Does Spotify really have “fans”? Or maybe just users? And what user spends time “threatening” piracy, if they know how to do it?
Also, I realized only last month that my younger brother doesn’t know how to use torrents. Shame on me for having left home too early!
Age verification is a great success I see. I feel so much safer now with this shit in place so kids can’t watch porn…
…on major/regulated sites only.
The worst was watching porn on spotify…
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It has absolutely nothing to do with kids watching porn.
Of course.
*so that the government can say kids won’t watch porn.
Rule 1 of computers that everyone who has taught an ICT class learns - if little Timmy wants titties, he finds a way.
In Sweden pretty much anybody has Bank Id, an app which is connected to a bank account and which can function as a valid identification.
App belongs a private company, but it’s still trustworthy and everybody can sign government docs with that.
This is how you should do age verification, through a third party app, not like any site will get your id/picture to just end in their DBs ready to be stolen.
Every government should create an app for the online id, I don’t get why this seems so hard to achieve.
It’s super trustworthy bro I swear
Do you prefer to give your personal id to any site in the world instead of using the same app which you pay your taxes with?
The effect is still the same these companies are given access to my personal information because the government wants to monitor our activity online
Well, actually anybody is trying to monitor your activity online in this moment. But thinking to what Trumo is doing right now probably I wouldn’t like to do it as well.
Credit cards should roughly do the same, but both of those aren’t “great” for privacy and really exists to make profiles of adults while pretending to negate the need for parents to parent (the only real way to reduce/prevent harms of kids witnessing age inappropriate media). Your ability to do financial transactions shouldn’t be tied to your speech or content you view.
The thing is, UK has had age restrictions for years on its mobile platforms. So if you want to look at porn on your phone, you have to unlock it on your subscription. And to do this, they use youre credit card. The thing that they already have. Its easy and swift. And more to the point, only one company has your data. As it stands now, you are supposed to give your personal details to every single company in the world.
Over the past 20 years, how many massive hacks have we seen that leak email addresses and passwords? Are how about all those woman that get their iclouds hacked and their nude photos uploaded? I can think of at least 10 instances in the past 10 years. And now its going to be all of our driving licences, passports, other photo IDs? And the law also requires that they scan ALL private messages. Thats end to end encryption fucked. And god forbid your girlfriend calls you “Daddy” in a sext, you get the cops knocking on your door treating you like Jimmy Saville.
The shit is insane, and people arent anywhere near outraged enough. Its coming to Europe next, if reports are to be believed. So you lot should ALL start kicking up fuck about it now.
My point is you shouldn’t present any id to a random site, it should exists a government app that does it for you.
Same as the passport you show at the border and it should not even show name or picture, is should just say if you are over 18 or not.
People shouldn’t be in the need to show a credit card to watch porn.
ah from shady porn sites, like spotify and wikipedia. definitely protect kids from porn there. /s
Is wikipedia on the list? I see reddit is, lol. We might see an influx soon.
not yet, but the wikimedia foundation has been fighting against it expecting that it would be a class 1 site and require it.
We have to protect wikipedia
Here’s one way to help: https://kiwix.org/en/about-us/#our-story
Download Wikipedia to your own device. If it’s ever blocked or taken down you still have access and can help share information with others.
You can download different versions (e.g. without images) and different languages based on your needs.
There’s other resources available via kiwix as well but I’ve not really explored them to be honest
Does it run a local web server or is it all static files? Is it searchable?
We turn various online educational contents (such as Wikipedia, for example) into ZIM files, and these can be opened by Kiwix even if you have no connectivity whatsoever.
https://flathub.org/apps/org.kiwix.desktop
The ZIM file format is an open file format that stores website content for offline usage.[1] The format is defined by the openZIM project, which also supports an open-source ZIM reader called Kiwix. The format is primarily used to store the contents of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, including articles, full-text search indices and auxiliary files.[2][3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIM_(file_format)
Edit:
All content files are indexed and compressed in ZIM format, which makes them smaller, but leaves them easy to search and selectively decompress.
The ZIM files are then opened with Kiwix, which looks and behaves like a web browser, or with a suitably enabled conventional browser. Kiwix offers full text search, tabbed navigation, and the option to export articles to PDF and HTML.[8]
So I feel like I’m now hearing more successful pushes for censorship through this stuff.
Just last week I learned how Texas has a bill that makes it so if anyone ever invested in green technology that they wouldn’t be allowed
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/08/24/texas-boycott-companies-fossil-fuels/
I saw a post saying /r/period required an age check.
They’re gonna censor as much as they can with this.
Ah, yes. As we all know, periods start at 18, when you’re a legal adult. It’s illegal to have periods before then
That makes no sense, surely everyone has invested in green energy through workplace retirement plans, no?
Let this be a reminder to never turn away from piracy. It needs to constantly be in the background and if any company gets like they always do, then it comes back out. But if we let the knowledge fade away then it’s impossible to rebuild it.
Piracy preserves media.
Piracy preserves art.
Piracy makes sure, that future generations still have access to the creations of humanity.
Data hoarding is a service to the public.
“Keep circulating the tapes!”
I initially perceived piracy similarly to how or perceive reading about archaeology and such, so the fact that someone is sincere in hating p2p copying and calling it immoral just felt preposterous.
Yet now it seems plenty of normies will agree. Then go listen to something they didn’t pay for on YouTube or Facebook or whatever, because “everybody uses that”. What “everybody uses” is fine, see. What they condemn me the pirate for is using ed2k, torrents and such other technologies. Even when I’m literally downloading public domain stuff or abandonware.
It doesn’t take much for media though to parade out the “lil guy and change the opinion of people about how your basically attacking small indie creators”
Or you know you could punish parents for not parenting. Like if kids are watching porn and caught and if it’s actually against some law then go after the parents.
It’s not hard to teach parents how to implement a filtering DNS. But no, countries think they need to be the nanny.
“Protecting children” is just the pretext under which governments can sell increased surveillance. The fact that there are more effective ways they could act to protect children, yet governments everywhere continue to push for ID checks and monitoring online activity, shows that the aim isn’t what they say it is.
Don’t forget trying to kill e2e encryption like what the EU wants to do, both to “catch criminals” and “protect the children”
https://www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/news/article/the-end-of-encryption-as-we-know-it
Protect from what? I mean seriously. Most of us (guys at least) probably saw porn way before we were old enough and most of us probably didn’t end up as rapists or pedophiles. It’s not a good thing by any means, but it really feels like we’re trying harder to keep sexual material from entering their brains than we are trying to keep them fed, clothed, educated, housed, healthy, loved, and physically safe. Of all the things I mentioned the last seven have a monumentally greater affect on their success and well-being as an adult.
That’s just the pretext they give to justify it. The real reason is surveillance. Now they have a way to confidently tie your accounts to your individual identity. And most of these solutions use third parties which will then sell that data as well, so now anyone can tie your account to you without you ever knowing.
Even if the government is barred from surveilling citizens in these ways, third parties aren’t, and the government can just buy that information, no warrant needed anymore.
And these laws never stop at porn, it’s drugs, LGBTQ information, etc. and they can always easily add additional things later with little fanfare.
This is it. Theyve been going after encrypted messaging apps for a long time, ig they realized theyre not getting anywhere and figured to just hit it head on.
The internet has always circumvented this kind of shit, just look at TPB. The ones who are getting really beaten up by this is the older generations and the ones lacking technical know-how.
Yep. “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”
LOL, wrong on that last point! Gen X and Millennials are generally hot shit on tech. It’s the young folks who don’t have a clue if something doesn’t “just work”. Present company excluded of course. :)
Going against the parents is impopular and would make the parents vote against you in the next elections.
As a parent, that’s my take as well. If my kids break a law, I should be the one to fix it. Don’t do my parenting for me…
I feel like I’m standing between two really stupid positions here.
On the one hand, just let parents teach their kids is basically a state’s rights argument. A lot of parents won’t teach their kids, so… do we care? Does this matter? We should probably mount a stronger effort then.
On the other hand, we don’t need the government to get involved to stop 9 year olds from seeing titties—we just don’t! Websites the world over have implemented 2-factor-authentication more or less by themselves (
and probably because they want to spy on you). And, no one says the word r----- anymore because if you ever do, a bunch of anti-bullying PSAs will be really annoying about it in your replies.Not every social problem needs to be solved by swinging around Thor’s hammer. We do have other means.
is basically a state’s rights argument
No, it’s a privacy and individual rights argument. I don’t want local governments enforcing it any more than I want national arguments enforcing it.
Kids seeing stuff they shouldn’t isn’t itself a problem, but it can lead to problems. For example, kids learning to make bombs itself isn’t an issue, kids making bombs to hurt others is the issue. Hold parents legally accountable for the latter, not the former.
The furthest I’d be willing to go on this is requiring a payment method (which itself requires sufficient age) to be entered before accessing anything “adult oriented,” and even then I’m not completely sold. But this way the burden of verifying age is restricted to things consumers already need to trust, and parents would need to give or allow their kid access to a payment method.
I think you misunderstand. I’m not saying I’m in favor of this law.
By state’s rights, I’m referring to the way republicans pretend they want the freedom of choice where they are actually just looking for excuses to keep doing what they’re doing. In this way, letting parents choose is functionally identical: parents won’t choose, so it is equivalent to doing nothing.
There has to be a cultural shift for anything to change.
Kids seeing stuff they shouldn’t isn’t itself a problem,
If I’m being perfectly honest, I do not give a shit if 9-year-olds can see titties. Like, my other argument against this government overreach is that I don’t know what problem it’s supposedly solving that can’t just be solved with better sex-ed.
They could just offer a child protection browser where parents could set to child mode and require adult material offering sites to check if user has something like “attention not 18 year old user” in the headers.
Would be way cheaper, I think.
Don’t threaten, just do it. Enshittification must end.
The only reason we have mainstream paid video streaming now is because early Netflix was genuinely better than dodgy, pop-up riddled mirrors on movie4k.to. The convenience was well worth 8 bucks a month. Same for Spotify.
Fast forward 10 years and Spotify wants me to pay 15 €, scan my face and listen to forced podcast ads AND pay extra for paywalled audiobooks that used to be free? Meet my good old friend youtube-downloader, then.
The news can’t easily report on users actually returning to piracy; who would admit to it? And how would you get data on it? Much easier to truthfully report on users who talk about returning to piracy.
I don’t mind giving my date of birth to all the services I already pay for with credit card but face scanning? That’s just creepy. Fuck off.
Date of birth (with some other details) is kind of a sensitive information in the right hands
given that governments are now starting to make certain protests illegal, definitely not as bad as having your face in a database and your behaviour being mapped for suspicious illegal activity like criticising genocide.
You’re right and I’d go a bit further: It’s none of their business what your age even is, they need to know only one bit for their legal duties, over or under age of majority.
Basically what is really needed is a certificate of majority digitally signed by the government bound to some identifier, email address or full name. All this uploading faces or ID card scans is ridiculous.
The invasiveness is the point. Age gating explicit content is just the excuse.
This
Even using a credit card for something like Spotify is already giving out more information than is needed.
How do you suggest people pay for Spotify?
A normal modern bank card (with 2FA) through a payment provider which obfuscates everything besides the name on your bank account and your bank account number (this will also share the country of your bank if you are in a SEPA region). And since people younger than 18 can use that system, they cannot use that for verification.
Plus, you won’t be at risk of spending money you don’t have, and it doesn’t negatively impact your credit score like even having a credit card does in some countries.
He’s saying if you have a credit card to pay there’s no need to verify (I think)
Edit: nah I’m wrong, cheers
I just hate credit cards since they are like the worst payment method unless you want to dig a financial hole for yourself
Only if you’re bad with money. Nothing wrong with credit cards themselves, and most of them these days are credit/debit cards.
Besides that, credit cards (and chipless debit cards) are unsecure? That receiving credit cards payments costs more in terms of administration costs?
That credit cards are a system designed for consumerism (you see this especially in the US) and that people who grew up with credit cards being the default/more common payment method are often worse with money?
There is a reason why you can only own credit cards if you are an adult, but you can own chipped debit cards earlier.
It is 1970-01-01 like me, no?
April 20th, 1969? Anyone?
it’s 2000-01-01 for me
You’ve got to be 18 to be able to have a credit card.
At that point someone else has verified your details for them, a bank (who are generally considered to be accurate about most things)
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fair point but given the direction US and UK are headed, something legal you do online can be illegal in a couple years with a face attached to that activity. What you mention is also bad (your face being in a face recognition database) but not as bad as that being attached to tons of behavioural data collected about you.
There’s a wide gap between “travelling to another country” and “listening to music.”
I’m not trying to go on holiday to Spotify
Don’t threaten, just do it!
I don’t get why people are so stubborn to move away from corporate products.
Personally, the open source community’s aversion to algorithms is what’s holding me back. Say what you will about them, but I’ve found many great songs thanks to Spotify’s algo.
what are “spotify fans”? Spotify paid 150k $ for Trump’s inauguration party, f them. They do not deserve my money
I left Spotify for many reasons including this. They’ve only proven that they do not care about artists at all. I remember before I left, many of the tracks that came up “based on my playlist” were just random AI generated crap.
Spotify fans
“Fans”?
that’s like saying Amazon fans really lol
Apple fans. Spotify fans. Same shit.
If I am paying for my account personally, with a card in my name, what more do they need?
They want to scan your face to get as many images of people of stated ages to feed into their facial recognition system. Do not for one moment think it is for anything else.
Edit: it is like how Facebook had a 10 years ago you looked like this! Post a new comparison photo today!’ Specifically because they want to know how people age for their AI shit.
Well sure, the real reason is always data harvesting.
Yeah, they want to be able to ‘People that look like This listen to This’ so that advertisers have more options when they are locking down commercials.
what’s even the point of age gating “explicit” music?
“oh no! “Speak To Me” by Pink Floyd has the fuck word in it! can’t let my kids hear it!”
We live in a rural part of Canada that has been left behind by modern times. Mostly by the choice of the residents. I grew up during satanic panic. It was crazy here. My wife and I let our kids listen to anything they want. They always have. They’re 10 and 12.
Their friends often comment about swear words and “sex, drugs and rock and roll” themes of the music they listen too. As an old man I get to regale them with stories of how crazy the Christians were over heavy metal and punk rock when I was a kid, including their grandma.
Now I yell “you’re gonna go to hell!” As a joke to them every time their friends bring it up and I am around.
You’re parenting the right way. Let our kids know about our past and how it compares to theirs, live it. And joking with my kids and their friends without immediately jumping to “that’s bullying”, you can tell my kids are a bit happier than the rest because everything is a joke to them. I applaud you.
“you’re gonna go to hell!”
if where all the “christians” go is heaven, then i’d rather go to hell
Just get me the kid bop version
I’ve been cursing a lot lately, and I blame what I listened to in Spotify. By no means was it because I was playing my pirated Eminem music all weekend 🤣🤣
tf is spotify “fans”? more like spotify “users”
Fans of things that are provisioned by Spotify.
doesn’t make them fans of spotify though
I guess that’s why I didn’t say that, or agree with that framing.
I mean, fuck Spotify and all that, but this one is really the UK government’s doing.
And soon, this shit will come to every country. They’re all drafting laws to mandate real age verification for adult content. The UK is just the first to implement it.
I mean, fuck it. At this point we might as well put our passport numbers in the HTTP headers.
Coming to a pop up near you. If they even bother to ask any more.
I think there are going to be a whole lot of phishing and blackmail scams in the future, preying on the stupid computer illiterate masses putting in their personal information into fake “age verifiers” to access porn or other adult content.
It’s a good thing it’s so easy to tell them from the “trustworthy” ones…
A VPN is a must if you wanna go down this route
Soulseek (and I recommend the Nicotine+ client over the official one) is a fantastic source for all music in all formats, and particularly obscure off-label shit you won’t get anywhere else. You’ll even have some success finding audiobooks there, although this is very hit-and-miss. I wish audiobook pirates would use it more heavily. It’s P2P, like Napster used to be. You’ll have to share something or you’ll get auto-ignored by most users.
RuTracker is a great non-private/non-ratio-monitoring torrent site for music (does require a free account though). I’ve never had a single torrent from there that wasn’t seemingly seeded by a Godzilla’s dick. Obviously it’s in Russian, but there’s really no difficulty navigating around. The only thing you might struggle with is signing up for an account, but just have your favourite translation tool open in another tab 👍
If you don’t mind slow download speeds (from the likes of RapidGator), I enjoy Exystence. It’s a blog that shares link to the latest albums and offers both lossy and lossless versions. Nice RSS subscription to have.
If you do find yourself using RapidGator a lot, don’t waste money buying a sub directly from them, it’s insanely pricey. Instead, get a reseller like Real Debrid, which costs like 10% as much and also covers you for about two-dozen other file hosters. I highly recommend putting as much distance between your credit card and the company as possible, just for safety reasons. Using PaySafeCard is fine, as Real Debrid will never see your details in that case. I don’t have any specific reason to be weary of them, I just don’t trust random/small/hitherto unheard of companies as a rule.
It’s P2P, like Napster used to be. You’ll have to share something or you’ll get auto-ignored by most users.
Oh, reminds me, you should also sort your share. I once got march-horny, added some German marches to my download queue (no judging pls), and then got a PM from the guy sharing them that I should keep my collection in order. And yes, the jerk ignored me.
Also not really p2p, there is a central server. The downloads are p2p.
RuTracker is a great non-private/non-ratio-monitoring torrent site for music
It was ratio-monitoring, that’s how it became great. Just after being banned in Russia they decided that those who try hard enough to even reach there can be trusted to behave.
It’s not only for music, it’s for everything.
I’ve been using RuTracker for years and it usually has all the music I need. And it has more than music, great site.
Here’s a reliable, free VPN: https://riseup.net/en/vpn
