[bgdam]

Pretty much. In addition there is no real enforcement to see that only the sites requested are blocked. And ISPs (Jio especially) have started taking creative license with block orders. For a lot of ISPs this blocking is implemented at DNS resolution level, which is easy to bypass (just change your DNS resolver), but the most popular ISP (Jio) does not do it this way, and is pretty much impossible to get around.

[anonms-coward]

How does Jio do it? Would encrypted SNI help in thwarting that?

[searchableguy]

I think it will on some supported sites. Enable the dns over https option in firefox.

Check the status here - https://www.cloudflare.com/ssl/encrypted-sni/

Your best bet would still be a vpn which will work on all the sites.

[mukuz]

Jio uses DNS sniffing and SNI blocking.

They monitor all DNS requests(no matter who provides the DNS server). So the solution is DNS over HTTPS.

The SNI method is a bit tricky. ESNI does prevent the blocking, but currently it’s rarely implemented by websites. One other solution is TCP fragmentation. Split the packet containing SNI into two. This prevents them from catching the whole URL mentioned in the SNI. Thus, they are unable to block it.

One such tool: https://github.com/SadeghHayeri/GreenTunnel