Life & fun · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Ideas to work around SOPA
Over breakfast, I thought about how to circumvent SOPA (as I understand it). Key problem: SOPA allows the government to tell DNS servers to stop linking certain website addresses to their IPs. Abstract Solution: Remove the need for DNS servers in the majority of cases. Idea 1: Have a list of IP addresses stored in each browser so they don't have to be resolved. Just have an associative array somewhere that contains a bunch of really popular websites. Every time the browser auto upgrades, it updates and expands its list of IPs. This could be done as a plugin for most modern browsers. Idea 2:…
Ideas to Work Around SOPA proposes technical approaches to bypass DNS-based website blocking as outlined in the SOPA legislation. The project suggests two main strategies: embedding popular website IP addresses… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 1 we have checked on their own sites, 1 of them free or with a free tier. Ideas to work around SOPA launched in 2011; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1NA
We just shipped a new feature in NextDNS: Bypass Age Verification. More and more sites (especially adult ones) are now forcing users to upload IDs or selfies to continue. We think that’s a terrible idea: handing over government documents to random sites is a huge privacy risk. This new setting workarounds those verification flows via DNS tricks. It’s available today to all users, including free accounts. We’re curious how the HN community feels about this. Is it the right way to protect privacy online, or will it just provoke regulators to push harder? https://nextdns.io
2025 · its alternatives →
- 2
Hey HN, I saw a thread a while ago (linked in README) discussing how Wikipedia does a good job keeping track of the domains of websites like Sci-Hub or The Pirate Bay. Someone mentioned checking Wikipedia to find links to these sites, so I thought this would be a fun thing to automate! To try it out, install an extension or modify your hosts file, then type in the name of a website with the TLD `.idk`. For example: scihub.idk -> sci-hub.tw Cheers!
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 3
Tired of companies snooping through your DNS traffic? Don't you wish you could get advertisements with your DNS records? Today we're introducing the innovative, privacy-focused, ad-supported DNS resolver - DN$! Traditional DNS resolvers provided by your internet service provider, cloudflare, or google could be tracking your internet activity and selling it to third-party data vendors. We at DN$ want to fix that and cut out these nefarious actors (until we've amassed a critical number of users to exploit). In order to support such a radically new business model, our service needs to serve…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 4
NextDNS protects you from all kinds of security threats, blocks ads and trackers on websites and in apps and provides a safe and supervised Internet for kids — on all devices and on all networks.
2019 · nextdns.io · its alternatives →
- 5WB
We built this free little notification bar so you could add it to your site and show your opposition to PIPA/SOPA without having to black out. The text never changes, there's no account needed or anything like that, and you can take it down whenever.
2012 · hellobar.com · its alternatives →
- 6
Alright so if you run a self-hosted blog, you've probably noticed AI companies scraping it for training data. And not just a little (RIP to your server bill). There isn't much you can do about it without cloudflare. These companies ignore robots.txt, and you're competing with teams with more resources than you. It's you vs the MJs of programming, you're not going to win. But there is a solution. Now I'm not going to say it's a great solution...but a solution is a solution. If your website contains content that will trigger their scraper's safeguards, it will get dropped from their data…
Dec 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 7WS
Y'all, I've been reading about the "nuclear option" that some internet giants are considering in order to highlight SOPA and I wondered why they didn't just put a banner saying to "Pay attention to SOPA" on their sites. I realized that it would only take a bit of time to build the service, so I did. It's built with Python, App Engine (my first time using it), Twitter's Bootstrap and GitHub. Has some rudimentary geolocating included so that politicians can be highlighted. It's a very early version (ie. I only have data for CA politicians), but I figured HN would enjoy seeing it early,…
2012 · sopajs.org · its alternatives →
- 8
2012 · millionshort.com · its alternatives →
- 9
Local development with .local domains and HTTPSfree tier, from $8/mo▲84Hi HN! I'm Jarek, and I've built this tool that allows publishing .local domains on the local network using mDNS. It also has a reverse proxy that handles HTTPS termination and port forwarding. I'm working on adding more features, like an index page with all available domains or allowing proxy redirects, so you could redirect from HTTP to HTTPS. Let me know if you have any questions or feedback!
2023 · localcan.com · its alternatives →
- 10
Domain names on blockchains, get your .Zil domain name free
2019 · unstoppable.ai · its alternatives →
- 11KE
My goal was to create a DNS server as simple as the LDAP server I've been contributing to (glauth) and here it is: https://github.com/fusion/kittendns A few things to know about it: - It is easy to configure using a Toml file - I am using it to bail my coredns/etcd instances when under attack - (yes, it also works as a service location server) - It comes with a simple, plain English, rule engine that doesn't do much at this point - It can be used with LetsEncrypt. I use it to retrieve certificates for my home servers. - RFC: all the nice ones :) Anyway, feedback is…
2022 · its alternatives →
- 12
A fast SOCKS5 proxy that tunnels your traffic through what looks like normal SMTP email, bypassing Deep Packet Inspection firewalls. How it works: - Client runs a local SOCKS5 proxy (127.0.0.1:1080) - Traffic is sent to server disguised as SMTP (EHLO, STARTTLS, AUTH) - DPI sees legitimate email session, not a VPN/proxy Features: - One-liner install on any Linux VPS - Multi-user with per-user secrets and IP whitelists - Auto-generated client packages (just double-click to run) - Auto-reconnect on connection loss - Works with any app that supports SOCKS5 Tech: Python/asyncio, TLS…
Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 13
A DNS client in Go that supports Google DNS over HTTPS - pforemski/dingo
2016 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 14
- 15
Most site blockers work by blacklisting distractions. That never worked for me, the internet is too big, and there’s always something new to waste time on. I wanted the opposite: allowlist‑only browsing. Block everything by default, and explicitly allow only what I need. So I built Sinkzone: a local DNS forwarder with two modes: Monitor mode: lets all traffic through, but logs every domain so you can decide what to allow. Focus mode: only allowlisted domains resolve; everything else is blocked (NXDOMAIN). It’s open source, written in Go, and runs locally on macOS, Linux, and Windows. Works a…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 16
To power the firewalling for our agents so that they couldn't contact arbitrary services, I build netfence. It's like Envoy but for eBPF filters. It allows you to define different DNS-based rules that are resolved in a local daemon to IPs, then pushed to the eBPF filter to allow traffic. By doing it this way, we can still allow DNS-defined rules, but prevent contacting random IPs. There's also no network performance penalty, since it's just DNS lookups and eBPF filters referencing memory. It also means you don't have to tamper with the base image, which the agent could potentially manipulate…
Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 17
DNS over HTTPS proxy written in golang. Contribute to satran/dohproxy development by creating an account on GitHub.
2018 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 18
Effortless Pi-hole DNS Ad Blocking Control
2025 · soomaalabs.com · its alternatives →
- 19MC
In 2020 my country temporarily blocked nearly all popular websites (Facebook, Youtube, Instagram etc.) for 45 days. I tried other VPN apps and protocols but they failed. And I started crafting my own VPN protocol and app. Android client app has features below: Quick Tile, Multi-profiles, Split tunneling, Offline region, Custom DNS, MTU config I found Offline region feature unique, for example if you want to watch videos on Youtube but don't want people to send you message from social medias. You can block internet access of these social media apps, so your friends will see you as offline,…
2021 · its alternatives →
- 20
- 21
I'm a solo dev. A few years ago, I got addicted to Reddit. Spent months in that loop. Being a programmer, I thought I'd be clever. Redirected Reddit's domain to nowhere in my DNS file. Worked great until I'd just... open the file and undo it 20 minutes later. So I made it irreversible. Locked the DNS file so it can't be edited unless I boot my Mac in safe mode. And if I do that, there's a script that instantly locks it again. Haven't used Reddit since last year. Problem solved, right? Wrong. I just replaced Reddit with Twitch and YouTube. Started keeping streams running in the background…
Nov 2025 · chromewebstore.google.com · its alternatives →
- 22
Break Congress' Internet. Contribute to fightforthefuture/breakcongressinternet development by creating an account on GitHub.
2015 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 23AS
Hi! I am sharing this because it may be useful to others. I created a simple Docker image that lets you easily expose a web app running locally on your dev machine to the Internet, via a proxy server. It is a self hosted alternative to something like Ngrok, which is a paid service if you use custom domains. A small server is cheaper than Ngrok (I use Hetzner Cloud and the cheapest server costs me 3€ per month). I use this method in particular to test HTTP verification with Let's Encrypt for a SaaS app running on my Mac. Hope this is useful :) Code:…
2019 · its alternatives →
- 24FA
Would like to share here a project that we have been working on for the last ~10 months. It all started with the goal of properly blocking adult & explicit content out of our own kids devices and expanded it to a free service that anyone can use. Feedback is welcome: https://cleanbrowsing.org CleanBrowsing is free Anycast DNS resolver that automatically blocks adult content and enforces safe search on Google, Google Image search, Bing, Youtube, etc. We have been crawling and categorizing the web for many months and we feel it got to a point where our database is large enough and we…
2018 · its alternatives →
Also compare
- NextDNS Adds "Bypass Age Verification" alternatives
- DNS over Wikipedia alternatives
- DN$ – an innovative, ad-supported DNS resolver alternatives
- nextdns.io – A Combination of Cloudflare DNS and Pi-Hole alternatives
- We built a free Stop SOPA/PIPA notification bar for sites alternatives
- Stop AI scrapers from hammering your self-hosted blog (using porn) alternatives
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →