• Nadya@kbin.social
          1·
          1 year ago

          It can make such broad claims because it’s entirely based on facts. VPN’s are a trust-based system where the only evidence they don’t keep logs prior to getting a court order is “Trust us bro” and, historically, more of these services have been found to actually be storing records (or legally must store 30/60 days worth depending on their country of origin) than not.

          If you would like a more in-depth and thorough explanation as a technical breakdown for non-technical people there is this blog post or even this blog if the “TL;DR” explanation didn’t cut it for you.

          Regarding profit motives of VPN’s - see also:

          Here’s a real fun one!

          This site: https://thatoneprivacysite.net/choosing-the-best-vpn-for-you/ was purchased and now redirects to this site: https://www.safetydetectives.com/best-vpns/

          Safety Detectives was purchased by non-other than drum roll please. Kape Technologies. How do I know this? Well let’s take a look at the Wayback Machine for TOPS.net.

          What was the original claim?

          You may have started your search for a VPN by looking for “VPN Reviews” in your search engine of choice. if you had, you would have gotten page upon page of what seem to be harmless review sites, top 10 or blog style reviews of different VPN services. You may even be coming here for confirmation of what you were told on those sites. The sites making these recommendations are, in almost every case, paid by the services they review and recommend.

          Who owns PIA, ExpressVPN, and CyberGhost? The “best 3 VPN’s” recommended by safetydetectives.com? Kape Technologies.

          Why should this concern you?

          We’ll start with PIA’s owner, Kape Technologies. Kape Technologies was formerly known as Crossrider before it was acquired by one Teddy Sagi, an Israeli billionaire that has spent time in jail for insider trading. Crossrider itself never had that great a reputation itself, what with their primary product being a development platform through which they were frequently used by third parties to invade ad platforms to serve up malware, but whatever. Once acquired, the entire leadership structure was hollowed out, and the new Kape Technologies went on an acquisition spree. All of Kape’s purchased review sites suggest Kape owned VPN’s with “some consideration” given to Nord and Proton to maintain some kind of pretense at neutrality.

          In short: Sagi is shady, his business is shady, and his business moves are shady, which makes the whole thing shady from top to bottom. Kape Technologies isn’t the only company to go on an acquisition spree for VPN’s either. Ask yourself why there is interest in consolidating VPN providers and how that data might be useful.

          Every single modern VPN is a honeypot until proven otherwise. Mullvad is one of the few that has been able to prove otherwise.

  • CoderKat@kbin.social
    0·
    1 year ago

    I don’t get what the alternative is supposed to be. You can’t make stuff like blockbuster quality movies on ads and/or donations alone. And between ads vs subscriptions, ads are iffy because you end up with sketchy or unethical advertisements. Plus ad blockers make it hard to sustain a business on just ads.

    In an ideal world, nobody would need to “make a living” and we’d be able to offer more services for free. But we don’t have that ideal world. Musicians, animators, writers, programmers and more all need to get paid somehow.

    It’s admittedly annoying how fractured subscriptions get, though. I miss when Netflix was the only streaming video subscription I needed. Now there’s half a dozen major services and they all want exclusive contracts to show certain movies and TV.

    Personally, I’m happy to pay for the stuff I use a lot. Which includes stuff that I don’t even have to pay for (eg, I donated $20 to kbin). It does suck for stuff I only want a little of, though. eg, I don’t have any news subscriptions because I only check news sites here and there and it’s almost never the same site, too (mostly I get linked from sites like this). I want to see subscriptions become a bit more centralized, spanning multiple sites to account for this.

    • citable6704@midwest.social
      0·
      1 year ago

      When cable TV was first a thing, it was advertised as extra content and with NO commercials. Pay us money, we’ll give you a big bundle of channels, and you won’t have to see commercials anymore.

      Then they started adding more and more commercials in. Nowadays, a half-hour slot is 1/3rd commercials, and probably another 15% of that time is credits and “previously on” or “before the break” or pointless shitty padding

      Then Netflix came out. Pay us a monthly fee, you can see all this content whenever you want, no commercials.

      Then everyone wanted a slice of Netflix’s pie, and now we have a dozen separate streaming services you all have to pay monthly fees for.

      The solution is Cable TV 2.0. Compile it all back into one service, charge a higher fee, cut all the ads out (again). Call it Fiber TV or something, idk. Otherwise people will realize it’s easier to pirate shit again than to navigate and pay for 8 different streaming services