| HN Mirror

Freedom has a price, people outside the regime (refugees of the regime) could explain and pay friends outside of the oppressive regime, to sell them at a loss (below market rate).

People inside the oppressive regime will unwittingly buy smart bulbs, that only activate after enough were smuggled in at the same date, so that by the time the regime detects some, all bulbs will be traced to non-refugee sellers outside its jurisdiction, absolving any unwitting participants buying and powering them, so it's important the ad doesn't advertise any quirks or functionality added, as that would compromise the buyers.

By having the sellers be random foreigners (from the perspective of the oppressive regime), the regime can't punish the family of the refugees sponsoring this infiltration, if it doesn't know which refugee friends the seller has (so it should also be a low contact friend, so the refugee would have to convince a friend to do one large batch once, and never meet again..., which is a bit sad).

This assumes commercial entities aren't selling friend network data, or if they do, that oppressive regimes somehow can't get their hands on it. A rather dubious assumption in 2026...