The recent thread about Servury and its proxy service kind of spurred this question. I’ve noticed this iOS/iPadOS app called Shadowrocket that’s been consistently amongst the top paid iPhone/iPad apps over the last few years. From what I’ve read, it’s a rule based proxy client capable of rule based scripting and traffic filtering, and is sometimes recommend by providers who offer V2Ray based services. Ranking that high in the App Store leads me to believe that there’s a significant number of regular folk (normies) buying it. My question is, what are these buyers using it for?
It wouldn’t be surprising in China, considering their internet restrictions, but this Shadowrocket “phenomenon” seems to be happening in the US as well and started long before the current age-restricted dystopia. Even in my country it’s currently sitting in 3rd on the App Store’s top paid charts, and has been for at least the last couple of years if memory serves.
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know much about proxies and their use cases, aside from the obvious ones like web scraping (not something you’d do on an iPhone, I reckon) or accessing geo-restricted content (more plausible). Considering the amount of VPN sponsored Youtube videos one encounters on a daily basis, I would imagine more regular folk gravitating towards the typical NordVPN or Surfshark plan instead of a proxy and Shadowrocket combo which would require some setup expertise.
My best guess would be some trend starting on social media introducing broke college/university students to the “cheapest way to evade campus internet restrictions” involving Shodowrocket and some free proxy service somewhere. Aside from that, I’m kind of stumped. Did the normies (outside China) suddenly get good at VLESS or Hysteria while we weren’t looking? Or am I just failing to notice something blatantly obvious here?
Censorship evasion coupled with AppStore region change in order to unblock proxy client purchasing/downloading options since Apple complies with the local laws.
I’d wager that since it was so popular in China, it’s super normal for them and is seen as THE solution and most likely has a lot of tutorials, ready-made rule sets for specific use cases, and pre-configured subscription links they just have to import readily available. And after the app was removed from their app store, I’d imagine Chinese students/travelers download it while they can when they’re outside of China’s firewall.
While it CAN be because of campus restrictions, it’s more likely Chinese students in US dealing with both university network restrictions AND needing essential services from inside China.
While it CAN have advanced configuration on a per-app basis, I’m pretty sure most people are simply importing a subscription URL and clicking “connect”. About as complex as a VPN.
