It’s only January of 2021, but the Internet has already reached maximum meme levels. First Trump tried to ban TikTok. Then TikTok banned Trump - along with every other social media platform, with Twitter leading the charge. Now the internet has become an ethical battleground, with politicians and big tech fighting it out in this increasingly grey area as they decide who has the right to moderate certain kinds of content and speech. But Different governments and corporations use it in different ways, and for vastly different reasons. How it’s applied in our social and political lives is what matters. censorship itself is just a tool. In Uganda, censorship was to disrupt a democratic election by shutting down the internet and denying access to social media. In the US, it’s being on online forums run by volunteer moderators. used by a dictator used to help stop the coordination of domestic terrorist attacks But at the end of the day, it shouldn’t be any one entity that gets to control and . moderate the free flow of information and ideas online It’s us, everyday netizens, who should have the final word on free speech. From Asia to Africa, the internet plays a more vital role than ever in our political freedoms. Beyond moderation, A series of separate, by governments all over the world for reasons that seem purely political. a quarter of the Internet’s users don’t even have complete, open access to it. "sovereign" internets are being fenced off In places where democractic practices such as the right to protest and free speech are forbidden, Yet in , users can be arrested for posting, sharing or even “liking” something on Facebook. the internet is often the only glimpse into any alternative reality. 47 countries It comes as no surprise then that . Sadly, in regions with , they are illegal, or simply don’t work. over a quarter of the world’s internet users depend on a VPN for daily internet access and privacy pervasive censorship and state-controlled internet And internet censorship is only expected to get worse in 2021. So whether it’s big tech or ruling dictators, there should be no way for someone to just flip a switch and deny anyone else access to the web. Source: Access Now From oligarch to republic Many people (including Twitter’s own CEO, Jack Dorsey) believe that corporate censorship sets a dangerous precedent. We can all agree that hate speech and inciting violence is inexcusable and intolerable. Yet how can we normalise the behaviour of businesses setting the social standards for freedom of expression? This is surely a slippery slope. These businesses . And every year the number of data breaches continues to rise, with billions of more records exposed. already set the standard when it comes to internet infrastructure itself This is because there are very few enforced practices when it comes to building the websites and apps which make up the internet today. Businesses, including VPNs, are free to track their users and store their data centrally, which is insecure . While new legislation such as GDPR is a step in the right direction, it does nothing on the infrastructural level, which is why data hacks occur on a weekly basis. Traditionally, companies such as Amazon Web Services and Cloudflare treat the web as a privately owned commodity, when in fact, the internet is public infrastructure. And just as with public utility companies like electricity and water, there are ways to turn the internet into a publicly managed and powered space. We call this Web 3.0 The internet belongs to everyone. This new kind of decentralized web means we can shift governance processes to people, rather than businesses, This new ownership model for internet infrastructure would drastically change the way we not only run it - more accessible, secure and free - but the ways we prevent things like dangerous hate speech. so we all become gatekeepers. It’s all ruled by democratic, peer-to-peer accountability. We need to protect the internet from governments and corporations, who only care about protecting their bottom lines. The internet is our shared home of free information and expression. It’s also the home of cat videos, memes, Wikipedia and your favourite COVID-19 lockdown series. Introducing Mysterium VPN While you can use a VPN to stay secure and connected, . a regular VPN is also just a band-aid fix for a deeply flawed infrastructural problem The current VPN market is an oligopoly, led by a handful of private companies who have failed to innovate. Running on centralized servers, they can store logs of all their users’ browsing activity. This represents a central point of failure , as (not looking at you, ... 👀) these servers can be hacked and personal data exposed NordVPN Mysterium’s it leverages a resiential node network like Tor's, but provides the seamless user experience of a VPN. Mysterium is built on the WireGuard and OpenVPN protocols, so we follow best industry practices. decentralized VPN is a hybrid of Tor and a regular VPN ; The network is made up of people who effectively . While you have to pay to use regular VPNs (which are just businesses turning a profit), in the case of a decentralized VPN, users pay peers (nodes) within the distributed network to connect to their residential IP address. "lend their digital freedom" This open, , meaning there’s no intermediary and anyone can join. It’s also , meaning peers can transact anonymously and without needing to trust each other. peer-to-peer marketplace is permissionless trustless Thanks to this P2P  architecture, it’s technologically impossible for Mysterium Network to log your browsing activity or data, unlike regular VPNs. Some unique features that set Mysterium apart from regular VPNs: 💌 - no contracts, no subscriptions, no locked-in costs. Only pay for what you actually use (by the megabyte or minute). Pay-as-you-go ⏯ - just open up and switch off whenever you need. No personal details ever required. No email needed - censorship-resistant and untraceable, so you can pay for your privacy the truly anonymous way. 💸 Pay with cryptocurrency - our decentralised infrastructure means no central servers run by businesses. We can’t hand over data to anyone, even if legally requested. 🕵️‍♂️ No logging - Mysterium is powered by the very people who use it, helping to create a secure and censorship-resistant layer of the internet. 🤝 Peer to peer 😴 - turn your computer or Raspberry Pi into a node and let it run in the background, so you can earn while you work or sleep. Earn while you sleep - our code has been open-source since day one, so you can verify our level of encryption (and no logs claim). . 🔍 Open source Github here <div style= > "width: 100%; height: 0px; position: relative; padding-bottom: 136.842%;" < = = = = = > iframe src "https://streamable.com/e/j1znbs" frameborder "0" width "100%" height "100%" allowfullscreen style "width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" </ > iframe </ > div (Here’s a UI, soon to be released.) sneak peek screen recording of our new mobile app Download the dVPN today for Android, Mac and Windows and get some test MYST tokens to try before you buy. iOS coming soon.

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