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The mechanism of VPN is pooling together many users and making them indistinguishable to the outside, providing plausible deniability. Outsiders can see a user
by TZubiri 4mo ago
The mechanism of VPN is pooling together many users and making them indistinguishable to the outside, providing plausible deniability. Outsiders can see a user belongs to the pool, but they can't tell if they are 'good' or 'bad'.
It's a similar mechanism that cryptocurrency, or money laundering uses. It's very possible for 'good' users to be recruited into the pool for no other reason than to provide plausible deniability for the 'bad' members. If I wanted to run an ilegal operation like cybercrime or drugs, I would probably use a VPN and a crypto pool, and try to get legitimate users to desire using VPNs for reasons like gaming latency, or avoiding taxes on 1K/month income.
It's well known that Mullvad provides lower than market prices when compared to competitors, and that they offer stricter no logs policies. Yeah, maybe they are providing a basic privacy right, or maybe they are providing shelter for criminals. Tradeoff old as time. But with prices possibly being subsidized, it makes sense that their incentive model is not to collect fees for usage, but to provide a wide enough user pool such that the anonimity is more effective.
What's interesting is that both far-right free-market anarchist users and far-left Not for profit Free Software socialists appear to be shocked that their anonimity pools contains them both. Kind of like how the lights went up at the club at 6 am and you realize who you've been smooching in the dark.
- culi 4mo ago> far-right free-market anarchist There's no such thing as rightwing anarchism. In the entire history of anarchism, it's always been a strictly and explicitly leftwing movement.
- TZubiri 4mo agoI know what type of anarchism you are referring to, spray paint a circled A, live in a farm, free love anarchy. but what about free market capitalism, anarcho capitalism, the austrian economic school, the chicago boys, Milton Friedman, Javier Milei..
- culi 4mo agoYou just named the fathers of neoliberalism. Perhaps you can start here if you're actually interested in anarchism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_anarchism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_anarchism Anarchism is David Graeber, mutual aid, Makhnovshchina, The Conquest of Bread, Zapatistas, Rojava, James C Scott, the Mexican Revolution, the IWW, etc. You will not find "anarcho-capitalism" on the Anarchist Library because it has absolutely nothing to do with the Anarchist tradition. It's a total neologism and misnomer. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/special/index https://theanarchistlibrary.org/special/index Anarchism has always been explicitly and critically opposed to capitalism and capitalists (literally often assassinating them) and market-driven hierarchies
- iamnothere 4mo agoOther forms of anarchism are not real anarchism, because he said so.
- culi 4mo agoNeoliberals mentioned above have never even attempted to call themselves "anarchist". Anarchists have been explicitly and diametrically opposed to neoliberals since their inception. This whole thread is a bizarre conversation. It's like, saying I will list out some progressives and I include Margret Thatcher in that list. Thatcher never even attempted to call herself a progressive.
- iamnothere 4mo agoI agree that the neoliberals listed are not anarchists, but individualist anarchists and ancaps certainly are some form of anarchist. Not according to the left-anarchist definition, sure, but a broader “anarchist” label certainly fits in the sense of abolishing the state, and if those people use the label to refer to themselves, then it doesn’t make sense to just say “no you can’t do that”. To do so makes discussion impossible. Left-anarchism is more prominent and more developed, sure.
- culi 4mo agoAbolishing the state isn't the definition of anarchism. If it were, then Marxists would also be anarchists.
- iamnothere 4mo agoYou’re dancing around the issue. Some groups you disagree with use the word “anarchist” to refer to themselves. They fit with the colloquial term for anarchism and ordinary people are going to refer to them by that term. Like it or not, they are now some kind of anarchist just based on how language is used. Nobody except left-anarchists accept the narrowly politicized definition of the term “anarchy”. Attempting to impose this definition against consensus is decidedly non-anarchist. You should stick with bespoke terms like mutualism and syndicalism that have a distinct meaning. (It is annoying how humans do this with language, especially when it’s forced, but I guess that’s just how it goes.)
- jeffbee 4mo agoYou're ignoring the other main economic foundation of VPNs: the service is in fact run by the cops, at a loss.