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Its funny, how the VPN providers basically become the avatars of the old anarchic web and the constant buisness and government overreach makes them ever stronge

Its funny, how the VPN providers basically become the avatars of the old anarchic web and the constant buisness and government overreach makes them ever stronger. Its basically a old "freedom" tax.

quickthrower2 3y ago
Tor exists though fwiw
- Etheryte 3y ago
  Tor exists, but realistically the overhead of using Tor is not acceptable to the general public. As long as Tor is sufficiently slow compared to everyday traffic it will remain a niche use case. A good VPN on the other hand gives you at least a little bit of privacy without much of a cost.
  - 93po 3y ago
    I've looked at Tor recently just out of curiosity for the tech and I found browsing to be plenty fast. Admittedly it was plain text sites with no images or whatever. And the installation/use of the Tor browser was easy.
    - quickthrower2 3y ago
      One does not need to justify Tor usage :-)
KyeRussell 3y ago
That’s incredibly generous. The VPN industry is deserving of its bad reputation. Collecting user data in clear contravention of their TOS. Using hacked boxes as VPN endpoints to get people onto residential IP ranges. And whatever else. I’m very confident in my completely baseless assertion that most people that use a “public” VPN are either bypassing geographical restrictions on a streaming service, or doing something outright shady. There’s a reason that it’s common for VPN providers to take cash and cryptocurrency, as this one does. It does precisely zilch to thwart the sort of tracking that affects the vast vast vast majority of Internet users. The VPN industry isn’t being propped up by nerds indulging their crypto libertarian / anarchism fetish but are just spending their time reading Hacker News (with JS off, obviously). There just aren’t enough of them.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- catminou 3y ago
  Don't forget the VPN providers who turn their customers machines as egress nodes without making it obvious they're doing so.

Its funny, how the VPN providers basically become the avatars of the old anarchic web and the constant buisness and government overreach makes them ever stronger. Its basically a old "freedom" tax.

quickthrower2 3y ago

Tor exists though fwiw

Etheryte 3y ago
Tor exists, but realistically the overhead of using Tor is not acceptable to the general public. As long as Tor is sufficiently slow compared to everyday traffic it will remain a niche use case. A good VPN on the other hand gives you at least a little bit of privacy without much of a cost.
- 93po 3y ago
  I've looked at Tor recently just out of curiosity for the tech and I found browsing to be plenty fast. Admittedly it was plain text sites with no images or whatever. And the installation/use of the Tor browser was easy.
  - quickthrower2 3y ago
    One does not need to justify Tor usage :-)

KyeRussell 3y ago

That’s incredibly generous. The VPN industry is deserving of its bad reputation. Collecting user data in clear contravention of their TOS. Using hacked boxes as VPN endpoints to get people onto residential IP ranges. And whatever else. I’m very confident in my completely baseless assertion that most people that use a “public” VPN are either bypassing geographical restrictions on a streaming service, or doing something outright shady. There’s a reason that it’s common for VPN providers to take cash and cryptocurrency, as this one does. It does precisely zilch to thwart the sort of tracking that affects the vast vast vast majority of Internet users. The VPN industry isn’t being propped up by nerds indulging their crypto libertarian / anarchism fetish but are just spending their time reading Hacker News (with JS off, obviously). There just aren’t enough of them.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
catminou 3y ago
Don't forget the VPN providers who turn their customers machines as egress nodes without making it obvious they're doing so.