1)The great firewall: None of the Google products would work. This means no access to important stuff like Google Docs, Gmail, etc.
https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand installs Shadowsocks, which seems to work quite well in China, provided you find a VPS with good peering in mainland China. I hear a lot of people have good results with Vultr via Japanese data centers, other VPS providers in Hong Kong get good results too.
One of the maintainers of the project does live in China; if you have a question open up an issue in the discussions repo (https://github.com/StreisandEffect/discussions), I'm sure you'll get answers to whatever question you may have.
In Ask HN: Traveling to China for the first time. Would love some adviceStreisandEffect
streisand
Shell2014–2025
StreisandEffect / streisand · Archived
streisand
Streisand sets up a new server running your choice of WireGuard, OpenConnect, OpenSSH, OpenVPN, Shadowsocks, sslh, Stunnel, or a Tor bridge. It also generates custom instructions for all of these services. At the end of the run you are given an HTML file with instructions that can be shared with friends, family members, and fellow activists.
114Distinct people
155Mentions
4Explicit recommenders
23.4KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Streisand sets up a new server running your choice of WireGuard, OpenConnect, OpenSSH, OpenVPN, Shadowsocks, sslh, Stunnel, or a Tor bridge. It also generates custom instructions for all of these services. At the end of the run you are given an HTML file with instructions that can be shared with friends, family members, and fellow activists.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
3 years ago I installed Project Streisand [0] on one of my Digitaocean droplets which configured automatically different VPN protocols and my favorite one has been Wireguard.…
babayega2 used a recommendation phrase. 4 indexed comments match. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- trailofbits/algo · linked in 17 of the same discussions
- stevenblack/hosts · linked in 4 of the same discussions
- nyr/openvpn-install · linked in 3 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 9:01:12 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year155 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2014-07-24 21:43:37 UTC to 2025-10-25 16:04:17 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 2 | 5 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 22 | 5 | 17 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 38 | 2 | 36 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 28 | 0 | 28 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 30 | 1 | 29 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 11 | 1 | 10 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 2 | 4 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
Streisand
English, Français, 简体中文, Русский | Mirror
Streisand
Silence censorship. Automate the effect.
The Internet can be a little unfair. It's way too easy for ISPs, telecoms, politicians, and corporations to block access to the sites and information that you care about. But breaking through these restrictions is tough. Or is it?
If you have an account with a cloud computing provider, Streisand can set up a new node with many censorship-resistant VPN services nearly automatically. You'll need a little experience with a Unix command-line. (But without Streisand, it could take days for a skilled Unix administrator to configure these services securely!) At the end, you'll have a private website with software and instructions.
Here's what a sample Streisand server looks like.
There's a list of supported cloud providers; experts may be able to use Streisand to install on many other cloud providers.
VPN services
One type of tool that people use to avoid network censorship is a Virtual Private Network (VPN). There are many kinds of VPNs.
Not all network censorship is alike; in some places, it changes from day to day. Streisand provides many different VPN services to try. (You don't have to install them all, though.)
Some Streisand services include add-ons for further censorship and throttling resistance:
OpenSSH
Tinyproxy may be used as an HTTP proxy.
OpenConnect / Cisco AnyConnect
This protocol is widely used by multi-national corporations, and might not be blocked.
OpenVPN
Stunnel add-on available.
Shadowsocks,
The V2ray-plugin is installed to provide robust traffic evasion on hostile networks (especially those implementing quality of service (QOS) throttling).
A private Tor bridge relay
Obfsproxy with obfs4 available as an add-on.
WireGuard, a modern high-performance protocol.
See also:
A more technical list of features
A more technical list of services
Cloud providers
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Microsoft Azure
Digital Ocean
Google Compute Engine (GCE)
Linode
Rackspace
Other providers
We recommend using one of the above providers. If you are an expert and can set up a fresh Ubuntu 16.04 server elsewhere, there are "localhost" and "existing remote server" installation methods. For more information, see the advanced installation instructions.
Installation
You need command-line access to a Unix system. You can use Linux, BSD, or macOS; on Windows 10, the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) counts as Linux.
Once you're ready, see the full installation instructions.
Things we want to do better
Aside from a good deal of cleanup, we could really use:
Easier setup.
Faster adoption of new censorship-avoidance tools
We're looking for help with both.
If there is something that you think Streisand should do, or if you find a bug in its documentation or execution, please file a report on the Issue Tracker.
Core Contributors
Jay Carlson (@nopdotcom)
Nick Clarke (@nickolasclarke)
Joshua Lund (@jlund)
Ali Makki (@alimakki)
Daniel McCarney (@cpu)
Corban Raun (@CorbanR)
Acknowledgements
Jason A. Donenfeld deserves a lot of credit for being brave enough to reimagine what a modern VPN should look like and for coming up with something as good as WireGuard. He has our sincere thanks for all of his patient help and high-quality feedback.
We are grateful to Trevor Smith for his massive contributions. He suggested the Gateway approach, provided tons of invaluable feedback, made everything look better, and developed the HTML template that served as the inspiration to take things to the next level before Streisand's public release.
Huge thanks to Paul Wouters of The Libreswan Project for his generous help troubleshooting the L2TP/IPsec setup.
Starcadian's 'Sunset Blood' album was played on repeat approximately 300 times during the first few months of work on the project in early 2014.
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
38 sourcesstreisand: Automate the Streisand Effect
3 points · Open discussionMy lazy sysadmin apporach to getting Wireguard running on a VPS is to use Streisand[1].
1: https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand#services-provid...
In “It's been great to see Wireguard mature over the years”I'm surprised no one has mentioned Streisand, an open-source project that takes most (not all) of the effort out of setting up low-cost individual VPNs for yourself and your friends and family on a number of popular cloud services:
https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand
It takes a little bit of technical know-how (or bravery) to get started, but the setup process is dead-simple and you end up with a completely personal VPN with dozens of options that can work around a number of different situations. Best of all, it's entirely under your control. You can tear it down and start from scratch, or move to a new location or cloud provider easily. The docs are clear and easy to understand, and it's constantly being improved. It's a pretty remarkable project.
In Do you need a VPN?Yes you need a VPN, no you shouldn’t trust anyone with it. Run your own. It’s easy and less expensive.
https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand
In Do you need a VPN?I've set up my own VPN using Streisand [https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand] & Google Compute Engine (Micro Instance). When you create an account on Google's Cloud, you get $300 (or used to at least). This instance type is big enough to handle the few devices I connect to it, fairly speedily too.
In Do you need a VPN?One option would be paying for a VPS on AWS or Linode or DigitalOcean or Vultr or any number of similar providers - pick the lowest spec machine, raw network throughput is not very hardware dependent - and set the VPN up yourself.
Streisand is pretty useful for this purpose.
https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand
In US telcos appear to be selling non-anonymized access to consumer telephone dataSet up your own VPN with https://github.com/jlund/streisand
In VPN Report – Reviews of the top VPNsEverytime I read posts about VPNs and ban attempts, I can't resist to link to the Streisand project: https://github.com/jlund/streisand. Used that when there were crackdowns on VPNs (Astrill, Express, etc.) while I was living in China and it never disappointed.
In Putin signs law that prohibits technology providing access to banned websitesWhy not this script https://github.com/jlund/streisand ?
In I made my own VPN server in 15 minutesCould you give some examples?
While I'm sure these exists, I'm using VPN on EC2 micro instance (installed with http://github.com/jlund/streisand) and haven't been blocked, yet.
In I made my own VPN server in 15 minutesVPNs are for privacy, not anonymity. Confuse the two are your own peril - the Grugq
The only trustworthy VPN service is one that you operate yourself. There are plenty of Github projects that will deploy a personal VPN for you:
https://github.com/jlund/streisand
https://github.com/trailofbits/algo
In How to find a trustworthy VPN serviceI personally use Streisand [1] hosted on a t2.micro using the AWS Free Tier. Some people also recommend Algo [2]. Both have all their code open sourced on GitHub.
I do have a Pi too, but after all these new laws where ISP's can sell your Internet history etc. I think it's nice to be able to hide traffic from them too.
[1] - https://github.com/jlund/streisand
[2] - https://github.com/trailofbits/algo
In Raspberry Pi VPN Server: Build Your Own Virtual Private NetworkMaybe he wasn't aware of it? Just my speculation.
In any case, AES-GCM is natively supported by OpenVPN 2.4, and Streisand as it is will configure it for you as part of the NCP ciphers list, with a fallback to AES-CBC if the client is a bit older [0]
[0] https://github.com/jlund/streisand/blob/master/playbooks/rol...
In How to build your own VPN if you're wary of commercial optionsI operate my own VPN endpoint for a couple reasons:
1. I frequently need to connect via open, untrusted local networks, such as those at hotels.
2. Many commercial VPNs (e.g., PIA) end up having some portion of their endpoint IPs end up on blacklists and break a lot of sites.
Anonymity from the government is a lower priority than both of the above, and I acknowledge the lack of it in my risk model.
Initially I started out just running a Streisand[0] server, but its scope and overall speed were unsuited for my wants. Now it's just a barebones VPS with OpenVPN running, and I connect to it primarily through a travel router.[1] Longer term I would like to develop an Ansible playbook so that I can quickly deploy a new endpoint at a close VPS when traveling if the need arises for better speed.
[0]: https://github.com/jlund/streisand
[1]: https:
In How to build your own VPN if you're wary of commercial optionsShowing the 15 most recent of 38 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.