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Yeah, a wise decision by our government indeed. However, one of the major reasons Vkontakte is popular is due to it being filled with illegal music and video co

• grishka 5y ago
  Oh, no, it's now kinda useless for that too unless you somewhat go out of your way. They've signed contracts with recording companies and "legalized" most of the music several years ago, killing off the public API (audio.* methods), adding ads (which I've never heard thanks to my ad blocker, but still) and imposing ever more nonsensical client-side restrictions in mobile apps (which I use an old version of) that are removed by buying a subscription. But — despite Mail.Ru Group doing its best to ruin it, it's still way better than Facebook. There's a chronological feed even! And they aren't brave enough to ruin that. Full disclosure: I worked at VK on the official Android app for 5 years, most of that as the only Android developer in the entire company. I quit in 2016 because of growing disagreement with the management about our goals. VK still has a lot of sentimental value for me because it literally changed my life, multiple times over. Anyway, if you do want the experience of the OG VK but without FSB and all the other perils that come with centralization, you can follow the development of my ActivityPub project: https://github.com/grishka/Smithereen https://github.com/grishka/Smithereen