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I know Air cares a lot about protecting *against* (edit: forgot an important word here) censorship across the world, but is it necessary to turn their company Twitter into a 24/7 ‘Free Assange’ machine? I like to follow it for finding out new info about VPN servers and things of that matter. Up until a few weeks ago, it was relatively dormant and only seemed to tweet when there was new things about the company*. Now it’s almost turning into an echo chamber for the “anti-MSM” crowd. (*yes, you may be run by activists, but you are a business. Don’t forget that). As a business owner who does do a lot of social, one of the most important pieces of advice I can give is to separate the politics from your company unless there’s a 1000% connection between the two. I don’t think Assange was an AirVPN user and whether or not you agree with his treatment as of late, it probably doesn’t impact the AirVPN service in any way. I’m also sure there are many other instances of freedom of speech being trampled upon that don’t involve him yet do involve presumably innocent people being jailed for speaking the truth. Whoever is running that Twitter should make a separate personal account and use that as his soapbox as it could lead to potential new users deciding to use a less political VPN provider. https://twitter.com/airvpn

Hello! Today we're starting AirVPN ninth birthday celebrations! From a two servers service located in a single country providing a handful of Mbit/s, the baby has grown up to a wide infrastructure in 22 countries in three continents, providing now 230,000+ Mbit/s to tens of thousands of people around the world. Software related development has also been powered up. Eddie Android edition is now a fully mature application which features an exclusive best effort method to prevent traffic leaks and a complete integration with AirVPN. In 2019 AirVPN has also started operating in South America, on top of Asia, Europe and North America, and the infrastructure has grown significantly, counting now on more than 260 bare metal servers, whose traffic is mainly powered by tier1 and tier2 transit providers. AirVPN has also become recently an EFF "Super Major Donor" member. Furthermore, and we're very glad to announce it here publicly for the first time, development for OpenBSD and FreeBSD has started. We are also integrating OpenVPN 3 on new software which will couple Eddie on UNIX-like systems, including Linux, during the second half of 2019. GDPR compliance was already a de facto standard for AirVPN way before the Regulation entered into force, mainly because we don't collect personal data, period. By the way the compliance is now fully formalized (check details in our Privacy Notice and Terms https://airvpn.org/privacy ). AirVPN provides probably the strongest protection to your data, not only personal data but all data, you can find on any service. If you are an AirVPN customer or user, you are probably aware that our service is radically different than any other VPN service you might have met anywhere. No whistles and bells, no marketing fluff, no fake locations, no advertising on mainstream media, a transparent privacy policy, no trackers on the web site or in mobile applications, no bullshit of any kind in our infrastructure to sell your personal data to any personal data merchant, and above all a clear mission which is the very reason which AirVPN operates for. https://airvpn.org/mission Many of you know that when you buy AirVPN service, you not only support yourself and improve your ability to exercise your fundamental rights, but you also support AirVPN mission. However, while AirVPN in itself has flourished, AirVPN mission aims and values related to fundamental rights have experienced, in 2018 and 2019, a grim time. Australia "encryption-busting" monstrous law is fully in force; the European Union has definitively approved the bad Copyright Directive, mandating automated filters, which will unavoidably limit freedom of expression on big boards, and making the first step to undermine the liability exemptions of mere conduits and web publishers alike; new threats to citizens' privacy are becoming real through plans of wide face recognition deployment, indiscriminate DNA databases proposals, more pervasive and efficient profiling (possibly even through AI), and strict cooperation between Internet tech giants and intelligence agencies; the persecution of journalists, publishers and whistleblowers all around the world has reached unprecedented levels, revealing a widespread plan to suppress freedom of the press and freedom of expression even in so called "Western democracies". One of the greatest journalists and publishers of all times, Julian Assange, nominated seven times for the Nobel Peace prize and winner of many journalistic prizes and awards, has been and is prosecuted and persecuted for having merely published the truth about war crimes, corruption, torture and more, with a 100% accuracy, and for having protected his sources as any good investigative journalist does. He has been detained arbitrarily and illegally, as widely ascertained and recognized by the UN. He has been victim of an abominable smear campaign based on ignominious lies and defamation, a campaign aimed to turn the public opinion against him and distract from WikiLeaks publications content exposing war criminals in governments key positions, warmongers, torture maniacs, systematic illegal surveillance, endemic privacy violations and plots to limit and reduce fundamental rights. He is currently detained in solitary confinement 23 hours a day, with no access to books, maximum two visits per month, forbidden in practice to coordinate a defense with his lawyers, in a tiny cell of a maximum security UK prison which has been designed for dangerous murderers and terrorists, while UK will decide whether to extradite him to the USA to face a potential 175 years imprisonment. Whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning, who should be regarded as a hero, as Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Daniel Ellsberg and other titans of our times pointed out, have been tortured and are still persecuted by the very same criminals whose crimes were exposed. Privacy activists and software developers, like Ola Bini in Ecuador, are imprisoned without charges, simply for having showed friendship to Assange or WikiLeaks, or for having developed software aimed to protect privacy through encryption. And the list can go on and on and on. But make no mistake: the dark times we are living in, the environment of fear and intimidation that various governments are building against the exercise of those fundamental rights which our mission forces us to protect to the best of our abilities, the mounting attacks against "encryption for everyone" and the awareness that enemies of human rights nestle inside government agencies, have not undermined our determination. Quite the opposite: they have convinced us that our service is even more necessary now and we are resolute to do even more. Our mission has been and will be empowered by the ongoing support to projects and NGOs which aim to the protection of privacy, personal data and freedom of expression, now more than ever. We have confirmed our support to Tor and we will progressively add support to champions of freedom of expression and privacy in any way our capacities and abilities will allow us. If you're curious to know something about a series of fortunate events which gave birth to AirVPN, have a look here: https://airvpn.org/aboutus To worthily celebrate AirVPN ninth birthday, we're glad to inform you that starting from now we will offer a 20% discount on all long term plans. Hurry up, this special offer will end on June the 11th, 23:59:59 UTC! Check the new prices here. Kind regards and datalove AirVPN Staff

We cherish your integrity. Good job, and happy birthday.

I think one should keep in mind that it may be in ones own self-interest to defend even an asshole (which it seems Assange may well be) from unjust retribution, particularly when it would set a legal precedent that could affect us all, There was a written article on the BBC News site recently that I found useful. "Viewpoint: What Assange charges could mean for press freedom": https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48393512 This guy sure makes a poor poster boy for press freedom. It serves the purposes of those who want to stifle the press perfectly. Having said this, I am still a bit worried that AirVPN may alienate quite a few customers.

I would rather see AirVPN's official twitter account used for timely information regarding the service itself and for actual promotional posts rather than to disseminate divisive political arguments. Snowden is widely appreciated globally outside limited jingoistic and militaristic circles in the USA. Assange is a very different type of personality who was initially widely appreciated, but turned out highly partisan with odd loyalties towards the enemies of liberal democracy. I do understand why some digital freedom activists or anarchists still see him as a hero, but I hope AirVPN appreciates the fact that Assange's legacy is seen as tainted or at minimum controversial by many other freedom activists.

Hello! We are starting to publish "transparency mission reports" to add information and clarifications about the reasons of our support to projects, persons and NGOs. While the organic summary, as well as the mission statements, remains in https://airvpn.org/mission page, the reports will provide important explanations and insights. Our first report, covering the first five 2019 months, has just been published here: Kind regards and datalove AirVPN Staff

Website: http://www.dmax.it Italian streaming TV Status: OK Routing: All servers to IT route.

Website: http://www.cbc.ca Official CBC television site for Canada Status: OK Native: CA servers. Routing: All other servers.