My understanding is that it’s for tracking/reporting purposes, and to mitigate future offenses by banning those IPs. You can report an IP to an ISP for CSAM violations, but it’s not as useful when the user’s on a VPN.

Don't think even the most extreme actors go that far, link could be opened accidentally, etc...

Anyway, from what another poster here linked, it looks like Catbox might actually not be banning any VPNs at all on its own, this might be some kind of middleware/routing infrastructure issue.

Do you use Verizon for Internet? It's been my experience that the only way I can open catbox links is if I'm not connected solely to Verizon's network.

How is catbox hosted?

If they're renting VPS hardware, then they're getting scammed.

They should set up self hosting with their own hardware and a VPN. It will cut down on the recurring costs significantly.

Don't pay for others' stupidity, if you can avoid it.

We should normalize just sending them money directly through crypto.

Why have more middlemen than we need? It it because we're idiots getting taken for a ride?

I know what I'll put my money on, every time.

I can never see catbox files anyways

That's likely caused by your DNS provider blocking it.

Apparently one of the devs got a confirmation from NLnet for a grant, so GNU Taler will probably become another payment option in Liberapay.

Taler · Issue #1309 · liberapay/liberapay.com

GNU Taler is a payment method designed to provide an unparalleled level of privacy to the payer. Related issues: #1062 and #1268. Implementation guide: create sql/branch.sql add a 'taler' value to the SQL enums payment_net and payment_pr...

GitHub (github.com)

NLnet; Taler in Liberapay

(nlnet.nl)

that sounds great!

Hmm, I'll have to try that... not Verizon directly but a MVNO that uses their network. Thank you for mentioning

Let me know what you find out, would you?

This is phenomenal, I've been switching through countless EU countries and servers, and catbox just kept becoming inaccessible in every single one day by day, and even after abandoning Proton VPN altogether and moving to obscure VPS provider with my self-hosted VPN, it worked for like 2 days, and now it's blocked again.