It is great to have experienced users around. Certainly I hope together we can learn and improve from one another, particularly the people running things, even if they lost your confidence. I don’t know how experienced they are or the particulars of the situation, but I do believe there is no bad will and I hope they will get a better hang of it. It really sucks that there are users that could have their life really impacted for something like this, so I hope they take care of themselves and be cautious, and we all be mindful of each other, especially of those more vulnerable as you mention.

Thanks for your input.

Why would you feel comfortable providing them with any information of yours if you live in a country where you may be concerned for your safety - not even now, but in a few years - for having the unmitigated gall to admit you are (gay/trans/bisexual/a believer in a socialist meritocracy/atheist/muslim) on a place where there are no legal precautions actually being taken? Where the word of someone sending a letter matters more than what the law might actually say?

As I said, I agree that communication has not been great. I can budge on that, even if it is not even my original point. The admins (and all the fediverse really) could more clearly state that everything on this site is basically public. This is not Signal, this is not Telegram, this is not the dark web and this is not a corporation with a legal department. User should be mindful of that when posting. It is precisely people under immoral laws and governments, or concerned about personal safety the ones that need to be careful about their activities, because if their risk is anything greater than downloading a videogame without paying, some guy in another country reaching out to a lawyer for an hour is not likely to provide them relief. I don’t like that, but is the reality. The site should improve on making the users aware of that reality.

About my original point, it seems that we agree that the site is not under any obligation to provide legal shield, whatever legal options exist or not, are costly or not. It would be great if they provided them. I think setting up an operation like this at own cost for free is a show of values and the quality of a person, and I think that would show if the stakes were higher, like the examples you provide. It would also be great that people with expertise in legal affairs, like you seem to be, volunteered to carry on that job, like the admins carry the technical job voluntary. But not them nor you or anybody should be forced to do so. Exclusively the users up in arms almost demanding piracy free-for-all content, are showing unjust entitlement and misunderstanding about how the fediverse works.

I hope you’re not going to take this the wrong way

Absolutely not, I also agree, as some others have pointed out, that there have been mishappens with communication, so I’m glad that there’s discussion about the issue. Thanks for clarifying with your knowledge and doing so nicely.

this is not at all what is involved in legal services or remotely the costs involved

To be honest, everything I know about that is what I have read about the number of cases when platforms or other kind of purveyors of piracy are sentenced to or settle paying tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands or even millions. Those are real cases where the people involved obviously felt very confident about their legal safety. Surely, most of the situations are not like that and don’t even get to be in the news because of how insignificant the resolutions are.

But, is there a way to be sure about what kind of outcome would lemmy.world would get to be completely confident about doing or not doing one thing or another?

Costs for lawyers are typically in the $100-$600/hour range, with very few (top partners at large firms) getting into the $2k-$3k/hour territory. A lawyer with a specialty in intellectual property is going to land smack in the middle of average these days, around $250-$350/hr.

Is that just one time? Is that total to get a safe and definitive resolution? Or is that every time the situation arises? What about companies that exist exclusively to massively send takedown requests? What about copyright trolls? If the instance openly accepts the legal liability, the number of times that this happens will decrease, increase or stay the same?

The reality is, them making guesses - and immediately backing down to any request - is a problem for anyone using their servers. Its a real concern

I guess we go back to the point I tried to make. My position is that the instance admins are not obligated to be a legal shield for the users to have any kind of content that we want on the platform. This is not a privacy-focused nor a free speech-focused service, never has been, data is not encrypted, users have identifiable information, there are commercial services being used to run it, used under another set of TOS and hired with real world legally responsible identities. To say ‘Well the legal cost of keeping piracy on the site is not that high I think’ seems like an unfair position to me.

I do pirate stuff myself, sometimes because it is more convenient, sometimes because it is moral, sometimes is the only option. But I take the responsibility of doing so myself. If whatever site I use decides to shut down tomorrow, I won’t make a fuss about it. Demanding to someone else to face the possibility of legal trouble because it will only take them a few hours and max a couple of thousand dollars and is comfortable to me, is what seems concerning to me.

I don’t like the decision, like most people here.

But it’s unbelievable to see the reaction of many users. Providing a free uncompensated server and bandwidth and monitoring and all the related stuff is apparently not enough. There’s is people basically demanding free legal representation, protection, and challenges to many country laws. That’s completely insane. The comments criticizing the instance for ‘folding’ against legal request better have ready 100k USD for retainer of a top copyright legal firm, with even more ready for a lengthy and expensive legal battle. Otherwise it is just nuts to me the responses we are seeing.

Again, of course I don’t like it and will consider my options like moving instance, but I understand that I am responsible for the content I seek and the legality of it. I will not feel entitled to offload the burden of that responsibility on someone else demanding that it be carried for free.

To the instance admins I only have to say thank you for the service you provide, thank you for putting in actions the spirit of sharing and community. And please do exercise your right to protect yourself legally.

For us users is seems so simple as just export our stuff and go somewhere else, but for the instance admins there have been so much time and other resources invested that certainly must be sad and frustrating to risk it all, so it’s better to follow the way that leads to the continuation of the project, and we should understand that if we want the project to continue, like I do.

I wish there were better options, like better laws or the independent tech for better protection and anonymity, but this is the reality of what we have and we all have to engage with things as they are. We can keep demanding changes to the people really in charge of the system instead of fighting among each other.

Let’s hope for a smooth upgrade and many thanks to all of you making this possible to all of us users!

-Me talking to people on twitter after nov 22 and before leaving

Didn’t uninstall any of my AdBlock layers, but YouTube didn’t survive.

Even though I actually never saw the famous popup, the whole thing made me take steps after months of feeling that the recommendations sucked and I was often wasting lots of time watching stuff I didn’t even like.

Now I’m actually getting back into reading and audiobooks, and using invidious for the occasional watch.

Yeah I’ve also been having issues with fedora and been thinking of switching to Arch… Looking forward to it

that would be great of course but you know who’s very ready to double down and lose billions instead of saying ‘uhmm you know what I think I was wrong and I need to correct course’?

yeah that guy

not directly making money but they can keep creditors at bay by showing not so ugly MAU numbers

i’m not gonna say to anybody that they should stop using twitter right now or they are morally evil, but I would say to everyone that it would be so funny that banks took twitter from him if things declined too much

The tragedy of edge is that it is technically a fantastic browser for windows but made by Microsoft.

Just thinking about the engineers that built such great memory management and security features that no other browser has just to have the marketing guy come in and say ‘yeah put these three layers of bloat on top oh and don’t forget to add the new backdoor we need…’ only to see that all their work is basically a tech meme…

I guess they must get home and cry while hugging their stock options and 300k/y contract the poor guys…

Let this be the regular reminder that any time that a gigantic for profit corporation seems to be doing the right thing it’s a mere coincidence and they are following their bottom line. The moment those two depart, they will look after their bottom line right thing be damned. There are no moral corporations.

Maybe those good things they do while are convenient to them are moral and bring real benefits and can be followed and celebrated, but ultimately they are a convenient mask to trick customers. So don’t ever be loyal to a brand, be loyal to principles.

Remember Jack the Dripper?

Completely agree. I try not to use it but don’t really have a similar replacement. For some reason there are tons of notes apps, but the ones that kind of resemble keep fall short of the easiness and practicality of it.

Right now I’m just waiting for Quillpad to add sync capabilities to see if we are finally there.

that’s exactly the amount of peanut butter I eat per month but it’s the smooth kind. I was about to say ‘how could you do that’ but never really tried the chunky style so I guess I’ll hold on to the judgment lmao

Probably not what you had in mind but I won twice in my country’s version of HQ Trivia, total of about $60 usd.

They kept saying that there were some technical problems and delaying payment. In my country that amount is not nothing but also not a ton of money so I really didn’t bother too much. My brother on the other hand kept calling and emailing until I guess he was a bigger nuisance than it was worth and they finally paid.

PayPal took an unreasonable chunk, I gave my brother like half for his efforts and I kept like $20. All things considered probably a good way to spend those 20 minutes playing.

A few things:

Privacy-wise, no, neither one of those Microsoft services are good alternatives to Google. Microsoft is just another flavor of an enormous corporation milking your personal information for profit. If that’s your number one concern and decision maker, then stop here and consider something else. I don’t think there’s anything as polished as Google drive, but some actually private services are pretty good. Proton Drive is usually the most recommended. I use filen.io, it is very cheap, encrypted and works pretty well. Skiff Drive is also very good, they don’t have as many options for drive space but they have a suite with email, calendar, drive storage and documents (not like Office mind you, a more simple kind, like formatted notes), all encrypted. If you want something that allows collaboration and is well integrated skiff is probably the best option.

Now if you don’t want the highest privacy but just something that isn’t google, well I have used OneDrive and it has never worked well for me. The short period of time that I decided to use it on windows it broke constantly, I had to log out and in a few times because out of nowhere it stopped working. It didn’t delete files or resynced files that I had deleted in some other device. Maybe those issues have been fixed since, I don’t know. But even if we completely ignored the privacy aspect, I would not recommend OneDrive to anyone.

Maybe the biggest issue is the office suite. If you need the advanced features of Microsoft Office, there’s simply nothing that can replace it. If you don’t, then a local alternative may work for you, like LibreOffice or Onlyoffice. You can also use office online, it’s simple but it is maybe the second best option after full desktop office. But again, you are relying on OneDrive even a little. What I do when I need it is I download the file I need to work from my filen drive, upload it to office online, work with it, download when I’m done and move it to my cloud. It’s a bit cumbersome but I’ve never had any problems. But mostly I use Onlyoffice on my desktop.

None of the private alternatives are as easy and comfortable as Google or even Microsoft services, that’s for sure, so whatever route you end up following make sure to try first so that you can see what to expect and what is the best for you.

In the road to privacy I’ve found that being an absolutist of the ‘ditch everything right now and move to Foss’ kind is not a sustainable way for most people and only leads to them going back to the old ways. Small careful steps one at the time is an option that almost anyone can get used to and work long term.

I recommend you to check privacyguides.org for more explanations and good alternatives.

Thanks for the long read and good luck.

finance is full of that kind of terms that would even be goofy if they weren’t that misleading.

when the economy contracts very often is called ‘negative growth’.

Just trying this today and it blows me away how smooth and fast is on the browser. Thank you.

don’t be so hard on yourself. over time, we all just stop paying so much attention to every single internet drama, it’s tiring and we have better stuff to do.

and the point is that epic games has been really liberal with the freebies for their users ever since they set up shop as a competitor to steam. they give away a game every couple of weeks and even more on certain special seasons, including triple a games. someone following them since the begging must have a library well over a hundred games now, completely for free. despite that, they are finding very hard to find sympathy and market share among certain sectors of the gaming community, because their store is just not at the level of steam and some other questionable practices, even so far as to still be operating at a loss even now years later. you can see the giveaway games just below the current discounts at the home page or in the free games page almost at the top https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/free-games and of you use telegram there’s a channel that notify you every time there’s something new for free https://t.me/epicfreegames