Nothing good will come of federating with meta, the fediverse should simply stay out of their reach and realize whatever potential it may have.

I think there might be another way to hurt it though that this article doesn't seem to mention. Funnily enough, it's also a theme of an asterix and obelix comic book, which the introduction referenced. This way would be monetization. Threads might try to "help" the fediverse by feeding the bigger instances money, therefore the hosts of the instances would be more open to negotiations with meta and accepting of their policies.

I will compare this to YouTube which started paying all it's big creators until they became dependent on the platform for a living and then started slowly implementing more and more rules that limit their freedom of expression. Remember how much PewDiePie used to swear in his getting over it videos? In another "pew news" or whatever it was called video I happened to watch he directly mentioned that he censors himself because he isn't going to put his job on the line just to say "fuck". Profit invites creators to comply with YouTube's regulations even if they aren't enforced violently always.

The same pattern was used in the asterix comic I mention above. Ceasar decides to open a building complex almost next to the problematic for him village and so the residents flood the markets and are shocked at the low prices compared to Rome. As a result, the villagers start increasing prices and advertising their goods and services, neglecting their previous morals and ethos. In the end, however, the Romans lose again after (panoramix, I think?) makes them realize how much separation this has caused them, living only for their business. As a result they kick the Romans out of their village, once again united, and Caesar's plans fail.

I think both these stories could serve as a potential warning to anyone who might consider selling themselves out if meta adopts such a policy.

If they didn't why would they develop tools to federate? It's obvious that the threads project was sped up significantly following musk's obliteration of Twitter, so they wouldn't go out of their way to implement such a feature if they didn't have a very specific reason for it.

A company's goal is maximization of profit, so don't assume they intend anything else. The activitypub userbase is too small to be a significant addition to their userbase but in this way they can destroy it before it escapes their control. They don't take risks. Mastodon could seriously compete with threads and it's gaining popularity. If one more big boom happens it might be too late to stop the fediverse from competing with meta in the most cost efficient way possible. Do not be lured in by the false sense of security, meta wants us to help maximize their profit. We aren't doing that right now so Meta wants to stop us (or limit us, whatever they deem more profitable)

To me it seems weird that YouTuber is doing this at all. They should know that they can't win, I doubt their CEO is that incompetent. Especially after all this time of wasted effort on their side to overpower a very small fraction of users who actually block ads online. Could it be to draw attention from something else that's actually more worrying?

Because as an AdBlock user, since I bothered configuring them and using only ublock I haven't had almost any popups and my experience, especially now on the later stages, is exactly like it was before the ban.

I can't help but think there's more to this because they can't be wasting resources, further damage their reputation and risk absolute monopoly on video platforms for a fruitless endeavor.

Even if YouTube isn't profitable by itself, which, given the user data harvesting and the ads I definitely doubt, google still is. I'd appreciate any takes on this because it's been bugging me for a while now.

Yes but how many losses?

NONONONONONONO

WHAT WILL I TITLE MY POSTS NOW

My guy these are sex trafficking victims, they don't get the "choice" you're mentioning. They were either kidnapped or scammed into doing this, meaning forced. But you're probably a troll so I won't elaborate lol.

The people who run said shadier environments usually support banning sex work so they can get cheaper labour force :). Capitalism runs even behind the scenes.

This looks like an ad

I'm pretty much also a beginner when it comes to privacy so I'd be gladly corrected, but if you read the Tor manual you'll see it works best on its own. VPNs offer very limited protection and if you're looking to reinforce Tor, you might want to look into Tails instead, since Tor is meant to work on its own.

A good first point to make is your operating system. Ditching proprietary software is a must there as well since they have back doors from which they can steal most of your data anyway. Use a Linux distro, preferably not Ubuntu based, however it might be a little harder to use and the difference is not that big afaik. Ubuntu hasn't given us reason to worry other than that it's developed by a for profit company, in addition to some additions that were not considered ideal by the open source Linux users. I am typing from memory of some videos I watched though, so if you're looking for a distro you best do your own research.

One additional necessity is encryption. Use it everywhere you can. Proton mail and other such providers encrypt your emails and allow only the recipient to read them. You can also encrypt your hard drives to protect the information inside them. De-google your devices and use as much open source software as you can. Newpipe or YouTube revanced should be installed instead of the official yt app, Lemmy(as you know lol) instead of reddit, Instagram or any other social media, however this can be hard to execute so what you might want to do instead is delete the apps from your phone and log in to your accounts from a browser that isn't Tor, since logging in with Tor defeats it's purpose completely. Alternatively you can use clients for some like frost for Facebook and, as previously mentioned, newpipe or yt revanced.

Finally, you might want to set up a Tor network server in your residence, as it helps hide your own traffic among the others using it. Additionally, the more wide the Tor network is, the more efficient blending in the crowd becomes. In fact, this is tor's biggest strength. Using any extensions and add-ons to the browser can help make you stand out from the other users and allow others to track you.

Sorry for the long response not necessarily explaining what you were originally asking for, network privacy. But if you are to make your online computing private you must shield yourself from all directions and not leave back doors open at all. It's not all or nothing but it certainly isn't a one click wonder either.

TL DR: Leave Tor as is with the strongest default privacy and security settings, replace closed source apps with open source ones(like clients) and get a privacy respecting OS for both phone and PC.

With enough propaganda, any of them.

I'm not American so I'm happy to hear that the veterans know why they went thru it at least.