And it’ll stay that way until people use, and keep using, this space. So, to use an overused phrase, be the change you want to see :)

Growth is a secondary concern to me. I’m not against it but quality is much more important to me than quantity. And I mean quality in terms of content AND respectful interaction.

Historically, if one can even use the word for such a recent thing as the internet, techies are usually first to a new thing. And these types of conversations inevitably follow at some point as though growth at all costs is the only way to stave off death. And then a decade or so further on we end up with Xitter, Meta and Reddit where the anger is palpable and the interface revolves around pushing monetised hate at you and exploiting your private data for another source of monetisation.

I’m enjoying being able to go somewhere everyday where I don’t have awfulness pushed to a platform curated feed I can’t opt out of. If people want those things - fine they exist. I hope the fediverse does all it can to avoid interacting with or devolving to those places and that any discoverability tools that might get developed are for people not algorithms. I hope it remains an alternative to that mindset, not just another place to fling shit at each other.

Only Brits or BBC International viewers will know this character but Catherine Cawood from Happy Valley.

And obviously Ellen Ripley, Dana Scully and Sarah Connor.

I pay Bitwarden the tenner a year as I have no reason to distrust them and they’re definitely providing a more reliable, securer service than I can self-host.

I also do an encrypted export once per week and store that export to an encrypted cloud based service and an encrypted USB stick. Takes 2 minutes.

Bandcamp is still OK for me and I listen to some fairly obscure stuff.

Just to offer a heads up - there’s a new solution/site which is currently in Beta but is backed by good people (musicians). It needs an influx of music diversity (lots of metal at the moment) but if it gets that when it comes out of beta then it could very well be a good Bandcamp replacament - Ampwall

Incontinentia Buttocks.

Invitation To Love the soap opera that a lot of residents of Twin Peaks, especially Nadine, seemingly adored.

Bad idea. Last time someone did this we ended up with this timeline.

Less privacy invasion, less corporate, less fash, less incoherent fury, less trolling, less need to doomscroll.

user: @username@instancenameuserison.tld

community: !communityname@instancenamecommunityison.tld

West Kennet Long Barrow is a Neolithic barrow over 5,500 years old. It’s part of the numerous neolithic structures in Wiltshire, UK (which includes the frankly far less impressive but more famous Stonehenge).

Going inside it is a very odd feeling. You can see and touch ancient work marks put there by people who are so remote to us we know very little about them. I’ve visited numerous ancient world heritage sites and its unique (to me) in how close you feel to those people.

The Aubrey/Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian - yes, I know there’s been a movie (Master & Commander with Russel Crowe and Paul Bettany) but the series is much richer and deeper than any single movie could be.

Also, Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings series. Concentrate on the Fitz storyline, maybe give the Liveship series a miss.

A few little things rather than one or two big things - email advertised as private but they won’t let you use anonymous addresses (like anonaddy or duck.com) for recovery addresses, an ever growing portfolio of products that seem unfinished or incomplete or lacking in standard features like they’re trying to corner the whole privacy market rather than making one or two products but making them really good, poor customer service and support as a continual theme throughout their existence.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting they’re doing anything dodgy, I just feel that I don’t really trust them. They just make really odd choices and it all feels like a haphazard rush.

You would think that someone at Proton would’ve had the foresight to realise the reputational damage this (along with the LLM announcement) would do to the company.

Without wanting to sound smart after the fact, I’ve been suspicious about Proton for years. I briefly had an email account with them but I could never quite shake the feeling there is something off about the whole company. This move just confirms to me I was correct to be suspicious.

Instead of u/username its @username@instancedomain which translates to https://instancedomain/u/username

Instead of r/subname its !communityname@instancedomain which translates to https://instancedomain/c/communityname

Basically, in the body of a post or comment, use the ! or @ format to create a workable link.

I’d been flirting on and off with Lemmy for a year or so, not using it seriously (different username) but then u/spez deciding to sell user data to LLM’s coupled with the general air of permanent aggro in just about every sub led me to finally ditch it. I’ve had to go back a couple of times and every time I did I regretted it. It’s become Twitter level users intertwined with bot armies all flinging shit at each other.

Depending on what part of the world these people live in, the actions of these vigilantes might screw up the chance of a successful prosecution.

I’m in the UK and I remember watching a copper interviewed on the the TV asking people not to do it as a lot of the time it results in inadmissible evidence and might even give pedos chance to delete evidence. I think he also said he was aware of multiple instances of the pedo-hunters getting the wrong person at the ‘sting’.

That said, I doubt these pedo-hunters really care about abused kids, it seems mostly about bragging rights and youtube views.

It is worth noting though, that Proton doesn’t allow you to use certain domains for recovery addresses. Admittedly this was awhile ago and maybe things have changed there but when I first joined Proton they wouldn’t allow me to set a duck.com or simplelogin.com or addy.io address as a recovery email.

Obviously using an apple ID is stupid but Proton could make more of an effort too.

That’s true, there’s always going to have to be some trust, but a provider that takes the time and expense to invest in a privacy audit or defend their clients by not logging and establishing that in court certainly indicates they’re worth having that trust in.

Do ISP’s monitor or sell or pass on your data? Yes.

Do VPN’s? Depends on the VPN. Find one that doesn’t and can back that up with 3rd party audits and legal encounters.

So can a good VPN protect your privacy? No, not by themselves. A VPN is part of an overall toolkit to be as private as you personally would like to be. It can help protect your privacy, that’s all.

It’s really that simple.