bitcointalk banned in the Philippines

[Eternad]

The people behind this action are morons.

Real morons.

It seems they have mistaken it for a gambling site. It's probably a glitch in an automatic identification system.

In the end, all they will accomplish is reducing exposure for people who don’t know much about Bitcoin or the forum but are curious—people who would have found it using regular browsers. For everyone else, Tor is your friend.

100% agree on this that we have worst and moron government. They are branding everything as casino just because there’s a discussion of casino here same with other casino related website even askgamblers.

They are too lazy to check the website content rather ban all at once without thinking what they are banning while this same group doesn’t give a license to international exchange here because they want a huge under the table kickback for the license.

[cryptoaddictchie]

Russians use VPN to acces bitcointalk, so I guess that's what users from Phillipines will have to use from now on.

Im from the Philippines can still access the forum well. Some ISP provider here in the country was hold by the necks of the oligarchs which is why some network are down for those other users.

So sad that the OP attached message refer to forum as scam gambling site.

So the Philippines is joining the superpowers of democracy and prosperity China and Russia by blocking a forum where cryptocurrencies are discussed? Of course, you always need a good excuse for doing stupid things, and it's easiest to blame gambling now that there's no mixers anymore.

On the other hand, there is something good in that, because now maybe more users of this forum from the Philippines will start using Tor and VPN, although I recommend Tor if you care about privacy.

If this escalates to other ISP provider here then likely we dont have much choice to use these recommendations. Besides being moron of our govt starting to remove cex market one by one on Playstore and App store now the forum too.

We really need a new leader someone open minded and not a Puppet.

[crwth]

I was still able to access and be able to post but apparently it could be to other ISP providers only.

I mean it doesn't make sense, since there's no official announcement from the NTC, this can be challenged and should be but I doubt they would give a f*ck about the citizens reporting this.

Maybe because it has "Bitcoin" in the title. That's just stupid though. 

~snip
We really need a new leader someone open minded and not a Puppet.

I agree that there should be a leader that is competent and has no corruption issues.

[Upgrade00]

The screenshot also mention scam, so it could be related with how scam isn't moderated on this forum. Only scammer who also violate other forum rule (such as spamming or share referral link) got punished.

I'll be really surprised if a country goes looking through the forum unofficial rules or there are enough scams here to warrant a probe from the Philippines authorities. I'll think it's most likely we somehow got into their anti gambling system due to the number of casinos that gets posted here.

Maybe someone in the country can report this and it could be lifted.

[stompix]

Is this a DNS-level block?

So the Philippines is joining the superpowers of democracy and prosperity China and Russia by blocking a forum where cryptocurrencies are discussed? Of course, you always need a good excuse for doing stupid things, and it's easiest to blame gambling now that there's no mixers anymore.

You forgot the superpowers on the axis of resistance that have dealt with it on the next level, by shutting down the internet, like North Korea and the other supreme democracy, Iran!
But yeah, somehow this will be spun to make the West look bad!   

Anyhow, I just found out that they also block pornography there:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_the_Philippines
yup, blocking 10 or 100 or 1000 websites will definitely do something!

[philipma1957]

Is this a DNS-level block?

So the Philippines is joining the superpowers of democracy and prosperity China and Russia by blocking a forum where cryptocurrencies are discussed? Of course, you always need a good excuse for doing stupid things, and it's easiest to blame gambling now that there's no mixers anymore.

You forgot the superpowers on the axis of resistance that have dealt with it on the next level, by shutting down the internet, like North Korea and the other supreme democracy, Iran!
But yeah, somehow this will be spun to make the West look bad!   

Anyhow, I just found out that they also block pornography there:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_the_Philippines
yup, blocking 10 or 100 or 1000 websites will definitely do something!

oh well no pornhub no redtube no bitcointalk how about altcoinstalks


lastly reddit has crypto and porn so do they ban reddit.

[AakZaki]

Bitcointalk is not the only unharmful site that was banned. The target is against a site that has a correlation with gambling activities. As we all know, the forum is housing many gambling platforms, and to the Philippine government, anything gambling wants to be restricted from access to their religion. It is obvious they dont care about the other benefit of the site to the peoples.

That's ridiculous in my opinion, shouldn't their government weigh the risk level first, considering that this forum is not a place to play gambling directly, the gambling site should be blocked.
Not a forum site that is blocked, after all if their government understands the content of this forum which in certain parts of this forum can provide additional income when Filipinos do something creative.

Maybe the Philippine government always thinks, so that its citizens always have an income of 2USD per day. Lol

Philippines is one of the countries with notoriously low income. Many people survive their family off 2 USD a day.

[nutildah]

The Philippines government may be including reports going all the way back to 2016 or so, when there indeed was a lot more gambling scams and HYIPs that used the forum as a base. Now they are just a funny reminder of the past. I don't think the government would go out of their way to mess with the income of a lot of Filipinos by blocking this site -- they probably don't know any better.

But then again, a huge import tax on electronics makes owning a computer out of reach for most of the people there. Sometimes it seems the poor are being disadvantaged on purpose.

[aioc]

The screenshot also mention scam, so it could be related with how scam isn't moderated on this forum. Only scammer who also violate other forum rule (such as spamming or share referral link) got punished.

I'll be really surprised if a country goes looking through the forum unofficial rules or there are enough scams here to warrant a probe from the Philippines authorities. I'll think it's most likely we somehow got into their anti gambling system due to the number of casinos that gets posted here.

Maybe someone in the country can report this and it could be lifted.

It's only on one ISP; all the other ISPs will allow you to access Bitcointalk. I'm looking for a verified article from our independent media platform that focuses on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency, and there's no report about a ban on our beloved forum; our local board is still confirming whether the ban will be implemented or if just one ISP made an error.

BitPinas

[alegotardo]

Are you for real??? A forum that is as harmless as Bitcointalk banned by your government? That's pathetic if this is true. I even thought backward a little when I first saw this to be sure I wasn't dreaming of another April fool prank.

Thank goodness, VPN is there for you guys.

An isolated decision by a single country wouldn't worry me too much... I know that users in the Philippines can easily circumvent this idiotic block with a VPN... there are free and secure options like Proton VPN, for example.

But what worries me is knowing what really motivated them to block bitcointalk and whether this might "encourage" other countries to do the same.

Remember that bitcointalk already needed to ban mixers and to comply with local laws to avoid being seriously banned. Even if they follow the laws and prohibit illicit activities, is there still a risk on a larger scale ban?

[Chibit01]

oh well no pornhub no redtube no bitcointalk how about altcoinstalks


lastly reddit has crypto and porn so do they ban reddit.

Maybe it have not still come to their attention, maybe people from the Philippines uses reddit banning it will make it very obvious that they are going against the places where the people can freely socialize, they could have used other means to warn their citizens and close all unregistered gambling sites on their end than banning bitcointalk where those casinos only come promote, just as they regulate social media and how influencer can promote and advertise gambling platforms.

[NotATether]

Maybe it have not still come to their attention, maybe people from the Philippines uses reddit banning it will make it very obvious that they are going against the places where the people can freely socialize, they could have used other means to warn their citizens and close all unregistered gambling sites on their end than banning bitcointalk where those casinos only come promote, just as they regulate social media and how influencer can promote and advertise gambling platforms.

Everyone knows that reddit is social media. They will only come after the site and ban it if they had some wider censorship agenda going on, like what happens in certain other countries.

Reddit's not going to be banned over some crypto policy. But the site is pretty useless though.

[Chibit01]

Maybe it have not still come to their attention, maybe people from the Philippines uses reddit banning it will make it very obvious that they are going against the places where the people can freely socialize, they could have used other means to warn their citizens and close all unregistered gambling sites on their end than banning bitcointalk where those casinos only come promote, just as they regulate social media and how influencer can promote and advertise gambling platforms.

Everyone knows that reddit is social media. They will only come after the site and ban it if they had some wider censorship agenda going on, like what happens in certain other countries.

Reddit's not going to be banned over some crypto policy. But the site is pretty useless though.

The chances of them banning it might be slim since it have not been done.

But in the case as mentioned by philipma1957, where the platform is also known or seen as where porn could easily be accessed then that could be used as a reason to go ban it since, they have been banning lot of porn related sites since 2017 they introduced the law that protects teenagers from adult contents.

[alani123]

Philippines is one of the countries with notoriously low income. Many people survive their family off 2 USD a day. It is equivalent to Africa but doesn't get much publicity.

I knew that situation there is not good, but do people really have such a low income there? $2 per day is like level of Central African Republic and other similar sub sahara countries. I find it hard to believe that situation is that bad in Phillipines as well. 

I have a friend who married a local and the stories I heard too were shocking. In Manila there are endless slums and untold poverty at the same time the rental prices would be unaffordable even for most westerners. The city's cleaners work informally earning sometimes less than a dollar a day:
https://www.context.news/just-transition/philippines-zero-waste-bid-relies-on-informal-workers

There's a lot of informal work in the Philippines. So I'm seriously believing that the government banned this forum not as a mistake but because just by a citizen signing up to a signature campaign they could change their social class instantly.

Think about it. Informal work in the Philippines pays USD 2 a day, which isn't even guaranteed. More than half the population in the Philippines works informally which means they aren't even guaranteed the minimum wage which already is low. A Bitcointalk signature campaign is paying even more than that amount for a single post! And you can be paid for several posts a month even!

[Ambatman]

So the government deemed that this is a way to better their economy
Taking decisions from a broken lens.
People also loss money from trading, I believe they should also banned Centralized exchanges.

Lol imagine talking about personal data at risk when they are against non KYC sites. Hypocrisy.

[coinlary]

That's would be   from some specific ISPs.
Does not necessarily  have to be gambling even though  that's what the whole restriction is all about. There are crazy fellows who would have report this forum because they lost money on a shitcoin , trading Bitcoin because they followed a random user advise , PANIC selling with loss which also fits with the current situation. Seeing it  rising can even make them more mad to hit the report button. Lol.

There are service  scams too and the forum mods  aren't sleeping on it , they are active to take actions . So  what they did is quite unreasonable  to me, why not block reddit, Facebook, IG , TikTok, X and so many more sites infested with scams.

[EFS]

If they made a decision like that, it won't benefit the people of the Philippines. On the contrary it will harm them as they are blocked by authority for no real reason. Blaming this forum for the risk of scams is ridiculous. I'm pretty sure the people who made this decision haven't even visited the forum once.

The way they worded the shutdown message also make it sound like the government refund your losses on licensed gambling sites. That's fundamentally wrong. Hopefully the people of the Philippines won't re-elect leaders who make such ridiculous decisions.

[Cointxz]

The way they worded the shutdown message also make it sound like the government refund your losses on licensed gambling sites. That's fundamentally wrong. Hopefully the people of the Philippines won't re-elect leaders who make such ridiculous decisions.

The current leader recorded the most amount stolen on the government funds through different scam scheme but no one was put on jail or trial including the president even though there’s a lot of evidence pointing to them because all politicians, government secretaries and highest rank of our army are appointed by the president himself so he has total control of the country.

They are trying everything to gather tax that’s why they are blocking all sites that possibly involved on gambling to force user to play only to registered casino. The main goal is to collect tax to fund their corruption once again.

[zasad@]

Looks like the Philippines is making history as the first one to block the forum.

That's a very ambitious statement This forum has been banned in Russia since 2021 or even earlier.
Many VPN protocols don't work in Russia, but in the Philippines, you can open any free VPN client and continue using it.
Windscribe is a good free VPN service with 10GB of data per month.
Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X are blocked in Russia, but people have long since found ways to combat the blocking.

[Rengga Jati]

Wow, this is like...
Ah, speechless.

It's truly ironic to see this happen. Is it possible that certain parties in the government are unhappy with this forum, or is it really the people in charge?

So, what exactly is the regulation of cryptocurrency in that country?
Can anyone explain to them about this very informative forum?

Ah, but sometimes the government isn't unintelligent, but simply unwilling to do so for their own personal gain.

After looking at the thread history, I discovered that a similar case had been posted on this forum since 2016:
Ban FILIPINOS from the forum that are using IP addresses from the Philippines!