• Nadya@kbin.social
          14·
          2 years ago

          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:

          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.

    • solberg@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      2·
      2 years ago

      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.

    • grus@kbin.social
      2·
      2 years ago

      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.

      • gmtom@kbin.social
        2·
        2 years ago

        Would these people (that aren’t you) say that you can use your normal Spotify account or do you have to start over?

        • grus@kbin.social
          1·
          2 years ago

          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.

    • GrandmasterFrank@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      12·
      2 years ago

      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

  • CoderKat@kbin.social
    6·
    2 years ago

    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.

    • citable6704@midwest.social
      6·
      2 years ago

      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

    • Kayn@dormi.zone
      4·
      2 years ago

      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.

    • highduc@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 years ago

      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.

    • beanssys@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      1·
      2 years ago

      for me, it’s far more about it being recurring than paying itself. I pay for software and media all the time. I just don’t like having to pay over and over when i’m likely only occasionally using these services

    • HerculeanTardigrade@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 years ago

      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.

  • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
    5·
    2 years ago

    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.

      • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
        2·
        2 years ago

        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.

        • CreamyWeenie@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          1·
          2 years ago

          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.

          I mean if everyone was using the same streaming or torrenting site probably not, but there are so many different sites to use that honestly I wouldn’t be surprised. If you do start pirating there are sites that are specifically for streaming shows, just make sure you have an adblocker or you’re gonna see a lot of porn ads. Also make sure to know what you’re downloading if torrenting, I’m not gonna get into the finer points on how to not get a virus or a cease & desist from your ISP if you go down that route, but there are plenty of details on that if you just look for it.

  • PenguinJuice@kbin.social
    4·
    2 years ago

    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.

    • Nadya@kbin.social
      2·
      2 years ago

      A small suggestion, only because using monthly prices sometimes makes things seem even cheaper than they are. Change it from $Monthly Cost to $Monthly Cost ($Annual Cost). For example instead of $11/mo for Apple Music it would be $11 ($132) and instead of $33 it would be $33 ($396).

      Doing this caused me to re-evaluate a number of monthly subscriptions I had, find cheaper (sometimes even free/“good enough”) alternatives. Other times it would make me realize I should update annual charges if it was available if it was something I planned to keep around anyway and the annual price was a good enough deal. It also causes you to re-evaluate which price tier you pay for. Like for Nitro - do you really need the extra perks for $84/yr or do you only actually care about emotes and slightly larger file uploads and the $3/mo Basic package would be good enough? Often times people go “Oh it’s only $7/mo difference anyway” and get the better package but don’t actually use the extra features they’re paying for.

    • GrandmasterFrank@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      1·
      2 years ago

      For real? That seems crazy to me, the only monthly charges I have are my phone bill and my gym membership. I’ve been tempted to get some services, like Hulu when I heard they got Community and that one Youtuber-shilled one that (if you used an oft-promoted coupon code) you get a full years subscription to their two streaming services which said Youtubers contributed exclusive videos/whole series there, but ultimately I never thought it was worth it and if I ever actually wanted to watch something I would search it on one of those pirate streaming sites or just torrent it.

      What kind of services do you end up spending for? Video streaming, Spotify, or utility stuff like dropbox?

      • fangleone2526@lemmy.fmhy.ml
        1·
        2 years ago

        do note that most of community is now available for the free on youtube and has been available for free on piracy websites for a looong time

  • thanksbrother@kbin.social
    2·
    2 years ago

    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.

    • variants_of_concern@lemmy.one
      1·
      2 years ago

      yeah I feel you I started getting rid of all my subscriptions about a year ago, I just went back to lightroom 6 which I own already and got rid of photoshop, I didnt use it for anything professional just making memes so I just use photopea for that. then for streaming I just setup a plex server and learned about usenet. I also started looking for software like davinci resolve instead of premiere pro, the old version of sketchup that they offer for free instead of the new cloud based one that I use for planning home remodeling. then I just started cancelling things that were nice to have but didnt really need, like the google play pass just because I wanted to fight against subscriptions and went and built a modded game boy advance instead