Internet Freedom is Here: FreeSocks v2 - Unredacted

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Internet Freedom is Here: FreeSocks v2

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The Internet as we know it is in danger and democracy is under attack . Around the world state censors are working to restrict access to information, and prevent people from sharing their own. With growing access to technology, we need to ensure that information remains free at serious infrastructure scale – and we think we can help.

FreeSocks is our flagship VPN service that launched in 2023 with over 60,000 access keys issued to date. FreeSocks has helped tens of thousands of people access the open Internet through our open source control plane (freesocks-control-plane), and vast network of servers around the world. However, as censors began to crack down on the open Internet even more and begin to more effectively block VPN & proxy protocols designed to circumvent Internet censorship, we realized we needed to build FreeSocks from the ground up via a highly flexible system. It’s now time to release it and punch more holes in the closed Internet.

FreeSocks v2 – the next generation

v2 of the freesocks-control-plane (FCP), the system that orchestrates the issuance and management of access keys has evolved into a fully-fledged all-in-one VPN orchestration system. It’s built on Convex, an open-source reactive backend platform, using TypeScript – a complete shift away from our v1 architecture running on serverless platforms using JavaScript. Convex combines a transactional database, server functions, scheduling, and realtime data sync into a single system, which lets FCP v2 handle the entire lifecycle of an access key – issuance, monitoring, rotation, revocation and more – in one place instead of stitching together separate serverless services. Without the power of Convex, we’d spend more time writing migrations, trying to improve caching and general troubleshooting – but Convex just works.

We self-host the Convex backend on our own infrastructure, so no part of FreeSocks depends on a third-party cloud platform anymore. Like v1, the entire control plane is open source under GPL-3.0, and it’s built so that anyone can deploy their own instance and run a FreeSocks-like service themselves. We think this is huge, and genuinely what makes our platform different than others. Whether you’re a single person, or a trusted organization running infrastructure at scale – you could run your own VPN-distribution platform. As time goes on, we plan to continue decoupling static components of the FCP and making them admin-configurable, essentially becoming a content management system (CMS) for VPN services.

New protocols

v1 of FreeSocks only supported Outline (Shadowsocks) proxies. Unfortunately, censors in several countries have gotten much better at detecting and blocking Shadowsocks traffic. FCP v2 supports pluggable proxy backends, and our primary backend is now Xray (managed via Remnawave), which supports multiple modern protocols that are much harder to detect and block. Outline is still supported, and we can run both side-by-side if needed.

Once you have an account, you can choose between two connection modes for your key – one designed to circumvent censorship, and one designed for maximum privacy. You can also pick which server location your key lives on, or let the system automatically place your key on the least busy server. If the censors adapt and start blocking a protocol, we can adapt too, without rebuilding the whole system again.

Client apps

FreeSocks works with any compatible client app, and you’re free to use whichever one you prefer. After you create your key, the site suggests client apps to try for your platform, with notes on how easy each one is to set up and whether it’s open source. In the future, we intend to build our own native FreeSocks VPN app to make setup even easier – stay tuned!

Hardware that we own

FreeSocks v2 is launching fully on hardware that we own, colocated in Kansas City, MO. Over the past couple of years, we’ve been purchasing and colocating our own hardware instead of renting servers from hosting providers, and FreeSocks is now part of that effort. Many popular VPN providers host their infrastructure on rented servers. Owning the hardware means we have full control over the machines that power the service, even the network stack and down to the metal. Going forward, every new FreeSocks location we add will only use hardware that we own.

Anonymous accounts

v1 of FreeSocks had no accounts at all – you received an access key, it expired after a period of time, and you had to request a new one. v2 introduces member accounts, so that your key can be regenerated, moved to a different server, or switched to a different protocol whenever you need. We designed the account system to collect zero personal information. There is no email, no phone number, and no password.

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