this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2023
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the only subscription service you need is a vpn
I disagree: https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29
For most people a VPS would be cheaper and meet their actual needs.
I don't know what the costs of a VPS are and there probably are advantages, but that post makes some pretty broad claims about VPN providers.
It can make such broad claims because it's entirely based on facts. VPN's are a trust-based system where the only evidence they don't keep logs prior to getting a court order is "Trust us bro" and, historically, more of these services have been found to actually be storing records (or legally must store 30/60 days worth depending on their country of origin) than not.
If you would like a more in-depth and thorough explanation as a technical breakdown for non-technical people there is this blog post or even this blog if the "TL;DR" explanation didn't cut it for you.
Regarding profit motives of VPN's - see also:
- https://www.skadligkod.se/vpn/the-trustworthy-of-vpn-review-sites-and-how-affiliate-programs-affects-their-opinion/
- https://restoreprivacy.com/kape-technologies-owns-expressvpn-cyberghost-pia-zenmate-vpn-review-sites/
Here's a real fun one!
This site: https://thatoneprivacysite.net/choosing-the-best-vpn-for-you/ was purchased and now redirects to this site: https://www.safetydetectives.com/best-vpns/
Safety Detectives was purchased by non-other than drum roll please. Kape Technologies. How do I know this? Well let's take a look at the Wayback Machine for TOPS.net.
What was the original claim?
You may have started your search for a VPN by looking for “VPN Reviews” in your search engine of choice. if you had, you would have gotten page upon page of what seem to be harmless review sites, top 10 or blog style reviews of different VPN services. You may even be coming here for confirmation of what you were told on those sites. The sites making these recommendations are, in almost every case, paid by the services they review and recommend.
Who owns PIA, ExpressVPN, and CyberGhost? The "best 3 VPN's" recommended by safetydetectives.com? Kape Technologies.
Why should this concern you?
We'll start with PIA's owner, Kape Technologies. Kape Technologies was formerly known as Crossrider before it was acquired by one Teddy Sagi, an Israeli billionaire that has spent time in jail for insider trading. Crossrider itself never had that great a reputation itself, what with their primary product being a development platform through which they were frequently used by third parties to invade ad platforms to serve up malware, but whatever. Once acquired, the entire leadership structure was hollowed out, and the new Kape Technologies went on an acquisition spree. All of Kape's purchased review sites suggest Kape owned VPN's with "some consideration" given to Nord and Proton to maintain some kind of pretense at neutrality.
In short: Sagi is shady, his business is shady, and his business moves are shady, which makes the whole thing shady from top to bottom. Kape Technologies isn't the only company to go on an acquisition spree for VPN's either. Ask yourself why there is interest in consolidating VPN providers and how that data might be useful.
Every single modern VPN is a honeypot until proven otherwise. Mullvad is one of the few that has been able to prove otherwise.
ProtonVPN received a request for a vpn user's IP. They did not have the logs, they aren't obligated to store them. They were forced to share mail IP, but are obligated to do so under swiss law, this isn't the case for VPNs.
Perfect-privacy was raided in 2016 and existed long before HMA, PIA, etc. They did not compromise user information .
Like you said mullvad was just raided, they did not have logs. The raid was useless.
Sure, a lot of VPN services are fluff and untrustworthy. Many VPN ranking websites are just ads. A blanket statement that all VPN providers are honeypots isn't helpful nor practical for the average person. A VPN shouldn't be used for anonymity, but a good provider has its use case.
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You don’t even need to “subscribe” to use Mullvad! You can just pay for how much you need. I don’t pay for it every month.
Reading this from piracy instance✌️
I heard it from someone (not me) that they've been using a modded spotify app downloaded from apkmody.io for more than a year now and it's basically free spotify premium. They (again, not me) say its pretty damn good, unbelievably good actually. They (NOT me) are pretty happy with it.
Would these people (that aren't you) say that you can use your normal Spotify account or do you have to start over?
When I came across the app (I think it was on reddit), users were recommending that you set up another account in case Spotify catches on and bans your account (so you don't lose your favs/playlists/etc)
And that's what those people (not me) did, they set their original account playlists to public so they can be accessed by the second account.
However for as long as they (not me) have been using that app nothing has happened to their account.
Also just checked, they (not me) have been using that app since august 2021 with zero problems.
use your normal spotify account and use xmanager spotify https://github.com/Team-xManager/xManager
to my knowledge there have never been any bans for it
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You'll own nothing and be happy.
I hate that this has been co-opted by "Jews control the world" people, because it is an apt and concise way of describing how shitty everything is going; some car manufacturers are brazen enough to charge a subscription fee for headed seats, and it's probably gonna stick and become the norm in maybe 10 years
Somebody will crack and release
Yeah but it would be like console hacking or jailbreaking, most people won't bother with getting it free so they will sustain the market pressure
It's only gonna get worse.....so we have that to look forward to
I don't get what the alternative is supposed to be. You can't make stuff like blockbuster quality movies on ads and/or donations alone. And between ads vs subscriptions, ads are iffy because you end up with sketchy or unethical advertisements. Plus ad blockers make it hard to sustain a business on just ads.
In an ideal world, nobody would need to "make a living" and we'd be able to offer more services for free. But we don't have that ideal world. Musicians, animators, writers, programmers and more all need to get paid somehow.
It's admittedly annoying how fractured subscriptions get, though. I miss when Netflix was the only streaming video subscription I needed. Now there's half a dozen major services and they all want exclusive contracts to show certain movies and TV.
Personally, I'm happy to pay for the stuff I use a lot. Which includes stuff that I don't even have to pay for (eg, I donated $20 to kbin). It does suck for stuff I only want a little of, though. eg, I don't have any news subscriptions because I only check news sites here and there and it's almost never the same site, too (mostly I get linked from sites like this). I want to see subscriptions become a bit more centralized, spanning multiple sites to account for this.
How about buying and owning things?
But we don't have that ideal world.
Steal everything until we do
When cable TV was first a thing, it was advertised as extra content and with NO commercials. Pay us money, we'll give you a big bundle of channels, and you won't have to see commercials anymore.
Then they started adding more and more commercials in. Nowadays, a half-hour slot is 1/3rd commercials, and probably another 15% of that time is credits and "previously on" or "before the break" or pointless shitty padding
Then Netflix came out. Pay us a monthly fee, you can see all this content whenever you want, no commercials.
Then everyone wanted a slice of Netflix's pie, and now we have a dozen separate streaming services you all have to pay monthly fees for.
The solution is Cable TV 2.0. Compile it all back into one service, charge a higher fee, cut all the ads out (again). Call it Fiber TV or something, idk. Otherwise people will realize it's easier to pirate shit again than to navigate and pay for 8 different streaming services
I just want to own stuff. I wanna pay for the series and music I like once and then have them forever. The problem with subscription gated media is that the subscription will eventually go away, and then so will the media. You will have paid hundreds over multiple years for it, but you will have nothing of it once it shuts down.
I think what would work best in an ideal scenario would be a free and independent platform. Something like Wikipedia or something.
Part of the subscription would be to keep the platform itself up and running, and anyone like Netflix, Disney, Fox, whomever would be able to upload their movies/shows/etc there, with no discrimination.
Payment could be the platform maintenance fee + access to the library of shows (and here more popular creators could get a bigger share of the pie) or it could be maintenace fee + paying for shows individually.
If only super intelligent dinosaurs that could recycle things for us and could remove the need for jobs, came in our planet. We'd have more time making Marvel movies too.
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We have to fight back against this. Remember the Horse Armor DLC? Everyone laughed... now look at shit. The best defense against this is an offense. Make this shit taboo and anyone who buys into it a fucking buffoon, socially.
I wish they would just let me buy shit lmao
the boss move of: just pirating it, at least then you'll actually have the physical files
It's quite similar to when I used to run a small cafe and people would say "you can make this yourself", "you can make that yourself" instead of buying stuff in - then they would say "if it hasn't sold by the end of the day, you can just eat it yourself - you don't have to throw it away".
Yes - that was fine when it was just egg mayonnaise. But then Tuna mayonnaise, and Chicken mayonnaise and then grated cheese, and ham....
When am I going to have time to eat all these unsold sandwich fillings? Oh and cakes, and scones....
A small amount is fine.
A few subscription services is fine.
But gradually EVERYTHING wants you to pay a "fair" monthly fee. Until you are spending more on these monthly fees, than you are on the electricity bill!
i hate subsribsion BASED
It was annoying with streaming cable replacements but I got it, I was replacing one overpriced subscription with a few lower priced ones. Now it’s mostly break even on that. I’m happy to have YoutubeTV, I split it with two friends and it works for me…
But lately it has been software subscriptions that have pushed me over the edge. I now have AllTrails, Strava, Adobe Photoshop / Lightroom, Silverstack XT, Xero, Mailfence, so on and so on… some days feels like my brain is gonna pop when the charges go through.
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I recently dislodged 100/month in subscriptions
Eh. Better than ads. At the end of the day streaming services, at least, are never going to be able to run on just donations.
Adblockers and piracy will let you have it for free AND with no ads.
Would it be possible for everyone to switch to piracy? Could the current piracy infrastructure support that? I've never actually considered that. Video is heavy.
Of course, if that's where we're going as a society we're going to need a new way to fund productions. That's not a bad thing, the artificial scarcity model we have is dumb. Maybe state-funded agencies like the BBC could massively expand.
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I don't pay for any of these.
Thank god you can play (and update) Zelda without online subscription. Once that is gone, i'll go postal.
WHERE TEMPLATE
Hey Google, disable up selling.
Did you want to listen to that on YouTube music and start your free trial?
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