greenskye

Yeah, I’m struggling so hard to just limit my knowledge. Does it really make a difference to me personally if I miss one of the fucked up things Trump does? If you’re already radicalized, it doesn’t really matter if he’s done 20 things wrong or 50. There’s no further room to sway your opinion and no further actions you can take. It’s just beating your mental health into the ground for no benefit.

But God damn is hard to convince the algorithms you don’t want to see that shit anymore. You truly can’t even do the simplest thing online without it showing up.

Yes, but actually managing to use crypto for commerce is pretty tricky.

Not sure of the state of things currently, but back in the day it was so volatile that you had to buy more than you need because it might lose value before you could pay with it. And the company also couldn’t cash out with the same value either. That’s why Valve stopped accepting crypto if I remember correctly.

It would be nice if it actually worked well for that, but I expect if it ever did approach broad adoption the powers that be would come down hard on it to prevent losing their control.

Lucky them. My company is attempting the Jenga strategy. How many core people can leave without replacement before it all crumbles. They’re absolutely confident they can just hire some people once it’s clear that it’s all falling apart and those people will be able to save the tower before it falls.

You were saying they were motivated by advertisers. That these websites can exist if only they chose not to use ads.

But hosting a website of any decent size takes money. So to pay for it you need ads OR payments from your users. Either a subscription or donation.

So if the websites, like you suggest, avoid advertisers to get away from advertiser sensibilities, they’re still subject to payment processors. Which have many of the same kind of hang ups.

Patreon has had several crackdowns on content solely because of payment processors getting upset. Patreon doesn’t care. The patreon creators are happy and their fans are happy. Everyone involved in the commerce was happy with the business. But PayPal was unhappy and the fans couldn’t send money to the people they were supporting without that middle man. So a company almost entirely unrelated gets to dictate what can and can’t be hosted on Patreon. And this has happened multiple times on multiple sites.

Primarily right now it happens to NSFW content, but there’s zero protections from PayPal and visa doing the same for LGBT content, content critical of China, etc. They’re a private company so all our rights and protections don’t apply.

Theoretically there’s an alternative. You could always make your own banking system and your own Internet (good old ‘free market’ at work) just so you can pay for your website hosting costs. Since that’s technically an option, then they aren’t legally interfering. It’s just business and they can choose not to do business with you if they want. Just as easy as building your own power grid and water system. (Though even if you did try to make your own, they’d heavily interfere to stop you).

So yes, avoiding ads will free you from their control, but it will also limit you to only the size of website that can be hosted for free. Anything of a size that would need funding is subject to these company’s morality rules. Which also makes these communities small, isolated and easily dismantled if they prove to be a problem.

As soon as any one instance gets big enough and needs to get funding, the payment processors will crack down on allowed content. Don’t like it? Tough luck in receiving the money people are trying to send you.

No it’s really payment processors.

There have been multiple successful ad-free websites in the past. But they still need revenue to function. Revenue their users happily pay.

But then Visa or PayPal or whoever is handling the transactions starts to pay attention and then all the sudden there’s new rules in place or else they hike fees or just stop processing payments altogether.

And on the Internet, there is no true alternative methods of payment (hint: any viable methods are quickly suppressed by those same payment processors).

So the only way any website gets big is left to the whims of advertisers or payment processors (usually both).

I have no idea why we as a people are somehow fine with private companies having a complete stranglehold on all significant online business. Why we’ve allowed the government to privatize digital transactions, subject to very little rights or protections. It’s allowing private corporations to massively suppress free speech, commerce, and social gatherings in the digital sphere.

Honestly our supposed freedoms are more and more limited these days because they only apply to public spaces, but there’s been a continual erosion of ‘public’. Where is the modern town square? If the only place you can practice your ‘rights’ is almost nowhere, do you really have those rights at all?

The government should be mandating that ‘digital infrastructure’ (ISPs, data centers, payment processors, etc) are neutral and can’t be utilized to bully others out of business. That their privileged position also comes with extra responsibilities and restrictions so you don’t have the digital equivalent of cutting off water to an abortion clinic because the water utility is pro-life.

Agreed. Every company deals with this exact same issue on a smaller scale. IT departments, building maintenance, administration, etc. All the costs to do business that don’t directly bring in profit.

I don’t get why they think a country wouldn’t have similar areas. Stuff you have to pay for, but isn’t directly helping GDP or overall success.

For me there’s a significant volume difference between 7-8. 7 is too soft and 8 is too loud. The difference between those two also sounds greater than 6-7, like it’s missing a step or something and is doing two at once.