I think it still very much depends on how much they’re onto you. The guy from the most famous Proton case seems like a low-level crook, so if he wasn’t so easy to catch, chances are the agency would’ve just went after an easier prey. If you’re a DNM admin, though… Indeed, play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

I need one because a large portion of the internet is blocked, pretty much everyone around me uses some sort of censorship evasion for this reason. I have a subscription to a VPS rather than a VPN - it allows me flexibility in what protocol to use because some can get censored (already has happened with Wireguard I used to have), as well as allows hosting a variety of services in addition.

The median monthly salary in my country is $300-$500. It absolutely is a big cost for some people.

It does have some built-in blocklists, but they’re limited compared to UBO. For example, blocking the ads on a site, but not the big HTML elements they used to be in.

Unless you’re a woman and want to be treated as a human being, I guess.

When I first installed GOS, wanted to like Vanadium. Went right back into a FF fork+UBO once I saw that while its blocklists did stop ads themselves on TvTropes, it did nothing to the HTML elements that contained them so it left big ugly white boxes visible.

My bank app just has its own NFC payment system, independent from Google, and that works fine.

Yes.

I’m just frustrated that Matrix is more popular than XMPP. Yes, it’s about as easy to spin it up, and I was surprised to see it runs fine on my low-end VPS, but it’s noticeably more resource-intensive, and I’m especially worried about the ever-expanding storage. I really don’t like the “store everything forever” model, I think it should be opt-in or allowing you to set an archival period.

I also recently learned that a lot of people don’t erase tabs upon quitting the browser, which feels wild to me… Why not use bookmarks at that point?

Where I am, Telegram’s pretty much the primary social media in addition to the primary messenger. While I could avoid Whatsapp (which would’ve been harder if I were older), I still would’ve had a very hard time if I deleted Telegram.

I got the impression most people do indeed have nothing to say or think they do. So this analogy irks me, unlike the more universal “curtains on windows/doors in bathroom”.

I think you’re exaggerating. Disabling JS breaks way more sites than an exit node’s IP.

Edit: I meant that “small number” of sites is an exaggeration, not that exit node blocking is uncommon.

To be fair, if your safety depends on whether a particular company cooperates with authorities, you’d better rethink your OPSEC.

What are the ones you’re after specifically?

Which would be absolutely disgusting given that Signal’s official app lacks some basic functionality!

Iceberg explanations are a whole Youtube genre, though - it’s such a convenient narrative structure.

I have come to the opinion that until stores and malls accept crypto, they will never grow betond being a commodity like gold

I don’t think they need to either. In the physical world, cash is the absolute best. Using crypto in the real world is like using cash by mail - cool gimmick but very impractical. Crypto is a way to buy your VPS, domain, email, etc - the purely virtual things.