Popular animated gifs hosting service gfycat.com is shutting down on September 1, 2023 and all hosted content will no longer be accessible at that point.
Just like the good old times of internet. When every kid had a hobby and installed a forum software into a shared hosting to spend time with others. “If you build it, he/they will come.”
The places I used to hang out with PHPBB or similar forums never really had problems with bots. And I’m at least pretty sure they were popular places. Penny-Arcade, Something Awful, NewGrounds, eBaums World…
They also weren’t a problem for small users either. Not only was there no incentive, they didn’t necessarily get discovered by web crawlers. I remember wondering why my websites never showed up on search engines when I first started fucking around with webpages, web hosting, networks, etc. I hosted the server, I had a domain name, I was online and could access my site from other computers solely through the internet; but it never came up on Yahoo or Dogpile and I didn’t know why. The first time I ever found my own site on a search engine, it was using a hosting site like Geocities. And that was after Google came out and I was getting archived versions of the first website I ever made.
Sadly public self hosting comes with a lot of legalities. And sure, I can hide behind cloudflare ( and I do) but that still puts all of my eggs into Cloudflare’s basket
So at the current moment, is there a way to use TOR browser and route it through Mullvad since TOR Browser would most likely be more anonymous having a larger, more common fingerprint?
Sorry, I meant TOR Browser, as using TOR Browser + Mullvad VPN and default Mullvad DNS with exit and entry nodes in two different countries and cities + anti quantum computer algorithm to prevent MITM and other attacks alongside obfuscation alongside the Wireguard (IPV6 if you can, not every one can) has to be about the most secure setup I can conceive of possibly (only using TAILS could possibly further protect you). Probably overkill, but I like optimizing for the future when attacks become more prevalent in cyber security.
I recommend every one tries Mullvad Browser, but i don’t think it’s the best idea for me and so I went back to TOR Browser.
I was able to get Mullvad and TOR to play nicely together, I couldn’t at first until a reboot I hadn’t noticed I had forgotten to reboot at the time.
I expect adblockers will find a way around that. If nothing else, AdNauseam should work, as it tells the site that you clicked all of the ads it’s blocking (making it much harder for them to build a profile on you).
I don’t really understand AdNauseam. Can’t they also not build a profile with a normal ad blocker, but you also completely avoid interacting with the trackers (so better for performance, data usage, etc)?
Yes and no. It’s harder, but even with an adblocker, your internet signature (things like browser size, are you blocking ads, did you send a “do not track” header, etc) is enough to identify you in a lot of cases. AdNauseam goes the opposite direction, instead of hiding your data, it fills their data collection with so much garbage that they’ll have a hard time figuring anything out about you. From what I understand, it doesn’t actually load the ads, just sees where the ad points to, and tells the ad provider that you clicked it while at the same time blocking it. So it would be very slightly worse in terms of performance and data usage compared to uBlock Origin, but not in any noticeable way, since the stuff it sends is much smaller than any actual content.
There’s just too damn much of it, and the people accessing it generally aren’t stopping to be advertised to. That’s a lot of storage and bandwidth costs with very little ability to make money back.
That and the desire to make money while being at the mercy of two card processors who set the rules. If you want MasterCard or Visa support then remove porn.
The best way to destroy the establishment is from within. The sleeper cells have been activated, ushering us into the new uncensorable decentralized era.
So, twitter, Reddit, Imgur, and now Gfycat are all killing itself
Has the internet bubble finally popped?
The privately-owned for-profit Internet is starting to pop. User-driven FOSS will reign supreme.
Just like the good old times of internet. When every kid had a hobby and installed a forum software into a shared hosting to spend time with others. “If you build it, he/they will come.”
The only thing that sucked about having my own PHPBB forum was the lack of actual users to communicate with.
But it looked and did everything just the way I wanted, so that was nice. 🥹
Haha not to mention the spam bots that would appear and ruin everything :/
The places I used to hang out with PHPBB or similar forums never really had problems with bots. And I’m at least pretty sure they were popular places. Penny-Arcade, Something Awful, NewGrounds, eBaums World…
They also weren’t a problem for small users either. Not only was there no incentive, they didn’t necessarily get discovered by web crawlers. I remember wondering why my websites never showed up on search engines when I first started fucking around with webpages, web hosting, networks, etc. I hosted the server, I had a domain name, I was online and could access my site from other computers solely through the internet; but it never came up on Yahoo or Dogpile and I didn’t know why. The first time I ever found my own site on a search engine, it was using a hosting site like Geocities. And that was after Google came out and I was getting archived versions of the first website I ever made.
Sadly public self hosting comes with a lot of legalities. And sure, I can hide behind cloudflare ( and I do) but that still puts all of my eggs into Cloudflare’s basket
it really does feel like a return to the older decentralized web
You mean popped again? It has already popped back in 2002 with the dot-com bubble bursting. Seems investors never learn.
Don’t forget about YouTube! https://www.techradar.com/computing/social-media/youtubes-test-run-of-the-three-strikes-youre-out-policy-against-ad-blockers-seems-like-a-bit-much
Been wondering how they detect how many videos you’ve watched without being logged in.
Cookies can be cleared, IPs can be changed, and if we all use something like the Mullvad Browser fingerprinting will be far more difficult.
I just spin up new virtual machines, with different flavors of linux. They’re all fairly interchangable at this point.
So at the current moment, is there a way to use TOR browser and route it through Mullvad since TOR Browser would most likely be more anonymous having a larger, more common fingerprint?
Do you mean Mullvad VPN or the browser?
Sorry, I meant TOR Browser, as using TOR Browser + Mullvad VPN and default Mullvad DNS with exit and entry nodes in two different countries and cities + anti quantum computer algorithm to prevent MITM and other attacks alongside obfuscation alongside the Wireguard (IPV6 if you can, not every one can) has to be about the most secure setup I can conceive of possibly (only using TAILS could possibly further protect you). Probably overkill, but I like optimizing for the future when attacks become more prevalent in cyber security.
I recommend every one tries Mullvad Browser, but i don’t think it’s the best idea for me and so I went back to TOR Browser.
I was able to get Mullvad and TOR to play nicely together, I couldn’t at first until a reboot I hadn’t noticed I had forgotten to reboot at the time.
Are you routing your Mullvad Browser traffic through TOR?
I expect adblockers will find a way around that. If nothing else, AdNauseam should work, as it tells the site that you clicked all of the ads it’s blocking (making it much harder for them to build a profile on you).
I don’t really understand AdNauseam. Can’t they also not build a profile with a normal ad blocker, but you also completely avoid interacting with the trackers (so better for performance, data usage, etc)?
Yes and no. It’s harder, but even with an adblocker, your internet signature (things like browser size, are you blocking ads, did you send a “do not track” header, etc) is enough to identify you in a lot of cases. AdNauseam goes the opposite direction, instead of hiding your data, it fills their data collection with so much garbage that they’ll have a hard time figuring anything out about you. From what I understand, it doesn’t actually load the ads, just sees where the ad points to, and tells the ad provider that you clicked it while at the same time blocking it. So it would be very slightly worse in terms of performance and data usage compared to uBlock Origin, but not in any noticeable way, since the stuff it sends is much smaller than any actual content.
Tumblr was just ahead of its time
Wait what’s happening with imgur?
Removing porn and all images not uploaded from an imgur account
But why the porn?
There’s just too damn much of it, and the people accessing it generally aren’t stopping to be advertised to. That’s a lot of storage and bandwidth costs with very little ability to make money back.
If everyone would just stop clicking on ads, this whole “the customer is the product” business model across the internet would stop within a week.
I hear you and I’m with you. I don’t even look at ads, I don’t permit my software on my hardware to offend me with them.
What would they switch to, though?
That and the desire to make money while being at the mercy of two card processors who set the rules. If you want MasterCard or Visa support then remove porn.
Nsfw images can’t be monitised with ads.
I sure hope my trusty ShareX program isn’t affected…
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/04/hosting-site-imgur-will-remove-explicit-and-anonymous-content-next-month/
From April but explains it
Wait what’s going on with Imgur? I’m aware of all the others. Also, you can add Stack Overflow to the list.
The best way to destroy the establishment is from within. The sleeper cells have been activated, ushering us into the new uncensorable decentralized era.