[proteal]

Figured I’d ask the HN crowd- what’s the best way around these geofence blocks? Have you had success with a system that can work smoothly on mobile/desktop without any of the disastrous privacy and performance implications that VPN services are prone to?

[dboon]

Just use a lightweight, privacy focused VPN like Mullvad. You don’t have to keep it on when you need top network performance. Ultimately, a VPN of SOME kind is the only option.

[Spivak]

I mean anything that circumvents geo-fencing at the IP level is going to be tunneling your traffic through an address that isn't blocked. Your options are all VPNs, the choice is only who's running it—you via a VPS or similar, friends/family/community, a service as you describe, or the public with Tor.

The friends/family option is probably the most broadly effective at circumventing the block since you'll have a residential address but at the cost of a lot of latency and bandwidth. The most performant option will be VPS services but lots of sites will block them as well out of an abundance of caution.