TOR is cool. TOR stands for The Onion Router. I assume Onion refers to the layers used to protect users and servers from censorship and surveillance, not dissimilar to the layers of an onion. TOR is the means of accessing everything outside of the surface web, particularly the spooky dark web where drugs and weapons run rampant. Or so the media claims.
disclaimer: I am writing this in a rush following social media getting blocked. I should come back to polish this post, but we know that "temporary" things end up as the most permanent solutions in the end.
TOR is, in my opinion, the last bastion of freedom, anonymity, and free speech in the world today. You can read all about how TOR works - it's fascinating. However, I won't do that right now, my priority is to teach you how to use TOR to evade censorship.
Installing TOR
Here's the TOR website: https://www.torproject.org/. There's a download button. You click on it and choose which OS you use. If you want to do this properly, you can click on signature and the little ? next to it to verify your installer.
When you're done downloading, install TOR like any normal program. I won't go over this because I use Linux. Finally, open TOR.
Connecting to TOR
You can do that once you've opened up TOR browser. It's that connect button you see. Just click on it.
Done? Awesome! Now your traffic is routed all around the world and is protected from your ISP snooping on what you're doing. You're thus evading censorship/internet blockades imposed by the ISP or your government.
Bridges
Bridges are a fundamental part of TOR. You see, the nodes which make up the TOR network are publicly viewable - they need to be to create these network circuits to obfuscate your internet activity. However, this means that governments/ISPs can now block those nodes, which is awful!
Thankfully, you can setup bridges which are more hidden nodes which essentially provide a bridge into the TOR network. In the browser, go to settings, and find the bridges setting under the Connection tab. You can enable it like this:
Onion Links
Onion links are URLs for websites found on the "dark web" - don't worry, it's not as scary as it sounds (as long as you're reasonable with where you go). You'll know an onion link because it looks like a bunch of random characters, followed by .onion.
You can open these URLs on TOR without facing any restrictions or censorship issues as well. Typically you would host a .onion website when it's something you don't want traced back to your real-world identity. You could use it for whistleblowing websites where you publish leaks and all sorts of info which would have you shoot yourself in the back of the head, twice.