the-future-of-software-rkr6n5bnz) · Foojay.io · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [FOSDEM 2026 \+ Hackathon](https://daily.dev/posts/fosdem-2026-hackathon-acj2gy8pd) · Lobsters · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#privacy](https://daily.dev/tags/privacy) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/i-refuse-to-accept-a-censored-internet-join-me-at-fosdem-27-l4iyuniqu) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"I refuse to accept a censored Internet. 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