I got a VPN in preparation for Australia's (even more draconian) "age verification" laws (those take effect in 4 days).
But what I'd really love (startup idea!?) is an app that let's you map websites to countries and it handles tunnelling that domain's traffic through the selected country's VPN.
For example, I'd like to view Reddit, YouTube, X, Facebook, Instagram and social media apps from a US IP (to avoid Australia's "age verification"), dailymail.co.uk from a UK IP (since it's blocked in Thailand), predication markets from a country that allows them, Imgur from a country that allows it, Spotify from any country so long as it's fixed (to avoid it randomly stopping mid workout with a 'your country has changed' notification).
Until something automated like this exists the current best solution is a VPN and manually switching countries when something you want isn't available from the current country, which isn't great UX.
Setting this up through your router / network infra is one possible path.
Another AU citizen here. I've been beefing up our home in prep for these laws too.
You can use policy based routing to send traffic through a few VPN egress points depending on either domain, or IP based country lookup. Most providers will let you keep simultaneous connections up. This then applies to all devices so streaming apps works well (e.g. for my partner to access her home country's public broadcaster) and any complexity remains hidden from others you live with. From there, a wireguard tunnel for personal devices back through home means you can keep these same paths active when mobile.
I'm looking forward to the level of networking and systems knowledge these laws will encourage across future generations.
After the article I set it up myself, it took me around a day I would say. It supports exactly what you're asking for, although it's not a comprehensive tutorial so you'll need to figure some things out on your own.
Full disclosure I ended up turning it off only 2 days later because it was causing too many issues with networking and I suck at networking-related things, but it was great while it was working. I plan on setting it up again in the near future.
I’ve seen people do this on the router level with a proxy, with imgur being the example - all other traffic just went as normal but imgur traffic was sent through a VPN.
However it was a very complicated setup with many parts and a home server so I would definitely like to see a proper app built around this that just handles everything for you.
But what I'd really love (startup idea!?) is an app that let's you map websites to countries and it handles tunnelling that domain's traffic through the selected country's VPN.
For example, I'd like to view Reddit, YouTube, X, Facebook, Instagram and social media apps from a US IP (to avoid Australia's "age verification"), dailymail.co.uk from a UK IP (since it's blocked in Thailand), predication markets from a country that allows them, Imgur from a country that allows it, Spotify from any country so long as it's fixed (to avoid it randomly stopping mid workout with a 'your country has changed' notification).
Until something automated like this exists the current best solution is a VPN and manually switching countries when something you want isn't available from the current country, which isn't great UX.