This only really works in cases where people are making a free choice. But since people don’t live in a vacuum where consumerism, capitalism, advertising, greed, power imbalances, class divides, poverty, platform decay, planned obsolescence, geoblocking, price gouging, etc. don’t exist, a significant portion of piracy comes from either having little choice (I’m poor and I either pirate or I miss out) or making a choice based on ethical considerations (such as not giving money to a corporation that is known to engage in unethical behaviour). Or that we’ve had decades, if not hundreds of years of elites/corporate propaganda telling us that poor people are poor because they’re bad and we must listen with zero critical thinking to our capitalist overlords who are wealthy because they’re smart and know what’s best for us stupid plebs and here you go, have some bread and a circus so you can ignore your long work hours for pittance pay which is totally your fault for being dumb and not because the system is rigged against you, also don’t ever cross us because we control the politicians that make the laws that say piracy is worse than corporate fraud, even though corporate fraud and tax evasion costs countries and communities infinitely more than piracy ever did…

Yeah, piracy isn’t simple.

They also monitor outbound streaming. I’ve twice had a documentary movie I was watching at a theatre stopped because so one was supposedly live streaming the movie to the internet. The second time it happened they stopped the movie until the person doing it stopped, only it turned out they made a mistake and no one was live streaming it at all - they just interrupted the movie for fucking ages because of wanky attitudes. What made it even more stupid was that it was a special screening for a one off event AND a pretty niche documentary that most people wouldn’t give a fuck about let alone pirate 🙄

Maybe break down by gender could be related to how accessible technology is to genders based on barriers like sexism and gender-based hostility? A bit like how IT jobs have less women (despite things like the first programmers being women and it originally being a “woman’s job”), non-binary folk and tend to be male-dominated? You have to ask why something that shouldn’t have a gender bias is gendered. In this instance, I would be looking at why there’s a difference between Western/W.E.I.R.D. countries and Indonesia - what in Indonesia is making it more accessible to women when the reverse is true in countries known to be hostile to non-males in the technology world.

(Possibly I have way overcomplicated what I’m trying to say lol but I’m a bit sick at the moment so not easy to think through a woolly head).

I used to almost exclusively pirate because I couldn’t afford much of anything. Steam has actually enabled me to purchase most of the games I use since I can wait till they’re on special and cheap. There’s also a huge amount of indie games that would never have seen the light of day if they could only release on physical media or through their own website or whatever.
no Steam isn’t perfect, I would like Valve to take less of a cut but in terms of making games more accessible, I think they’ve done a decent job.
No shade on my fellow pirates who still exclusively pirate and don’t want to feed the corporate beast.

Are you seriously comparing devastating and life threatening diseases and bodily waste to food that thousands of people eat every day without complaint?

If your TV is Android based then there’s the SmartTube app. YouTube without the ads and tracking.

Nissan Leafs are plenty DIY repairable. It was part of our decision making process when considering buying an EV. There’s also electric conversions if that’s your jam.

That’s already happened.

My spouse was just telling me about someone who got stuck waiting for an hour because their car decided to unexpectedly do an update

Enshittification :(

As an ex webdesigner/dev, Squarespace, Weebly and the like killed my income well before ChatGPT did.

Thanks for the explainer! Also, Google’s response is such a crock of shit.

Ghasts Gone Wild

“injured rights holders”

🙄🙄🙄🙄🤮

But the hurtful comments leave a bigger mark than the good ones

As a volunteer for a charity, I feel this so much. I work incredibly hard to help people, I get paid nothing for my time. The entitlement and rude demands burns me out way faster. Especially when people seem to put far more effort into complaining and being rude than they do thanking me or showing appreciation for what we do.

Meanwhile in my country (New Zealand), privacy laws are slowly being eroded and government spying and censorship is increasing.
I wish we had GDPR.

Yep, I used the add ons for many many years. But it’s the only explanation I have. I’m not a content creator so I’m not worried about the tiny number of videos I have uploaded, almost all of which aren’t listed anyway (and I don’t think mot people would consider unlisted videos, “Is my aquarium pump supposed to be making this sound?” or “Here’s how you use a tap adapter to attach a hose to a shower mixer” to be controversial lol).

I really don’t know how to explain it. One day it was all good, the next day my comments couldn’t be seen anymore.

And no I’m not someone who cries that I never make arsehole comments but actually does. I’m only ever respectful and I have zero interest in contributing to outrage circlejerks or drama.

So all I have left that Google wouldn’t like is my use of those add ons 🤷🏻‍♀️

EDIT: Maybe my sin was commenting on Second Thought videos and being anti-capitalist and anti-Google 😅✌️

I like my Kobo combined with Calibre. I’ve ever replaced the default software, just modded it. But you can completely change the software on it if you want.

https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kobo_eReader_hacks

It’s unfortunately my account that’s shadowbanned. Kinda moot at this point because fuck Google regardless. Just seems absurd to me (but not surprising) that they would shadow ban a paying customer.

I think you mean demons