Imgur Geo-Blocked the UK, So I Geo-Unblocked My Network
15 comments
·November 28, 2025bennyp101
"Is this overkill for viewing the occasional Imgur image? Probably."
From the last couple of weeks or researching some stuff, it makes perfect sense - I keep stumbling across blogs and documentation that uses Imgur, and it's really quite annoying that I can't see the screenshot or image that is being referenced. It hasn't /quite/ hit the point to put something in place, but this is super helpful for the final straw - when it comes!
Seattle3503
Could this be built into open source routers? If you wanted to get fancy you could even select the best VPN for the particular service.
toomuchtodo
Great work! Perhaps not the appropriate OSI layer, but would be cool if this could pull the imgur blob from the wayback machine if unavailable on imgur proper. You'd still need this networking setup, as archive.org is blocked as well in the UK per ground truth from others on HN.
1317
> archive.org is blocked as well in the UK
it isn't
toomuchtodo
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45430848 is the thread where I learned of this. I'll have to do more research, thanks.
https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/internet-archive-...
2b3a51
I'm in the UK and we use 'mobile broadband' for our domestic Internet connection. So a mains powered router box that connects to the local G4 (or G5) mobile data network and provides wifi and a few cat 5 sockets. We don't need to subscribe to a phone line (e.g. last mile supplied by Openreach/BT or fibre from Virgin or whoever). I pay a single flat fee monthly by credit card. It is reasonably fast and meets our modest needs. There is no hard data cap. We average 150 Gb per quarter or so.
archive.org is blocked (along with other nsfw type sites), but as the last post in your link to an earlier discussion says, I could get it unblocked by filling in a declaration that I'm over 18. Paying by credit card isn't enough to unblock automatically for this particular package.
I've chosen not to unblock for no particular reason. The block sort of makes sense to me because archive.org records a lot of Web sites, some of which may have what is regarded as adult content, and it is unreasonable to expect archive.org to label individual records of sites according to the criteria the UK uses (each country probably has its own set of criteria e.g. gambling Web sites of certain kinds in the US).
archive.org is easily accessible in the UK from most wifi connections in cafes, libraries and, hilariously, colleges (where people under 18 gather in large numbers), and also from domestic adsl or fibre Internet connections.
jamesbelchamber
The op in the thread is wrong, it's not blocked.
Source: am British, on phone.
exasperaited
> as archive.org is blocked as well in the UK per ground truth from others on HN
I am in the UK.
archive.org is not blocked — not the Library or the Wayback Machine.
ETA: I just checked re: the comment toomuchtodo linked to, and it actually is blocked by default on my mobile phone as adult content, because I've never bothered to disable the adult content lock on that device. I get redirected to a page operated by my mobile network where I can undo the lock by giving them info; I might do that one day, might not.
For non-UK users: UK mobile phone providers all block adult content by default at the account level as a simple parental control measure, and have done for some time, largely because PAYG data is really rather cheap here.
Interesting but not particularly bothersome. Apparently this decision is about eleven years old.
Acrobatic_Road
Imagine having to install a vpn to browse the internet in a first world country.
livid-neuro
Bold of you to call what has become the United Kaliphate a first-world country still.
exe34
that's a bit histrionic, isn't it?
John-Tony
[dead]
internet2000
> ⌘+F, "vote", Not found
Seems the author forgot one step.
petercooper
The law was drafted by the government of one party, enacted by the government of the other party.
Nice work.
I've thought about doing something similar as well! It drives me nuts this ban, everywhere I look I see these blocked images. I thought about making a chrome extension that proxies.