people like that CEO with his libertarian view of safety regulations actively hurt all of society

Sometimes, those views just sort of have a way of imploding.

Anyways, in the last few days I’ve noticed that for some reason, especially on the r/piracy sub (although other subs are of course no exception), that there has been a more positive sentiment towards spez (the CEO of Reddit) and a very negative one against the mods and the protest.

Do we even know if these are actual real humans (aka: not reddit bots, admins, or shills)?

We know 100% that spez made hundreds of bots in 2012 to fake “busy-ness”, and that was when reddit was started.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/reddit-founders-made-hundreds-of-fake-profiles-so-site-looked-popular/

That’s fine. I’m sure the passive masses will show back up.

The real problem is content creators and such are or have already left. And well, I’m here, as are all of you!

Passive consumers are a massive force, and will go where the wind blows. But they actively do little. And, about them… Who cares?

Using a VPN and HOW you use it all depends on your operational security (OPSEC).

If you’re a pirate consumer, then basically you need to keep your ISP from knowing what you’re doing, to prevent copyright strikes or shit-letters from Disney etm. A good VPN is fine.

If you’re a torrent creator, you need to raise your security a bit, depending on the “hotness” of the content. Rare anime torrent? Eh who cares. But you’re hosting HDCams from a movie released yesterday, or games that will be released officially in a week? You need to use a VPN in a country that does not have good relations to your country of origin. Yes, that means if you’re in the USA, get a Russian or Chinese VPN.

If you’re leaking state secrets, Snowden talked about what he did. He cracked wifi within a 2h drive distance, used a 12dBi yagi antenna, with a burner laptop loaded with Tails (Tor linux distro), and only used 1 cracked wifi per use. Never went back to the same place. Then again, he didn’t exactly fare well eventually.