Like when McDonalds offered free fries or something for everyone who used the app, but then quietly changed the terms of service for the app to include forced arbitration.

If a company does something bad, you can sue to fix it.

Suing sets legal precedent and forces all companies to abide by the ruling, more or less.

But now if a company tricks you out of your right to sue by putting arbitration clauses in everything, then you can’t sue. You can only have a (hopefully) impartial third part tell the company to stop doing something specifically to you. The company is still free to keep doing the thing to everyone else, and their arbitration doesn’t affect any other companies also doing bad things.

There are other issues too.

As an autistic gay person, I disagree that weather is the only determining factor in choosing a rural home. Plenty of amazing an fulfilling rural places to live, but certainly not all of them.

Huh. I hadn’t thought about that. That’s not a bad point either.

Why would Reddit ban it? It’s an easy way for them to collect users’ IP addresses for their corporate overlords.

Aldi’s sells little bottles of sparkling mineral water where I live. I always grab one when I go there.

People like metal cans, and they like bubbly drinks. I share in your confusion.

Problem is that one day, it will. I’m old enough to be able to see the difference in how much freedom has been lost online.

It’s not impossible. North Korea exists. There’s nothing stopping the rest of the world from adopting the same authoritarian regulations and technology bans.

That’s why people need to be involved in their governments; elections, local regulations, and what have you. It’s easy to complain that things aren’t perfect, or that you don’t like any of the options; but being part of the process, long term, is the only real way to fix that. The more people that give up and say they don’t care, the faster corruption infects everything and ruins what good is there. And trying to be clever and say that “one side is just as bad as the other” is not only a selfish lie people tell themselves to feel better about not doing anything, but it actively helps the authoritarians claim power.

The only thing that staves off corruption and authoritarianism is when the people being governed get involved and stay vigilant. Even small things like school board elections matter down the road.

You want to have a free internet? Then vote in school board elections. Seriously.

It already is. For example, it’s basically impossible to run your own email server these days, because most big email providers just block residential IPs to reduce spam.

Lots of ISPs block or heavily filter things like torrents.

Your ISP might decide you having a personal server at home is against their terms and force you to make a business account. They don’t want people uploading, only downloading.

Some countries are trying to weaken or ban encryption across the board.

And this is only slightly related, but things like websites that let you watch movies or shows are dying. They either all share the same server for video, or they just copy the files from each other. If you find one and watch a video with a little glitch, you’re likely to find that same glitch in all the other websites too. Think things like TV logos, audio suddenly changing language for a few seconds, scan lines on old VHS or TV recordings, etc… There used to be a lot, but now all the small players are being sued or shut down, and only the largest ones are still alive. The noose is tightening.

Don’t forget Nintendo.

Step 1 - Push people to piracy.

Step 2 - Complain to lawmakers about rampant piracy.

Step 3 - Get governments to outlaw and shut down piracy sources, compatible technologies, and generally force more authoritarian standards and laws.

Step 4 - P2P starts to die. Piracy starts to condense around large hubs.

Step 5 - Make money suing the only large hubs of piracy that still exist, and shut them down.

Step 6 - Profit from lack of competition and ability to force DRM into everything.

I had a seller on Amazon give my info to another party who then mailed me unrelated erotic marketing materials with my name and info on it, weeks after my order. I told customer support, and they instantly went “we’ll handle it, have a nice day” before I could even tell them who the seller was. I knew who the seller was because despite my info being in the digital order form on the website, they somehow managed multiple typos and mistakes, which the unsolicited mail also had.

It’s all pre-scripted bullshit to prevent customers from doing anything about legitimate issues.

You can find the PS3 key floating around too.

What is a “tankie”? I’ve never heard of that before.

Am missing something about my chosen-on-a-whim instance?

Holy shit, you’re right.

We’re playing permadeath on the easiest level, and failing.

Dude shares the name of an ex. The headline threw me for a loop.

The beard looks fake and it’s weirding me out.

Also, as an autistic person, you’re missing a gesture. It’s to stop moving and stare in horror like a deer in the headlights, because you’re unsure what’s happening or how to respond.

Basically small deliberate changes to the brightness or hue of chunks or even individual pixels scattered across the frame. Netflix would have the original, and would know where to look for the changes that embed the user ID data, or whatever.

They just get a copy of the leaked video, locate the ID, and take the user to court or ban them.

I’m not great at explaining it, so look up image stenography to get an idea of what I mean.

Anyway, I don’t have any proof they do that, but I guess I always assumed they did, because… why not?

For years I’ve assumed there was some kind of invisible image manipulation that effectively encrypts the Netflix user ID in the video feed itself, so they can use leaked video to pinpoint users that share recordings.

Same type of thing paper printers do, and AI giants are trying to push now.