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This is Cuba's Netflix, Hulu, and Spotify – all without the internet

Vox · 5.6M views · 2015-09-21 · 7:02

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Overview

A Vox report on El Paquete Semanal, the weekly offline bundle of shows, music and news that is smuggled and sold in Cuba. It shows how people get media without internet access.

On Hacker News

HN uses it as the standard example of sneakernet media distribution via hard drives.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2016–2026

Topics

Media, journalism & propagandaFree speech, censorship & civil libertiesNetworking & internet infrastructure
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cubasneakernetel paquetecensorship

What people said

placeybordeaux · 2016-08 · Recommendation

I'd recommend watching the video that is linked: [VIDEO] It talks about the mechanics, largely it looks like someone in Miami is consistently collecting stuff until they get close to 1TB or a week has passed, then that 1TB is flown out to Havana and it's copied and passed around after that.

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movedx · 2026-07 · Reference

This is hard to read, but I think you're saying the Internet will see a shift to "Sneaker Net" like tactics where people torrent stuff, store it on HDDs, and just move those HDDs around? Like they do in Cuba: [VIDEO] For the most part, I agree.

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29athrowaway · 2023-04 · Reference

This is how people consume content in Cuba [VIDEO] If you like this story, I recommend this documentary: [LINK] (Chuck Norris vs Communism)

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Sources

Video by Vox, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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