TikTok Shop Sells Viral GPS Trackers Marketed to Stalkers
TikTok Shop is selling GPS trackers marketed with viral videos that have voiceovers explicitly encouraging secretly tracking a romantic partner. Some of the videos have millions of views, and TikTok Shop’s own metrics show that that more than a hundred thousand of the devices have been sold. One of the accounts 404 Media found “If your girl says she’s just out with friends every night, you’d better slap one of these on her car—no, it is not an AirTag, it’s a real GPS tracker,” one clip, which has 5 million views, begins. The video shows someone putting a tracker in various hidden locations in a car—a plastic bag in the trunk, magnetically attached underneath, or on the inside of the hood. “And, unlike AirTags, this thing doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t send alerts, she will never know it’s there. It’s tiny, black, magnetic, hide it under the seat, in the trunk, wherever. It’s got its own SIM so you can track her anywhere in the world, no wifi, no bluetooth, just raw location data whenever you want it.”
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The trackers are advertised as undetectable by Apple’s FindMy system. Many of the videos encourage people to secretly install the devices in their partners’ cars if they suspect them for things like being “out with friends every night.” TikTok deleted the video mentioned above after 404 Media asked the company for comment, but dozens of similar videos remain online, and the trackers are still for sale.
“This is absolutely being framed as a tool of abuse,” said Eva Galperin, co-founder of the Coalition Against Stalkerware and Director of Cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Anything where the justification is ‘catch your partner cheating’ or ‘get peace of mind about your partner’ is enabling coercive control,” she said.
404 Media found a handful of accounts promoting these types of trackers, and there are several different versions on the TikTok Shop. Once a user clicks from the videos into TikTok Shop, the algorithm began to show us many more listings. One of the clips we saw has 86,500 likes, and links to a tracker that had 32,500 sales. Another from the same vendor currently has 97,900 sales, and there are several accounts offering the same products with similar branding and scripts. In the comments of one of the videos, a user says “I bought some and put it on cars of girls I find attractive at the gym.” The original poster responds with “Ok 😂.”
The TikTok content policy says that the platform does “not allow any violent threats, promotion of violence, incitement to violence, or promotion of criminal activities that may harm people, animals, or property.” We asked TikTok for comment about the videos that had been posted by one of the accounts we’d originally seen.
A spokesperson for TikTok said "We don't allow content encouraging people to use devices for secret surveillance and have removed this content and banned the account that posted it. We further prohibit the sale of concealed video or audio recording devices on our platform." However, 404 Media was able to findmanymorealmostidenticalvideoson the platform the following day, raising questions over how proactively the platform is monitoring to prevent content like this.
The videos skirt around the legality of what they are suggesting. One voiceover asks, over footage of the tracker being attached to a car, “it’s illegal to track people using this thing? I don’t know, I’m not a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure if you stalk someone using this GPS tracker, you’re probably gonna get in trouble.” playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2… The majority of the videos, though, frame the trackers as a way to spy on a partner: “men with cheating wives, you might wanna get one of these,” one video in Spanish begins. “Not everyone who uses this is crazy, they just want answers.” “Guess what my girlfriend put in my car?,” another says. Other videos start with ”Don’t let what happened at the coldplay concert happen to you”, “She seriously didn’t trust me, so you know what, I put one in hers too”, or “You got a cheating girlfriend?”
Eleven states explicitly prohibit digital location or GPS tracking in their stalking laws, and a further fifteen states prohibit tracking a vehicle without the consent of the owner. “Showing people how to do something that might be illegal is not necessarily illegal,” Galperin said. But TikTok is still allowing people to make money by marketing the tech specifically for the use of spying on a partner. Alongside the trackers, the same creators are advertising secret audio-recording devices with similar abusive framing. “Your girl always stepping out to take calls? Want to know who she’s really talking to? Just place this AI recorder in her car—she’ll never notice”, says one post, tagged #husband, #wife, and #coldplay.
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Video advertising a voice recorder as "the legal way"
Another video for the audio devices with 136,000 views describes bugging a cheating girlfriend’s car: “I heard everything she said with that guy.” Several videos claim that secretly recording audio is legal (“Think your girlfriend’s cheating? Want to know who the guy is? Then do it the right way—legally” and “Got a feeling something’s off? Then find out the truth—the legal way” and “Why the hell did I find a used condom in my car?”) However, recording a conversation without the awareness of the people involved can often be illegal.
Galperin also said that the TikTok videos reflect an extremely common attitude. “You would be amazed how many people think stalking, or recordings, or stalkerware is perfectly justified, as long as they think their partner is up to something like cheating,” she told 404 Media.
A 2021 Kaspersky survey found that 30 percent of 21,000+ respondents found “no problem in secretly monitoring their partner” under certain circumstances. The survey report also found that 29 percent of respondents who had been digitally stalked had their location tracked.
These devices are advertised and sold as undetectable. However, all the examples I found had high numbers of one-star reviews, many of which complained that the trackers did not work as advertised, and defeated “the point” by alerting people to their presence via Apple’s FindMy system. The Apple support site for FindMy-enabled devices says that “They should not be used to track people, and should not be used to track property that does not belong to you.”
Reviews for one of the trackers on TikTok Shop
In 2021, 404 Media’s Sam Cole reported on Apple AirTags being used to stalk women; in many cases, by attaching them to or hiding them in their cars. For that story, she reviewed 150 police reports of people who had said they were being tracked by current or former partners. After that story, Apple added safety features like phone notifications when an Airtag is nearby, but an ongoing class action lawsuit argues that the devices are still insufficiently “stalker proof.” Several of the videos were tagged #coldplay Earlier this month, WIRED reported that TikTok shop was selling stickers that could block the recording light on Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses. Again, many of the reviews found that the product didn’t work as advertised, but the platform did allow the stickers to remain available for sale.
Study shows 97% of developers believe gen AI is transforming the industry, with a focus on creating more dynamic worlds, intelligent nonplayer characters (NPCs), and more efficient workflows...
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It was possible to bypass the corporate login on an internal business card ordering website and exploit it to download the details of more than 270k Intel employees/workers.
An internal “Product Hierarchy” website had easily decryptable hardcoded credentials that provided a second way to download the details of every Intel employee. More hardcoded credentials made it possible to gain admin access to the system.
An internal “Product Onboarding” website had easily decryptable hardcoded credentials that provided a third way to download the details of every Intel employee. More hardcoded credentials made it possible to gain admin access to the system.
It was possible to bypass the corporate login on Intel’s SEIMS Supplier Site and further exploit it to download the details of every Intel employee (the fourth way). Additional client-side modifications made it possible to gain full access to the system to view large amounts of confidential information about Intel’s suppliers.
New machine learning framework bridges the embodiment gap between robots and humans and enables quadrupedal robots to perform versatile movements like pouring soda, organizing shoes, and even cleaning up cat litter.
I know this is the most ridiculous idea, but we need to pack our bags and make a new internet protocol, to separate us from the rest, at least for a while. Either way, most “modern” internet things (looking at you, JavaScript) are not modern at all, and starting over might help more than any of us could imagine.
Gemini is a new internet technology supporting an electronic library of interconnected text documents. That's not a new idea, but it's not old fashioned either. It's timeless, and deserves tools which treat it as a first class concept, not a vestigial corner case. Gemini isn't about innovation or disruption, it's about providing some respite for those who feel the internet has been disrupted enough already. We're not out to change the world or destroy other technologies. We are out to build a lightweight online space where documents are just documents, in the interests of every reader's privacy, attention and bandwidth.
I've personally played with Gemini a few months ago, and now want a new Internet as opposed to a new Web.
Replace IP protocols with something better. With some kind of relative addressing, and delay-tolerant synchronization being preferred to real-time connections between two computers. So that there were no permanent global addresses at all, and no centralized DNS.
With the main "Web" over that being just replicated posts with tags hyperlinked by IDs, with IDs determined by content. Structured, like semantic web, so that a program could easily use such a post as directory of other posts or a source of text or retrieve binary content.
With user identities being a kind of post content, and post authorship being too a kind of post content or maybe tag content, cryptographically signed.
Except that would require to resolve post dependencies and retrieve them too with some depth limit, not just the post one currently opens, because, if it'd be like with bittorrent, half the hyperlinks in found posts would soon become dead, and also user identities would possibly soon become dead, making authorship check impossible.
And posts (suppose even sites of that flatweb) being found by tags, maybe by author tag, maybe by some "channel" tag, maybe by "name" tag, one can imagine plenty of things.
The main thing is to replace "clients connecting to a service" with "persons operating on messages replicated on the network", with networked computers sharing data like echo or ripples on the water. In what would be the general application layer for such a system.
OK, this is very complex to do and probably stupid.
It's also not exactly the same level as IP protocols, so this can work over the Internet, just like the Internet worked just fine, for some people, over packet radio and UUCP or FTN email gates and copper landlines. Just for the Internet to be the main layer in terms of which we find services, on the IP protocols, TCP, UDP, ICMP, all that, and various ones and DNS on application layer, - that I consider wrong, it's too hierarchical. So it's not a "replacement".
IP is the most robust and best protocol humanity ever invented. No other protocol survived the test of time this well. How would you even go about replacing it with decentralization? Something needs to route the PC to the server
I don't want client-server model. I want sharing model. Like with Briar.
The only kind of "servers" might be relays, like in NOSTR, or machines running 24/7 like Briar mailbox.
IP. How would I go about replacing it? I don't know, I think Yggdrasil authors have written something about their routing model, but 1) it's represented as ipv6, so IP, 2) it's far over my head, 3) read the previous, I don't really want to replace it as much as not to make it the main common layer.
client-server model. I want sharing model. Like with Briar
Guess what
Briar itself, and every pure P2P decentralized network where all nodes are identical... are built on Internet Sockets which inherently require one party ("server") to start listening on a port, and another party ("client") to start the conversation.
Briar uses TCP/IP, but it uses Tor routing, which is IMO a smart thing to do
Just provide a full dump.zip plus incremental daily dumps and they won't have to scrape ? Isn't that an obvious solution ? I mean, it's public data, it's out there, do you want it public or not ? Do you want it only on openai and google but nowhere else ? If so then good luck with the piranhas
The problem isn't that the data is already public.
The problem is that the AI crawlers want to check on it every 5 minutes, even if you try to tell all crawlers that the file is updated daily, or that the file hasn't been updated in a month.
AI crawlers don't care about robots.txt or other helpful hints about what's worth crawling or not, and hints on when it's good time to crawl again.
Yeah but there's would be scrappers if the robots file just pointed to a dump file.
Then the scraper could just do a spot check a few dozen random page and check the dump is actually up to date and complete and then they'd know they don't need to waste any time there and move on.
Given that they already ignore robots.txt I don't think we can assume any sort of good manners on their part. These AI crawlers are like locusts, scouring and eating everything in their path,
Crawlers are expensive and annoying to run, not to mention unreliable and produce low quality data. If there really were a site dump available, I don't see why it would make sense to crawl the website, except to spot check the dump is actually complete. This used to be standard and it came with open API access for all before the silicon valley royals put the screws on everyone
Dunno, I feel you're giving way too much credit to these companies. They have the resources. Why bother with a more proper solution when a single crawler solution works on all the sites they want?
Is there even standardization for providing site dumps? If not, every site could require a custom software solution to use the dump. And I can guarantee you no one will bother with implementing any dump checking logic.
If you have contrary examples I'd love to see some references or sources.
The internet came together to define the robots file standard, it could just as easily come with a standard API for database dumps. But decided on war since the 2023 API wars and now we're going to see all the small websites die while facebook gets even more powerful.
Well there you have it. Although I still feel weird that it's somehow "the internet" that's supposed to solve a problem that's fully caused AI companies and their web crawlers. If a crawler keeps spamming and breaking a site I see it as nothing short of a DOS attack.
Not to mention that robots.txt is completely voluntary and, as far as I know, mostly ignored by these companies. So then what makes you think that any them are acting in good faith?
To me that is the core issue and why your position feels so outlandish. It's like having a bully at school that constantly takes your lunch and your solution being: "Just bring them a lunch as well, maybe they'll stop."
The solution is breaking intellectual property and making sharing public data easy and efficient. A top-down imposition DESIGNED to crush the giants back down to the level playing field of the small players into a system where cooperation empower the small and place the burdens on the big with the understanding that all public data is "our" data and nobody, including its custodian should get between US and IT. Something designed by actually competent and clever politicians who will anticipate and counter all the dirty tricks big tech would try to regain the upper hand. I want big tech permanently losing on a field designed to disadvantage anything that accumulates power.
I use Anubis on my personal website, not because I think anything I’ve written is important enough that companies would want to scrape it, but as a “fuck you” to those companies regardless
That the bots are learning to get around it is disheartening, Anubis was a pain to setup and get running
Okay what about...what about uhhh... Static site builders that render the whole page out as an image map, making it visible for humans but useless for crawlers 🤔🤔🤔
I wasn't being totally serious, but also, I do think that while accessibility concerns come from a good place, there is some practical limitation that must be accepted when building fringe and counter-cultural things. Like, my hidden rebel base can't have a wheelchair accessible ramp at the entrance, because then my base isn't hidden anymore. It sucks that some solutions can't work for everyone, but if we just throw them out because it won't work for 5% of people, we end up with nothing. I'd rather have a solution that works for 95% of people than no solution at all. I'm not saying that people who use screen readers are second-class citizens. If crawlers were vision-based then I might suggest matching text to background colors so that only screen readers work to understand the site. Because something that works for 5% of people is also better than no solution at all. We need to tolerate having imperfect first attempts and understand that more sophisticated infrastructure comes later.
But yes my image map idea is pretty much a joke nonetheless
We had a trust based system for so long. No one is forced to honor robots.txt, but most big players did. Almost restores my faith in humanity a little bit. And then AI companies came and destroyed everything. This is why we can't have nice things.
There once was a dream of the semantic web, also known as web2. The semantic web could have enabled easy to ingest information of webpages, removing soo much of the computation required to get the information. Thus preventing much of the AI crawling cpu overhead.
What we got as web2 instead was social media. Destroying facts and making people depressed at a newer before seen rate.
Web3 was about enabling us to securely transfer value between people digitally and without middlemen.
What crypto gave us was fraud, expensive jpgs and scams. The term web is now even so eroded that it has lost much of its meaning. The information age gave way for the misinformation age, where everything is fake.
I feel like half of the blame capitalism gets is valid, but the other half is just society. I don't care what kind of system you're under, you're going to have to deal with other people.
Oh, and if you try the system where you don't have to deal with people, that just means other people end up handling you.
The neat part is that anything bad that happens under capitalism is capitalism's fault, but anything good that happens is actually socialism happening in spite of capitalism, somehow.
You: “capitalism is the reason we have everything! And when people get sick of capitalism’s greed and form social policies to help the labor class because they continually get exploited in spite of capitalism, somehow that’s capitalism’s fault!”
Thanks for exemplifying the "CaPiTaLiSm BaD" person from my original comment so well! The total inability to engage with my comment to the point of inventing a whole new one to argue with was a really nice touch!
Optimise for maximum happiness and freedom and minimum suffering on a societal level, while making sure that a certain threshold of freedom-from-suffering is met for every single individual. (So that happiness for the majority is not reached via the suffering of minorities.) Obviously there can be arguments about where we draw the lines for the specifics of these.
Quite a few ways have been developed to measure happiness, wellbeing, flourishing, quality of life, whatever nuance you want to pick.
We have ample proof that it's a system that fundamentally undermines societal happiness by incentivising the accumulation of wealth at the expense of the wellbeing of people and ecosystems. It's decades overdue to radically change the way the world's economy works. (Which is of course not something those with the most power want, so unlikely to happen any time soon.)
The information age gave way for the misinformation age, where everything is fake.
and if there's one entity/person most responsible for that, it's Putin or the GOP. Most of it is political, and very little to do with capitalism itself. Except that capitalism surrounds and is intertwined with everything.
Still, if you get rid of capitalism, it doesn't get rid of politics. I'd argue that the root of the issue is the GOP trying to hoard power (money and otherwise), and power is going to exist with or without capitalism. Is North Korea capitalist? Do they have issues with disinfo?
This Christian Sharia Law movement doesn't exist for money.
Capitalism itself is political. But the point I was making was that capitalism was the driving force of enshittenfication of all our technology that could be used for helping us all but instead it’s only about profit. Which is capitalism..
Two of the largest drivers are religion, christians wanting their Sharia Law, and Russia taking political control of the US.
Capitalism is in the top three, sure. It's also part of the driver of that technology.
I don't think we should worship capitalism as we have, but I don't think getting rid of capitalism as a whole solves more problems than it creates.
Give me capitalism with heavy socialist controls and political separation please, thanks. The general idea of using money as a measure of what society owes you isn't terrible. It's allowing that measure to get so out of whack and have such inordinate control of everything that is the problem.
Anubis isn't supposed to be hard to avoid, but expensive to avoid. Not really surprised that a big company might be willing to throw a bunch of cash at it.
No, it's expensive to comply (at a massive scale), but easy to avoid. Just change the user agent. There's even a dedicated extension for bypassing Anubis.
Even then AI servers have plenty of compute, it realistically doesn’t cost much. Maybe like a thousandth of a cent per solve? They're spending billions on GPU power, they don't care.
I've been saying this since day 1 of Anubis but nobody wants to hear it.
The website would also have to display to users at the end of the day. It's a similar problem as trying to solve media piracy. Worst comes to it, the crawlers could read the page like a person would.
The streets of Tehran have become a confusing maze for driver Farshad Fooladi amid widespread GPS disruption, still ongoing nearly two months after the end of Iran and Israel's unprecedented 12-day war.
Iran: GPS disruptions have continued for two months following the conflict with Israel, causing the suspension of ride-hailing apps, delivery platforms, and basic mapping services
The streets of Tehran have become a confusing maze for driver Farshad Fooladi amid widespread GPS disruption, still ongoing nearly two months after the end of Iran and Israel's unprecedented 12-day war.
Detailed data that US government agencies collect and make available has underpinned research about people, medicine, science, crime, jobs, housing, climate and the economy.
If you try to launch or land a spacecraft anywhere close to another object on the lunar surface, that object will get sandblasted with rocks, dust and sand.
Survey shows students rapidly picked up chatbots, but perhaps surprisingly, they more often used it to augment their learning, rather than hand work off.
Agile has been a mistake for the software industry. It did nothing except to give executive more avenue to force changes to the software that are being developed and in the end it'll take a longer time to have production ready software when compared to traditional waterfall approach.
It depends on the use case. For incremental changes and validation of hypotheses in an uncertain or new product Agile is great. It allows for fast valuation and fast pivoting. I would not recommend Agile for systems that are mostly known and need a big upgrade, that's not what its for.
Agile became a buzzword and shouldn't have been implemented as widespread as it has. It does have its use cases though.
Butbutbutbut Linux is not ready for desktop! I asked a stupid question in an Arch forum and they told me to RTFM! It does not support kernel level anti-cheat! Terminals are scary!
May I ask what's your job? I'm a web developer completely fine on Linux. I used windows for a long time, I tried mac for some month. Linux is the best.
developer is completely different from designer. I'm a graphic designer, and I also do animations and videos. I use adobe illustrator, photoshop, indesign, premier; affinity designer, photo, blender. I use figma too which is good for prototyping for web or apps, but not graphic design in general. and certainly not photo editing. inb4 gimp--completely unusable for pro work.
For 3D animations, Modo has linux-x86_64 binary. Blender is native also.
I've never been into 2D animations.
For compositing, The Foundry Nuke is native also. (If you've got the money, or you're willing to buy it from seejeepeers)
For video editing, most youtubers use DaVinci Resolve.
Inkscape is slow as it's using SVG for its backend and not as polished as an illustrator but it is feature-rich. Adwaita icons are designed in inkscape. It's not a big sacrifice.
I learned photoshop when It was the CS4 version. I know it's got a lot of AI features since then. Luckily, I left it before I could get used to them, so now I can use gimp. And btw, check gimp's new release candidate. It's a huge step forward. Everyone could give them their adobe cc subscription fees and we could see how they compete after that.
i like it much better than adobe. up until a recent update in illustrator it even performed better but now AI seems to have surpassed it. but i find affinity designer's tools much more useful, although there's been a bug that pisses me of with the contour tool for quite a while now. but i tolerate it because overall it still allows me to design icons much faster.
in case you're interested in specifics:
the pixel persona in AD allows me to work on raster images without leaving the program most of the time (not all affinity photo features can be used but still having a limited raster editor mode feels much better and smoother than switching between programs). AI simply doesn't have this in any capacity.
AD's corner tool instead of AI's corner rounding with the direct selection tool is much more capable and useful because it's nondestructive. you can change the original shape with the rounding still applied, which is something you cannot do on AI.
AD's contour tool, despite the bug that doesn't properly round corners when you expand, is still much more fluid to use than AI's extremely clunky, 1998-ass-feeling offset path. apart from not requiring entering fucking numbers into a fucking dialog box and instead allowing you to offset the path with simple scrubbing... it's also nondestructive so it can stay on an object even as you edit its original shape. so i still prefer to do workarounds for the bug rather than dealing with that terrible experience in AI.
gradients are so much better in AD than AI i don't even know where to begin. it's just easier to use and more importantly you can use transparency gradients separately from color gradients (but also can have opacity info on a regular color gradient as well). so you can have an object that goes from 100% blue on the left to 0% green on the right but also add transparency gradient that goes 80% from top right to 20% on the bottom left and see the combination as a result in one object.
AD has "erase" as a blending mode which is small but can be very useful if you're designing something to be exported to png. Has a couple more modes that AI doesn't have but this one's the most straightforward and useful imo.
It's nothing huge but I like the vector crop tool in AD, you can just crop anything without thinking about it.
consistency between programs when using affinity is a great experience you don't get to have when working across Adobe tools which even for the most closely related ones feel like they aren't being developed within the same company but different ... I wanna say planets? yeah it's like they're being developed in different planets instead.
one time payment for major versions only. i bought affinity 1.0, got all the updates for free up until 2.0, which i was able to buy on discount for upgrading. now i get all the updates on 2.x for free.
there are things that AI does better and i use it when i plan to use those, and sometimes use one and copy paste to the other to use the best of each. best highlights are repeat function (Ctrl+d). now there's also radial repeat which can be great. blend can be very useful... most of the time though i go with AD.
I've already played the game for 20+ hours. I loved almost every second of it, and some of the things I didn't have already been addressed. They're taking player feedback seriously.
Battlefield 6 is made by a whole new studio, not "EA DICE", helmed by one of the best in the history of the industry for these games - Vince Zampella.
Not everything by EA is bad, and anyone saying anything like that is immediately showing they shouldn't be listened to.
Again - I've already played the game via the beta. I know I'm going to have an absolute blast. I didn't like the last few BF games, so I didn't buy them. This one is a return to form from what everyone has seen and played.
You tell me to "cope away" while basing your entire opinion on a wikipedia article that's pretty much got nothing to do with the actual game that's being discussed lol. Who is "coping"?
lol "Battlefield 6 is corporate slop" is certainly a hot take (a great tag to give you too haha). I'm sure you only enjoy the finest of artistic games that are all anti-establishment and must be played on DIY hardware using solar power.
I didn't downvote you because I disagreed with you, I downvoted you because your comments add nothing to the conversation and are essentially pointless spam.
I think maybe you're the one who needs to go back to Reddit though, not me. That's 2 comments in a row you've brought it up without so much as a mention of it from me lol
Ok buddy, downvote whatever you want and get as tilted as you want but it's not going to change the fact that most Lemmy users don't give a shit about playing corporate slop games from EA.
It seems like it upsets you that we're all happy with the games we can run on Linux. Which is a weird thing to be upset about unless you deep down just resent the fact that we are cooler than you (I use arch btw).
You have very strong Reddit energy which is catching me off guard. Very strange to see someone defending microsoft/ea on the fediverse. Stranger yet to see someone basically rage commenting about it haha.
Get "tilted"? What on earth? Is that reddit slang?
it’s not going to change the fact that most Lemmy users don’t give a shit about playing corporate slop games from EA.
Only because they can't because they all use Linux. And again with the "corporate slop" rubbish? Really? lol. What about Battlefield 6 is "corporate slop"? I can't wait to hear this.
You have very strong Reddit energy which is catching me off guard. Very strange to see someone defending microsoft/ea on the fediverse. Stranger yet to see someone basically rage commenting about it haha.
You have to be a parody account, right? Right? Like there's no way a person actually says these things and thinks this way, even on here.......right? You just can't get reddit off your mind lol.
When my wife's grandparents had to get a new computer they got upset about the new windows interface and the fact their old games didn't work, so I set them up with Linux and a DE that resembled XP (it's what they were familiar with), and I was able to get most of their games going.
No sadly COVID lockdown isolation did them in. I've never seen minds and bodies decay so fast. I have another friend who developed full-blown psychosis from it too, and at this point it looks like he's never coming back. The lockdowns were harder on some people than we were/are ready to talk about I think.
Yeah, it's honestly crazy to me because I think lockdowns were a net benefit to me. I was able to spend more time with my SO and kids, I had time for exercise and hobbies since I didn't need to sit in traffic, and I didn't need to spend as much social energy making small talk (I'm introverted). I honestly thrived during COVID. Getting COVID sucked for the week or so I had symptoms, but that was honestly a small price to pay for solitude.
But then I see headlines of people literally going crazy, see a dramatic increase in road rage in my area (which didn't have lockdowns, only social distancing for businesses), and see my own extended family struggling.
I feel so bad for people like your grandparents that suffered. I just personally wish the COVID lifestyle was more accessible.
I just personally wish the COVID lifestyle was more accessible.
Same, it suited me quite well and I feel bad saying I missed it because so many others, including some of my own family and friends, suffered. Now that I'm back in the office 5 days a week, I lose >2 hours a day with my kids. I had my own parents say "i don't get why you're complaining, we got by before COVID" while refusing to acknowledge it's different because one of them stayed home with us, while my wife and I must both work to survive.
I grew up in a religious conservative family. These and other experiences drove me to the left in a big way. I see now that thinking we can solve systemic issues with individualism is bullshit. I want a world where my wife or I could stay home (or some communal solution) to raise our family right rather than having a bunch of latchkey kids and being stuck doing chores from the moment we get home until the moment we lie down. Some people say "well that's how I was raised" but it isn't right.
Why not ? I suppose that as long as a browser (and whatever else she need) is working, my grandmother would not need much more. And I could also install a windows11 theme on KDE, if I really want to. A icon is a icon
And in the end I think that my grandmother would be able to mantain neither a window machine, so I don't see the problem.
I think most of the replies to my remark thought I was questioning Linux for grandma overall. I wasn’t. Just Arch. I don’t think grandma needs rolling releases.
In my opinion also Arch is usable on grandma desktop. True, it is a rolling release but I would suppose that on such machine there would not be that many packages installed and if the network is configured correclty (so nothing can connect from the outside) it would be not be a big problem, after all what grandma use is not updated on a daily basis.
But that means she’s not getting security updates and since she’s grandma she really needs them. On the other hand, if you’re automatically upgrading her Arch install then there will be breakage she is hopeless to fix.
So what advantage does Arch offer grandma over a traditional release LTS distribution which will be nice and stable, not breaking or changing unexpectedly on her but still remaining current with security patches?
But that means she’s not getting security updates and since she’s grandma she really needs them. On the other hand, if you’re automatically upgrading her Arch install then there will be breakage she is hopeless to fix.
True, but that would be the end result in any case where an update do something wrong or require some sort of manual intervention, it is not strictly tied to Arch. But you have a point here.
So what advantage does Arch offer grandma over a traditional release LTS distribution which will be nice and stable, not breaking or changing unexpectedly on her but still remaining current with security patches?
Only to have some newer software, but you can also update Arch every once in a while, the fact that it is a rolling release does not mean you need to update every day. The everything will depend on which distro normally uses the person who install the grandma machine
I used Arch for about 7 years. I still have it installed on an old PC but I haven’t used it recently. Every time I told pacman to update everything it felt like an adventure. Never knew if I was going to reboot to a working desktop or to a console printing cryptic error messages that take a while to Google on my phone before I get things back up and running. I wouldn’t wish that experience on my worst enemy’s grandma!
It all comes down to the maintainers of Arch putting all of the responsibility for breakage (especially due to old configuration files) 100% on the user. That’s not a system any normal person should use, that’s a system for Linux hobbyists. A LTS distribution where “don’t break the user’s install no matter what” is the rule is absolutely the only system I’d ever trust for grandma.
It’s fine if you want to assume all responsibility for updating grandma’s system and fixing breakage every time. I don’t have any interest in doing that. If I’m at grandma’s house I want to spend time talking to her, not fixing her computer.
I used Arch for about 7 years. I still have it installed on an old PC but I haven’t used it recently. Every time I told pacman to update everything it felt like an adventure. Never knew if I was going to reboot to a working desktop or to a console printing cryptic error messages that take a while to Google on my phone before I get things back up and running. I wouldn’t wish that experience on my worst enemy’s grandma!
The only times I got this kind of problems where when I didn't read some announcement or for some reason some packages (the kernel) were way too old, normally never had it on a normal update. But as I said, you have a point, even if in the end I would point out that a grandma would never be able to solve any problem caused by an update, irregardless of the distro or the OS.
It all comes down to the maintainers of Arch putting all of the responsibility for breakage (especially due to old configuration files) 100% on the user. That’s not a system any normal person should use, that’s a system for Linux hobbyists.
Only partially. Normally Arch put the new configuration file as a [something].pacnew and it is the user that should then do something, but as long as the software that use the new file could undertand that it is using an older file and it is able to handle the eventually missing new keys or removed ones there will be no problem. On my desktop I have a bunch of [some_program].conf.pacnew and everything works. Is it optimal ? Maybe not but it is not broke.
It’s fine if you want to assume all responsibility for updating grandma’s system and fixing breakage every time. I don’t have any interest in doing that.
Honestly, a grandma would just need Firefox with a couple of extension (uBlock Origin and really few others) and a network with all inbound ports blocked (so no one can connect from outside) and few outbound ports open (very few, just the common ones to use a browser). Maybe she need Openoffice, probably a DE (but a window manager could be enough) but she don't need a lot of software we all install on out machine. It is true that Arch could be a problem when updating but I think we are talking of a very small set of packages that need to be constantly updated and in my years of Arch usage, basic packages rarely break something while updating.
Yesterday I got into the process of installing Windows 10 onto my laptop because I am selling it tomorrow. I asked the buyer if he wanted it with an OS or not, and he replied that he wanted Windows 10 Pro. I downloaded the ISO and installed it to one of my M.2 SATA SSD drives with a USB adapter.
Before installing Windows over my Linux installation, I did a SecureErase to wipe out my drive with the Linux installation because that is the SSD I am selling with the computer.
After installing Windows 10 from the M.2 SATA SSD with a USB adapter to the SecureErased drive, I instantly got multiple error messages about SMART checks saying that the SSD was broken/corrupted. I had never seen this POST error message when booting that computer with a Linux installation.
Well, I obviously had to change the drive to another one where I got the Windows installation to work normally without the BIOS POST error message.
I really cannot be sure what caused that. Can SecureErase do that so SMART checks report the drive as corrupted? Or was it the Windows installation?
--trim-sector-range For Solid State Drives (SSDs). EXCEPTIONALLY DANGEROUS. DO NOT USE THIS OPTION!! Tells the drive firmware to discard unneeded data sectors, destroying any data that may have been present within them. This makes those sectors available for immediate use by the firmware's garbage collection mechanism, to improve scheduling for wear-leveling of the flash media. This option expects one or more sector range pairs immediately after the option: an LBA starting address, a colon, and a sector count (max 65535), with no intervening spaces. EXCEPTIONALLY DANGER‐ OUS. DO NOT USE THIS OPTION!!
I think the all caps warnings say it all. This is only for the trim sectors of the disk but I can't imagine it being much different overwriting a whole disk. Not to mention, as OP said, an old and very used disk. Quick formatting should be enough to prevent any normal user from extracting meaningful data from the flash storage as only the controller knows how to piece together the flash cells to a file. If the controller forgets it, the files are toast anyway. At best write some random data to a quarter of the disk or something lile that.
File recovery may only be possible if you give it to a drive recovery facility. But remember: Those ain't exactly cheap. A client paid some 4 figure price because an HDD died. Just for a small amount of files.
@zer0bitz@lemmy.world did a SecureErase, which is an entirely different function. It was exactly made to be used in this scenario: user is selling their laptop.
other than that, hdparm --trim-sector-range is most probably only marked dangerous because with a slight miscalculation you can wipe some of your data and you won't even know how much damage you did. I'm pretty sure the fstrim command relies on this, which is executed every few weeks on my system, by default. check systemctl status fstrim.timer, maybe on yours too.
Quick formatting should be enough to prevent any normal user from extracting meaningful data from the flash storage as only the controller knows how to piece together the flash cells to a file.
what do you mean by quick formatting? how do you do that on linux? I have only heard this term with te windows disk management tool.
on windows quick formatting only deletes the partition entry from the partition table. that's why it's quick. all the former data is there and can be easily recovered, given you know the former partition boundaries, which can also be recovered by tools. the ssd controller won't know a thing, it won't forget where it should look for each LBA address.
I use "incontrol" to stop feature updates. And I used win11debloat. Havent had a problem since. In dogshit bloat, no dog shit copilot, no forced updates, no privacy destroying telemetry. Just me and MY windows machine like the old days.
And I’m sure you’ll blame Microsoft/windows when things don’t work as expected and you get strange errors because you disabled core features using dodgy software that you don’t understand but think you don’t need them.
lol Another Reddit user, with nothing to offer but projection. Being in the game 20+ years, matey. If theres problems, I have skills to solve them. Just because you dont know your arse from your elbow, doesnt mean everyone else is the same. Go cry about MS's spyware some place else.
Im not crying about it, as I dont have any of it. Youre the one crying, and shilling, and painting anyone who doesnt bend the knee to them is going to cry without all those amazing core features... Absolute reddit moment.
Yet again - headline and article are massive overexaggerations, talking about an issue that a few people have had in very specific situations and saying it breaks everyones SSDs/HDDs and might corrupt their data to get people like you to get outraged and spread FUD.
Remember - if even 0.01% of people on Windows 11 get an error with an update, that is like 100k people. A 0.01% error rate is nothing. It's not even worth mentioning. It's not even worth investigating. Sure it sucks for those 100k people, and they'll be complaining to everyone that will listen - but it's not a big issue. That's this. That's this exact thing.
Doctors try to save everyone, even the 0.01%. Hell, the 0.01% are actually a huge focus.
In software a 0.01% affecting bug in a single one-off update, that needs very specific exact steps to happen, that is already released is at the bottom of the backlog, never to get fixed.
It’s you that clearly doesn’t get “it”. What is your software development background?
many have to - work from home, have to share data and programs with other workers. There are of course ways around it but I know literally thousands of people who are supplied with a company laptop with windows on it and they have to use it...
You realise that most companies still run on Windows don't you? I'm in the UK and there is around zero companies that use anything else... here they got rid of Macs because of the hassle of supporting them and windows. Plenty of companies won't let you use a Mac to work with either
You're in the UK, so you're not bound by GDPR... but a whole lot of places and orgs that are bound by GDPR realize that MSFT products indeed are a joke from a data security standpoint, and are actively transitioning to linux or at the very least FOSS software.
I am in the US.
I literally used to work for MSFT, a few of their different locations around Seattle.
They are a fucking insane mess, internally, organizationally.
I worked with people, old timers who'd just casually tell me:
'Oh yeah back before Desert Storm, I was out in Saudi Arabia flashing the BIOS of computer hardware that was bound to be installed in Saddam's C&C and Air Defense Radar networks, some months later when time came for the air sorties, somebody else just flipped a switch and down goes all their radars!'
Aka a supply chain attack.
Aka, unless your definition of 'data security' is 'the NSA has all my data', then MSFT products are rather dubious at providing data security.
For starters in the UK we ARE bound by GDPR...\ But it doesn't matter - you are assuming that companies care in the UK, they don't. You get Windows or Windows. As said a lot of software only runs on Windows, and this will continue until microsoft stop windows, corps don't care. Here in the UK Macs are rare, really really rare, in business. Heck in general use they are rare compared to Windows. Linux is nowhere, under 0.1%. You are literally forced to use Windows if you work for a company. My wife works for a charity and she has to use the company laptop, through the company VPN or else she gets warning and can be sacked... it really is that simple. The company controls what software is installed, even what updates are installed. Here in the UK the NHS buys around 5 million windows machines a year.... just imagine that
Much of what MSFT does isn't GDPR compliant, or violates other data security and privacy laws in the EU or elsewhere, or just generally throws privacy and security by the wayside, as a matter of course.
If you think MSFT gives a shit about actual data security and privacy, you're not following the just stream of lawsuits they just keep getting into, revolving around these issues.
Yeah if that means 99% of orgs have bad policy, by relying on a company with a terrible record on all this, the, uh then uh yeah, 99% of orgs are choosing to have the ability to blame someone else for their own bad decisions, over making better decisions.
The point is arguing about something when you plainly don't understand how the UK still has GDPR doesn't really validate your opinions in any way shape or form...\ The security doesn't matter, nothing other than Windows is used. To move to something else would cost so much that businesses simply cannot sustain that. We now have workers who have had 30 years of only working with Windows.... and new workers only get Windows. Doesn't matter what you or anybody else thinks, or says, it matters little. It is pretty much set in stone that you need Windows and Office in the UK, plus other software to make things like PDF's and documents. You can point anyone towards anything and it just doesn't matter... and here in the UK they don't care about lawsuits, we don't sue first and ask questions later - our legal system is just not setup that way. It is so difficult for other countries to understand, but that kind of approach just doesn't happen, and our legal system takes little notice of legal issues in countries like the US.
Cool, I don't care that its the industry standard, the industry standard is shit.
Adapt, Improvise, Overcome!
If a bunch of Boomers only know how to use Windows, and MS Office, its time for them to retire.
Its not that hard to switch daily drive office work to a stable linux distro, and libreoffice.
Yeah, it would be more difficult to switch over say, a full CRM solutiom, but uh, given how I've done exactly that at orgs I've worked at, uh, no, no, not impossible, quite doable actually.
You are still going? You really aren't a nice person are you forcing your "opinion" on people... it is not financially viable in the UK to retire early any more
I switched to Mac after my old Asus laptop went out. I figure why bother with a PC laptop, it’s not gonna game and let’s see what the fuss is about. Love my MacBook Air. So then our desktop dies and I give my wife 3 options. A Mac, a cheaper PC, and a more expensive PC. She’s Android, figured she’d want to stick with Windows, but she picked the Mac! So happy. I mostly game on Switch and Xbox these days so that’s fine.
I keep feeling like I left Windows at the right time.
I have been using Linux Mint for over half a year now, and besides gaming, I had no issues with a great experience. Had very bad experience with other Linux distros.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
TL;DR: Under Jobs, Apple focused on engineering products and the profitability and stock price followed. Under Cook, Apple focuses on stock price (dividends, stock buybacks) and is massively cutting R&D/Engineering costs to the point they did not release anything really new for years and their projects keep failing while also increasing prices. E.g. Siri that is unable to catch up to modern chatbots.
Sure, that's an argument for why the stock price is suffering, not for why macOS is in danger. Apple is still massively profitable, the stock price just reflects the market's perception that profits won't increase as fast as their competitors.
Again, why are you so over focused on stock price? As a consumer, how is the first thing you take away from lack of innovation and engineering failures that Apples stock price may suffer and not that the machine you are buying may be sub-par and overpriced?
I'm agreeing w/ you that stock price is irrelevant here, and that's what the video opens with. The market is unhappy w/ Apple because they're delivering essentially what people claim to want: a solid product with steady improvements w/o anything crazy. Microsoft, on the other hand, is delivering what the market wants, which is shoving AI into everything.
I guess I don't understand why the video is relevant to the average user, who doesn't really care about innovation and instead wants a consistent experience.
I highly doubt there is a user that truly does not care for innovation. If there is a better product for the same price, who wouldn't buy it.
More importantly, the impact is not just innovative features but security, price of ownership and reliability. Apple managed to "innovate" themselves into a position where they are obstructing data rescue on Macs and iPhones. That's the kind of thing you may not be thinking about when buying but may greatly regret not having when you need it.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has confirmed that copyright holders can't use a "DMCA subpoena shortcut" to identify internet subscribers suspected of copyright infringement. The Court sides with ISP Cox Communications, which intervened in the matter. The ruling blocks a legal tactic filmmakers have used to bypass the traditional, more expensive "John Doe" lawsuits. At the same time, it's also bad news for the MPA and RIAA.
We built the internet on email & passwords, coupled with an analog payment system based on typing 16-digit numbers into forms. If someone pitched this today, we’d laugh them out of the room.
Anti-cheat engines are now requiring users to have Secure Boot and a fTPM enabled in order to play online multiplayer games. Will this decrease the amount of cheating, or is it a futile attempt at curbing an ever-growing problem?
Anti-cheat engines are now requiring users to have Secure Boot and a fTPM enabled in order to play online multiplayer games. Will this decrease the amount of cheating, or is it a futile attempt at curbing an ever-growing problem?
Ukrainian drones hit key rail hub in Russia’s Voronezh Oblast — Ukraine’s long-range Flamingo cruise missile enters serial production — US officials provide contradictory statements on security guarantees fueling uncertainty — International borders cannot
Medical Supplies for Ukraine’s Hospitals. Partnering for global health equity.
Russia’s war against Ukraine
A resident, rescued from a bombed residential building, catches her breath and breaks into tears after being trapped inside during the Russian attack on Aug. 17, 2025 in Bilozerske, Ukraine. (Pierre Crom/Getty Images)
Russian strike on Kharkivkills 3, including toddler, injures 17 as Zelensky arrives to Washington to meet with Trump. Russia launched a wave of missile and drone attacks against Ukrainian cities late on Aug. 17, mere hours before President Volodymyr Zelensky is scheduled to meet for peace talks with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House.
‘Negotiation can begin where thefront linecurrently stands’ — Zelensky says ahead of meeting with Trump. “We need real negotiations, and that means they can begin where the front line currently stands. The line of contact is the best line for negotiations,” Zelensky wrote on social media following a meeting with members of the so-called “coalition of the willing.”
Trump saysno NATO pathor Crimea return for Ukraine as Zelensky comes to Washington for peace talks. Zelensky cautioned that any new deal must prevent Russian President Vladimir Putin from using concessions as a “springboard” for another attack, citing Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014.
TopEuropean leadersto join Zelensky for Trump talks. According to the German government, the discussions will cover the state of peace efforts, security guarantees, territorial questions, continued support for Ukraine, and maintaining sanctions pressure.
Ukraine claimsbattlefield successin Donetsk Oblast. The General Staff said Russian forces suffered significant losses in the area, including 910 killed, 335 wounded, and 37 captured.
Ukrainian drones hitkey rail hubin Russia’s Voronezh Oblast, HUR says. The strike disrupted train traffic through the Lisky station, halting the supply of ammunition and troops to aid Russian forces fighting on Ukrainian territory, according to the source.
KyivsanctionsRussian, Chinese, Belarusian firms supplying drone technology. According to the presidential decree, restrictions were introduced against 39 Russian nationals and 55 companies from Russia, China, and Belarus.
Ukraine’s long-rangeFlamingo cruise missileenters serial production, media reports. The domestically developed cruise missile has a reported range of 3,000 km (1,864 miles). The military has not yet publicly commented on the official technical specifications.
Read our exclusives
Ukraine war latest: Trump to meet with Zelensky, European leaders in Washington on Aug. 18
The leaders will meet in the White House to discuss next steps in negotiating an end to Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine. The meeting comes after the Trump-Putin Alaska Summit ended with no ceasefire announcement.
Photo: Tetiana Dzhafarova and Alex Wroblewski / AFP
Trump-Putin summit as Russia advances in Donetsk Oblast | Ukraine This Week
From Crimea to Donbas, Russia’s “peace” has always meant more war. We’re here in Ukraine to give the world a reality check. Support independent journalism in this critical moment.
Russian attackskill 5, injure 11across Ukraine over past day. The Air Force said Russia launched one Iskander-M ballistic missile and 60 Shahed-type attack drones and drone decoys overnight on Aug. 17.
General Staff: Russiahas lost1,069,950 troops in Ukraine since Feb. 24, 2022. The number includes 900 casualties Russian forces suffered just over the past day.
International response
US officials provide contradictory statements onsecurity guarantees, fueling uncertainty. In comments to various media networks on Aug. 17, Russia envoy Steve Witkoff and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed the outcomes stemming from the Trump-Putin meeting, providing differing accounts of the progress made towards providing Kyiv with security guarantees.
Russia seeks ‘Ukraine’ssurrender, not peace,’ Macron says ahead of talks with Trump. “I don’t believe (Russian President Vladimir) Putin wants peace, Macron told reporters after co-chairing a meeting of the coalition of the willing. “I believe he wants Ukraine’s surrender.”
‘International borders cannot bechanged by force‘ — von der Leyen says in Brussels. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also backed “Article 5-like security guarantees” for Ukraine, saying the country must become “a steel porcupine, indigestible for potential invaders.”
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European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also backed "Article 5-like security guarantees" for Ukraine, saying the country must become "a steel porcupine, indigestible for potential invaders."
This post makes it look like there's something serious ly wrong with openvpn, but it's just them not wanting to deal with it and deprecating it.
Oh well, guess Ill put a note not to use them. My country blocks VPN protocols and wg specifically, so for my usecase I need as many protocols supported as possible, preferrably mimicking other innocuous protocols.
Anti-cheat engines are now requiring users to have Secure Boot and a fTPM enabled in order to play online multiplayer games. Will this decrease the amount of cheating, or is it a futile attempt at curbing an ever-growing problem?
Anti-cheat engines are now requiring users to have Secure Boot and a fTPM enabled in order to play online multiplayer games. Will this decrease the amount of cheating, or is it a futile attempt at curbing an ever-growing problem?
LL3M uses a team of large language models to write Python code that creates and edits 3D assets in Blender. Given user text instructions, the agents are capable of creating expressive shapes from scratch, and realizing complex, precise geometric manipulations in code. Whereas previous uses of code-writing LLMs for 3D creation have focused on specific subtasks or constrained procedural programs and primitives, our method is able to create unconstrained assets with geometry, layout, and appearance. With high-level code as a 3D representation, our pipeline is natively a loop of iterative refinement and co-creation: agents perform automatic code and visual self-critique, and users can provide continuous high-level feedback. Further editing avenues are enabled by the clear code and the parameters transparent in the generated Blender nodes and structures.
Frustrated by rising subscription costs and fragmented content availability, viewers worldwide are returning to piracy at unprecedented levels, reversing years of progress made by affordable streaming services. Recent data from London-based monitoring firm MUSO shows piracy visits skyrocketed from 130 billion in 2020 to 216 billion by 2024, with the industry facing projected losses exceeding $113 billion.
Subscription Fatigue Drives Digital Exodus
The streaming landscape has transformed from Netflix's early promise of "everything in one place" into what critics call "Cable 2.0"—a fractured ecosystem requiring multiple subscriptions. According to The Guardian, the average European household now spends close to €700 annually on three or more video-on-demand subscriptions. With Netflix's standard plan reaching $15.49 monthly and competitors following suit, consumers are increasingly viewing piracy as a rational alternative.
"Piracy is not a pricing issue, it's a service issue," Valve co-founder Gabe Newell observed in 2011—a prediction that appears prophetic as streaming platforms struggle with content fragmentation and rising prices. In Sweden, birthplace of both Spotify and The Pirate Bay, 25% of people surveyed admitted to pirating content in 2024, predominantly driven by those aged 15 to 24.
Content Wars Create Consumer Casualties
The fragmentation crisis has worsened as studios create exclusive content silos. Viewers face scenarios where favorite shows vanish from one platform only to appear on another, or require separate purchases despite existing subscriptions. Even purchased content can become unavailable due to licensing disputes, prompting consumer lawsuits against platforms like Amazon Prime Video.
MUSO data reveals that unlicensed streaming now accounts for 96% of all TV and film piracy, representing a fundamental shift in how content theft occurs. Modern pirates leverage sophisticated tools including AI-driven search engines and encrypted networks that adapt faster than anti-piracy measures can respond.
Industry Scrambles for Solutions
Streaming executives are experimenting with bundled offerings and cracking down on password sharing, but these measures often backfire by further alienating users. According to Antenna research, one-quarter of U.S. streamers are "chronic churners," frequently canceling subscriptions due to cost and frustration.
The resurgence marks a stark reversal from the mid-2010s when convenient, affordable streaming services nearly eliminated piracy. As one industry analyst noted, studios have created "artificial scarcity in a digital world that promised abundance", suggesting that without addressing core affordability and access issues, the piracy revival may continue reshaping entertainment consumption patterns.
Frustrated by rising subscription costs and fragmented content availability, viewers worldwide are returning to piracy at unprecedented levels, reversing years of progress made by affordable streaming services. Recent data from London-based monitoring firm MUSO shows piracy visits skyrocketed from 130 billion in 2020 to 216 billion by 2024, with the industry facing projected losses exceeding $113 billion.
Subscription Fatigue Drives Digital Exodus
The streaming landscape has transformed from Netflix's early promise of "everything in one place" into what critics call "Cable 2.0"—a fractured ecosystem requiring multiple subscriptions. According to The Guardian, the average European household now spends close to €700 annually on three or more video-on-demand subscriptions. With Netflix's standard plan reaching $15.49 monthly and competitors following suit, consumers are increasingly viewing piracy as a rational alternative.
"Piracy is not a pricing issue, it's a service issue," Valve co-founder Gabe Newell observed in 2011—a prediction that appears prophetic as streaming platforms struggle with content fragmentation and rising prices. In Sweden, birthplace of both Spotify and The Pirate Bay, 25% of people surveyed admitted to pirating content in 2024, predominantly driven by those aged 15 to 24.
Content Wars Create Consumer Casualties
The fragmentation crisis has worsened as studios create exclusive content silos. Viewers face scenarios where favorite shows vanish from one platform only to appear on another, or require separate purchases despite existing subscriptions. Even purchased content can become unavailable due to licensing disputes, prompting consumer lawsuits against platforms like Amazon Prime Video.
MUSO data reveals that unlicensed streaming now accounts for 96% of all TV and film piracy, representing a fundamental shift in how content theft occurs. Modern pirates leverage sophisticated tools including AI-driven search engines and encrypted networks that adapt faster than anti-piracy measures can respond.
Industry Scrambles for Solutions
Streaming executives are experimenting with bundled offerings and cracking down on password sharing, but these measures often backfire by further alienating users. According to Antenna research, one-quarter of U.S. streamers are "chronic churners," frequently canceling subscriptions due to cost and frustration.
The resurgence marks a stark reversal from the mid-2010s when convenient, affordable streaming services nearly eliminated piracy. As one industry analyst noted, studios have created "artificial scarcity in a digital world that promised abundance", suggesting that without addressing core affordability and access issues, the piracy revival may continue reshaping entertainment consumption patterns.
One of the accounts 404 Media found
Several of the videos were tagged #coldplay
thatonecoder
in reply to Pro • • •Rozaŭtuno likes this.
Pro
in reply to thatonecoder • • •Like Gemini?
From official Website:
internet protocol
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Rozaŭtuno likes this.
vacuumflower
in reply to Pro • • •I've personally played with Gemini a few months ago, and now want a new Internet as opposed to a new Web.
Replace IP protocols with something better. With some kind of relative addressing, and delay-tolerant synchronization being preferred to real-time connections between two computers. So that there were no permanent global addresses at all, and no centralized DNS.
With the main "Web" over that being just replicated posts with tags hyperlinked by IDs, with IDs determined by content. Structured, like semantic web, so that a program could easily use such a post as directory of other posts or a source of text or retrieve binary content.
With user identities being a kind of post content, and post authorship being too a kind of post content or maybe tag content, cryptographically signed.
Except that would require to resolve post dependencies and retrieve them too with some depth limit, not just the post one currently opens, because, if it'd be like with bittorrent, half the hyperlinks in found posts would soon become dead, and also user identities would possibly soon become dead, making authorship check impossible.
And posts (suppose even sites of that flatweb) being found by tags, maybe by author tag, maybe by some "channel" tag, maybe by "name" tag, one can imagine plenty of things.
The main thing is to replace "clients connecting to a service" with "persons operating on messages replicated on the network", with networked computers sharing data like echo or ripples on the water. In what would be the general application layer for such a system.
OK, this is very complex to do and probably stupid.
It's also not exactly the same level as IP protocols, so this can work over the Internet, just like the Internet worked just fine, for some people, over packet radio and UUCP or FTN email gates and copper landlines. Just for the Internet to be the main layer in terms of which we find services, on the IP protocols, TCP, UDP, ICMP, all that, and various ones and DNS on application layer, - that I consider wrong, it's too hierarchical. So it's not a "replacement".
IndustryStandard
in reply to vacuumflower • • •vacuumflower
in reply to IndustryStandard • • •I don't want client-server model. I want sharing model. Like with Briar.
The only kind of "servers" might be relays, like in NOSTR, or machines running 24/7 like Briar mailbox.
IP. How would I go about replacing it? I don't know, I think Yggdrasil authors have written something about their routing model, but 1) it's represented as ipv6, so IP, 2) it's far over my head, 3) read the previous, I don't really want to replace it as much as not to make it the main common layer.
nymnympseudonym
in reply to vacuumflower • • •Guess what
Briar itself, and every pure P2P decentralized network where all nodes are identical... are built on Internet Sockets which inherently require one party ("server") to start listening on a port, and another party ("client") to start the conversation.
Briar uses TCP/IP, but it uses Tor routing, which is IMO a smart thing to do
Secure messaging, anywhere - Briar
briarproject.orgvacuumflower
in reply to nymnympseudonym • • •nymnympseudonym
in reply to vacuumflower • • •AF_BLUETOOTHsockets are.... sockets, where one machine ("server') opens to listen, and the other ("client") initiates the streamvacuumflower
in reply to nymnympseudonym • • •interdimensionalmeme
in reply to Pro • • •Isn't that an obvious solution ? I mean, it's public data, it's out there, do you want it public or not ?
Do you want it only on openai and google but nowhere else ? If so then good luck with the piranhas
Rose
in reply to interdimensionalmeme • • •The problem isn't that the data is already public.
The problem is that the AI crawlers want to check on it every 5 minutes, even if you try to tell all crawlers that the file is updated daily, or that the file hasn't been updated in a month.
AI crawlers don't care about
robots.txtor other helpful hints about what's worth crawling or not, and hints on when it's good time to crawl again.interdimensionalmeme
in reply to Rose • • •Yeah but there's would be scrappers if the robots file just pointed to a dump file.
Then the scraper could just do a spot check a few dozen random page and check the dump is actually up to date and complete and then they'd know they don't need to waste any time there and move on.
Leon
in reply to interdimensionalmeme • • •interdimensionalmeme
in reply to Leon • • •If there really were a site dump available, I don't see why it would make sense to crawl the website, except to spot check the dump is actually complete.
This used to be standard and it came with open API access for all before the silicon valley royals put the screws on everyone
Leon
in reply to interdimensionalmeme • • •Mr. Satan
in reply to interdimensionalmeme • • •Dunno, I feel you're giving way too much credit to these companies.
They have the resources. Why bother with a more proper solution when a single crawler solution works on all the sites they want?
Is there even standardization for providing site dumps? If not, every site could require a custom software solution to use the dump. And I can guarantee you no one will bother with implementing any dump checking logic.
If you have contrary examples I'd love to see some references or sources.
interdimensionalmeme
in reply to Mr. Satan • • •Mr. Satan
in reply to interdimensionalmeme • • •Well there you have it. Although I still feel weird that it's somehow "the internet" that's supposed to solve a problem that's fully caused AI companies and their web crawlers.
If a crawler keeps spamming and breaking a site I see it as nothing short of a DOS attack.
Not to mention that
robots.txtis completely voluntary and, as far as I know, mostly ignored by these companies. So then what makes you think that any them are acting in good faith?To me that is the core issue and why your position feels so outlandish. It's like having a bully at school that constantly takes your lunch and your solution being: "Just bring them a lunch as well, maybe they'll stop."
interdimensionalmeme
in reply to Mr. Satan • • •Net_Runner :~$
in reply to Pro • • •I use Anubis on my personal website, not because I think anything I’ve written is important enough that companies would want to scrape it, but as a “fuck you” to those companies regardless
That the bots are learning to get around it is disheartening, Anubis was a pain to setup and get running
prole
in reply to Pro • • •iopq
in reply to prole • • •notarobot
in reply to iopq • • •prole
in reply to iopq • • •CeeBee_Eh
in reply to iopq • • •mfed1122
in reply to Pro • • •Static site builders that render the whole page out as an image map, making it visible for humans but useless for crawlers 🤔🤔🤔
iopq
in reply to mfed1122 • • •lapping6596
in reply to mfed1122 • • •mfed1122
in reply to lapping6596 • • •I wasn't being totally serious, but also, I do think that while accessibility concerns come from a good place, there is some practical limitation that must be accepted when building fringe and counter-cultural things. Like, my hidden rebel base can't have a wheelchair accessible ramp at the entrance, because then my base isn't hidden anymore. It sucks that some solutions can't work for everyone, but if we just throw them out because it won't work for 5% of people, we end up with nothing. I'd rather have a solution that works for 95% of people than no solution at all. I'm not saying that people who use screen readers are second-class citizens. If crawlers were vision-based then I might suggest matching text to background colors so that only screen readers work to understand the site. Because something that works for 5% of people is also better than no solution at all. We need to tolerate having imperfect first attempts and understand that more sophisticated infrastructure comes later.
But yes my image map idea is pretty much a joke nonetheless
deaf_fish
in reply to mfed1122 • • •nialv7
in reply to Pro • • •SufferingSteve
in reply to Pro • • •There once was a dream of the semantic web, also known as web2. The semantic web could have enabled easy to ingest information of webpages, removing soo much of the computation required to get the information. Thus preventing much of the AI crawling cpu overhead.
What we got as web2 instead was social media. Destroying facts and making people depressed at a newer before seen rate.
Web3 was about enabling us to securely transfer value between people digitally and without middlemen.
What crypto gave us was fraud, expensive jpgs and scams. The term web is now even so eroded that it has lost much of its meaning. The information age gave way for the misinformation age, where everything is fake.
Marshezezz
in reply to SufferingSteve • • •Serinus
in reply to Marshezezz • • •I feel like half of the blame capitalism gets is valid, but the other half is just society. I don't care what kind of system you're under, you're going to have to deal with other people.
Oh, and if you try the system where you don't have to deal with people, that just means other people end up handling you.
null
in reply to Serinus • • •Marshezezz
in reply to null • • •null
in reply to Marshezezz • • •Marshezezz
in reply to null • • •null
in reply to Marshezezz • • •Marshezezz
in reply to null • • •null
in reply to Marshezezz • • •Socialized healthcare isn't socialism...
Interesting.
How about Canada?
Marshezezz
in reply to null • • •null
in reply to Marshezezz • • •Does Canada have socialized healthcare?
Does anywhere?
Marshezezz
in reply to null • • •null
in reply to Marshezezz • • •Marshezezz
in reply to null • • •null
in reply to Marshezezz • • •Marshezezz
in reply to null • • •null
in reply to Marshezezz • • •Lol can't engage with someone's point? Just call them a simp.
Why did you even engage if you can't walk the walk, lil bro?
Marshezezz
in reply to null • • •You: “capitalism is the reason we have everything! And when people get sick of capitalism’s greed and form social policies to help the labor class because they continually get exploited in spite of capitalism, somehow that’s capitalism’s fault!”
But then the irony is lost on you
null
in reply to Marshezezz • • •Marshezezz
in reply to null • • •null
in reply to Marshezezz • • •Marshezezz
in reply to null • • •null
in reply to Marshezezz • • •Oh wow, "no u".
Devastating comeback.
Marshezezz
in reply to null • • •null
in reply to Marshezezz • • •Marshezezz
in reply to null • • •null
in reply to Marshezezz • • •Marshezezz
in reply to null • • •kazerniel
in reply to Serinus • • •nymnympseudonym
in reply to kazerniel • • •It's definitely valid to disagree about point #3, but then you need to give a better model for #1 and #2
kazerniel
in reply to nymnympseudonym • • •term for the quality of the various domains in human life and general well-being of individuals and societies
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Marshezezz
in reply to Serinus • • •Serinus
in reply to Marshezezz • • •The complaint that got blamed on capitalism was:
and if there's one entity/person most responsible for that, it's Putin or the GOP. Most of it is political, and very little to do with capitalism itself. Except that capitalism surrounds and is intertwined with everything.
Still, if you get rid of capitalism, it doesn't get rid of politics. I'd argue that the root of the issue is the GOP trying to hoard power (money and otherwise), and power is going to exist with or without capitalism. Is North Korea capitalist? Do they have issues with disinfo?
This Christian Sharia Law movement doesn't exist for money.
Marshezezz
in reply to Serinus • • •Serinus
in reply to Marshezezz • • •Two of the largest drivers are religion, christians wanting their Sharia Law, and Russia taking political control of the US.
Capitalism is in the top three, sure. It's also part of the driver of that technology.
I don't think we should worship capitalism as we have, but I don't think getting rid of capitalism as a whole solves more problems than it creates.
Give me capitalism with heavy socialist controls and political separation please, thanks. The general idea of using money as a measure of what society owes you isn't terrible. It's allowing that measure to get so out of whack and have such inordinate control of everything that is the problem.
zifk
in reply to Pro • • •randomblock1
in reply to zifk • • •No, it's expensive to comply (at a massive scale), but easy to avoid. Just change the user agent. There's even a dedicated extension for bypassing Anubis.
Even then AI servers have plenty of compute, it realistically doesn’t cost much. Maybe like a thousandth of a cent per solve? They're spending billions on GPU power, they don't care.
I've been saying this since day 1 of Anubis but nobody wants to hear it.
T156
in reply to randomblock1 • • •acockworkorange
in reply to T156 • • •