bitcointalk banned in the Philippines

Quote from: Cointxz on May 03, 2026, 09:18:48 PM

-snip-
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.

If that's the case, restricting this forum is an extreme act of censorship simply because casino companies are allowed to market their brands here. I don't think they understand what an affiliate or endorsement system is, and Bitcointalk doesn't currently have that. The forum currently generates $0 revenue from the casino industry.

Wow this is weird. Even the reason looks even more ridiculous because fraud and causing money loss is this site considered gambling lol.

But this could also be a special concern and hopefully my country doesn't do the same thing because in recent years Komdigi (The agency in charge of formulating licenses) has always made some strange policies about banning a website or application even wikipedia is included in the banned access and hopefully they don't act for this site.

Not surprised but surprised it is banned on the basis of scam. I’m now wondering how many Philippines got scammed and it wasn’t well handled but also it mentioned gambling related, which means they are either mistaking the forum to be a gambling site because it’s not and will not be but advertise gambling sites m, so it is also possible that gambling is the reported case but concluded to be from the forum or the people who restricted it are purely dumb ass morons.

From the look of things, Philippine official may have gotten a wrong signal and unfunded feedbacks, because from the description on the baaned there is no where bitcointalk is mentioned, and everything sounds as if their are referring to gambling platform and not the forum.

Great to know that, no one can actually block your access via Tor and other VPNs pending when the mistake will be corrected and everything goes back to normal.

LOL I am not surprised their automated checks are really baaaaaad!

Few months ago, tumblr.com was also falsely flagged as unlicensed gambling website, and was banned. But restriction was lifted, I think because loads of people were posting about it on social media. Good ol' public exposure.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/tumblrhelp/comments/1rpbxpn/looks_like_tumblr_is_banned_in_the_philippines/

This ban was pretty likely at domain level again, thus the DNS trick should have worked just like this bitcointalk.org ban and the binance.com ban.

It may be a misconceptions of Philippines government about forum and gambling that triggered them to take such drastic decisions and actions to ban forum in her country..

I they need to know the difference between forum and gambling sites...gambling website is totally different from forum, and forum doesn't have any impacts it contribute to gambling....So the government of Philippines shouldn't hate forum without making a proper research about forum...

It seems that one of the major reasons they restricted people living over there access to forum, is that they had in mind that forum is a gambling platform.... They need to understand that forum is not a gambling platform, so that they can uplift the ban....but nevertheless, users of forum can equally bypass their restrictions through changes of IP address by using VPN...

At first, I thought this issue was just from a single internet provider, but it looks like 2 itnernet provider blocked Bitcointalk from the Philippines. So far, on my end, everything is still fine, I can still access the forum without any issues(apart from slow internet that happens from time to time).

Quote from: Ziskinberg on May 03, 2026, 07:45:37 AM

Facebook and other social media sites have way more scams than here. This is just a forum, we don’t promote scams. DT has been doing everything to keep the forum clean. I think the forum is being wrongly targeted because of the lack of competency from the Philippine authorities.

THIS!!!! If they are going to block a platform, they should start with facebook, that platform is littered with scams, you almost always encounter an ad sponsored crypto scam and a gambling ad every time you scroll. I even posted a rant about the crypto scam ads here in the forum.

Quote from: noorman0 on May 03, 2026, 09:53:16 PM

Quote from: Cointxz on May 03, 2026, 09:18:48 PM

Extreme censorship with partnership to lazy implementation. They don’t what they are banning. Lots of non casino website was already being banned which is not supposed to be part of this massive crackdown because they rely on incompetent government employee.

It’s ironic too that our government website was down recently too because they don’t have budget for cloud storage like wtf is wrong with this people.

https://www.rappler.com/technology/senate-protect-hearing-egov-outage-national-id/

Quote from: Ziskinberg on May 03, 2026, 07:45:37 AM

Facebook and other social media sites have way more scams than here. This is just a forum, we don’t promote scams. DT has been doing everything to keep the forum clean. I think the forum is being wrongly targeted because of the lack of competency from the Philippine authorities.

You have forgotten Google who even go up to the level of taking money from scammers and displaying their sponsored ads. I think it is hypocrisy of the highest order. The Philippines government just like many Governments out there just hate platforms where there is some bit of freedom for free speech. Censorship is their language.

They've restricted the best forum of the internet and claimed that it's a gambling site. They should get a life because they don't understand that what's a forum and what's gambling site.

I think they might be drunk that's why they're doing such type of things. I feel bad for my friends who're living in Philippines because it will be a little hard for them to browse the forum not but wait, they can use VPN and Tor to access it so they should not worry about the restriction at all.

Quote from: SamReomo on May 03, 2026, 11:53:06 PM

There are even reports that they banned Tumblr, a social media site and with the same reason, it was considered a gambling site. Those department heads and its members are the same with the president of the country, all are d*mb.

Quote from: crwth on May 03, 2026, 03:12:20 PM

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

2028 still far but I am looking forward on the Election day already. Hate whats happening now in our country almost all of bad stuff. Corruption, politician arguements, banning of crypto related now this one. Tsk!

Quote from: EFS on May 03, 2026, 09:10:58 PM

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.

Yes sir and as a user member of this country we really hate whats they are doing now. The government is always trying to make things worse for us. Btw do you think theymos can message them officially to inform that bitcointalk isnt a gambling site? Cause it will leave a bad impression to the name of this forum which we all know is only a discussion place and gambling sites arent moderated here.

Someone might have pushed the button wrong, but, no, not in my case, yet it might be on my provider. To OP, what's your internet provider? The absurdity of this one is to the highest level tbh, and what could get worse is that they can't recognize a forum as a gambling site, it's definitely far from it. Well, if that's the case, then a VPN will be useful to have, and the forum is VPN-friendly, afaik.

Quote from: Ziskinberg on May 03, 2026, 07:45:37 AM

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

Philippines is a bit late for this achievement, as access to this forum has long been unavailable in Russia and access is only possible with a VPN.

Quote from: Ziskinberg on May 03, 2026, 07:45:37 AM

The people behind this action are morons. They blocked a website that is actually very informative, and whoever reported it as a scam is probably just trying to ruin the website.

This is probably due to the "gambling" section or an attempt to protect the population from the "harmful influence" of the bitcoin.

Quote from: Ziskinberg on May 03, 2026, 07:45:37 AM

Facebook and other social media sites have way more scams than here. This is just a forum, we don’t promote scams. DT has been doing everything to keep the forum clean. I think the forum is being wrongly targeted because of the lack of competency from the Philippine authorities.

Keep it down, otherwise they'll block Facebook, or worse, the entire internet.

Although that's the path of a completely different country.

Quote from: Ziskinberg on May 03, 2026, 07:45:37 AM

Sorry for expressing my feelings, or ranting if it sounds like one. I just can’t accept how bad this decision is.

Is this a bad decision for whom? For you, yes. For the regulator? No. Learn to separate your own interests from those of others.

Quote from: Upgrade00 on May 03, 2026, 03:14:53 PM

Quote from: ABCbits on May 03, 2026, 08:14:26 AM

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.

I don't expect they actually research or know rule of this forum. What i mean is amount of scam and shady stuff that promoted or spammed here, because of that rule.

This blocking is like installing a barrier in the middle of a large field.

I've been to Asian countries, and for many, installing additional software is a real hassle. When your government starts spending big money on internet traffic analysis devices to block every ISP, then you'll learn what VPN protocols with traffic obfuscation are.

The high rate of scam accusation with good evidence on casinos are just getting too much in this forum, those that usually visit the scam accusation board will know what I’m talking about and this casinos are operating freely on this forum, this is one of the reasons why a country may decide to ban bitcointalk forum from their country, I think it’s high time scam start getting moderated in this forum I believe it will reduce a lot of scam activities happening on this forum.
Scam not being moderated by the forum will never sound well for any government.

Quote from: SuperBitMan on May 04, 2026, 08:47:50 AM

I think it’s high time scam start getting moderated in this forum I believe it will reduce a lot of scam activities happening on this forum.
Scam not being moderated by the forum will never sound well for any government.

That stupid message is clear: they just want us to be registered as a casino site (not bitcoin forum anymore). So why should we serve them?

Quote from: Cookdata on May 03, 2026, 07:58:25 AM

"Many users reported." Who are the users? Government can be useless you know.

When does government license a common website? Bitcoin must be very interesting over there because what's this.

Look at the scam accusation board, it's full of accusations against casinos. In many accusations, the members of this forum are equally blamed, because they "carry casino advertisements in their signatures".
Now, put in that context a couple of them from the Philippines, who are persistent in trying to destroy the reputation of a casino, so they decide to go to all lengths. It is easier for the outdated government apparatus to solve this problem by blocking it than to investigate the accuracy of the claims.

Quote from: Ziskinberg on May 03, 2026, 07:45:37 AM

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

The people behind this action are morons. They blocked a website that is actually very informative, and whoever reported it as a scam is probably just trying to ruin the website.

Facebook and other social media sites have way more scams than here. This is just a forum, we don’t promote scams. DT has been doing everything to keep the forum clean. I think the forum is being wrongly targeted because of the lack of competency from the Philippine authorities.

Sorry for expressing my feelings, or ranting if it sounds like one. I just can’t accept how bad this decision is.

I believe the reason for the block is triggered by this forum's powerful SEO, the huge list of casino scam accusations, and crypto related discussion of this forum, which i believe will make the team in charge of the Philippine authorities heavy gambling crackdown, and crypto related block to add this forum.
But i honestly don't believe the Philippine government will make this heavy crackdown decision because i always see the country as one of the countries that always do the best for their citizen. Since the move was to block illegal or unlicensed online gambling, unlicensed crypto exchanges, and trading, things may change in the future.