I think the only real path forward is for a developer to figure out a way to decentralize video hosting. The future of the free internet is decentralization. We’ve seen which way the wind blows when platforms are centralized.
Consumer storage is abundant and cheap as hell. There will need to be incentives for: 1. Creators 2. Node hosters 3. Moderators. Potentially AI could do the heavy lifting on number 3. Figuring out a way to avoid ad based revenue would be another hurdle. In an ideal world, creators would accept that only 10% of their viewers would contribute to them monetarily (through patreon or donations) and use the platform for its freedom from corpo bullshit.
But as much as the Foss and decentralized crowd has been growing, I think we’re still a long way out from average people becoming fed up enough to care. I still get eye rolls from everybody I know IRL when I try to get them to open an invidious link.
I’m in the same boat as you in that I need Instagram for work. My approach is to create a separate work profile in GrapheneOS. I handle all of my mobile work apps in that profile using a separate VPN from all other profiles. I don’t expect to be completely free from tracking in this profile, but for my threat model I don’t mind too much. Any web queries I make in this profile I keep strictly work related.
People arguing you just shouldn’t use Instagram need to remember Instagram is a tool just like Windows, Adobe, etc. Sometimes you need a specific tool to do your job and I believe as long as you containerize that aspect of your life then you’ll be fine.
Just don’t use your work Instagram for personal stuff, not even browsing memes.
I eventually managed to get the yubikey to work, although it is very buggy and the steps to get it working are unacceptable IMO for the “most secure phone OS”. Hardware keys should be a major priority and should simply work just as easily as using passwords, but it seems to be a stale open feature request for a few years. Luckily for me, once bitwarden is authenticated with 2fa I don’t need my hardware key unless I reinstall it. So that’s one major hurdle behind me. Another plus is that while you need sandboxed google services to utilize hardware key auth, they don’t need network permissions to work.
Most helpful comment. Thank you. I’m heavily considering carrying two phones. My biggest hurdle is the Yubikey at this point because it locks me out of my password manager and most of my more important apps.
You mention using the usb-c connection. I tried that but it doesn’t seem to register. I guess I just need to research some more.
Thanks for giving me some hope!
When I initiate Yubikey auth via NFC in Bitwarden, it takes me to a Yubikey demo page. From what I’m reading online, for some reason I need to install google play for the key to work correctly.
Also seeing lots of chatter on the forums that a recent gos update broke most banking apps and they’re working on a fix.
Thank you for the info about the keyboard. I’ll check that one out.
I really like mostly everything about GrapheneOS on paper. The UI, user profiles, security features. It’s the inability to use it in a practical setting that’s frustrating me. Yet I see many people claiming they switched to GrapheneOS a month or a year ago and love it. So there’s got to be a solution. I can’t imagine those individuals installed gos and it was smooth sailing since day 1.
I haven’t. I doubt it would solve all of the problems I experience.
Anybody downvoting me can share their experience running protools with multiple hardware fader interfaces and 18 input DAW interface, pci SDI cards, and 6 separate display monitors.
Adobe software, Davinci Resolve, 3ds Max and its 20 plugins. None of these work or work seamlessly in Linux.
I can’t even get my surround sound to work properly in Ubuntu without having to manually adjust multiple convoluted conf files.
That’s the truth. I love Linux. I use Debian and Ubuntu on a bunch of servers I run. But fanboys need to stop deluding themselves into thinking it’s easy or even worthwhile to use Linux in lieu of Windows for anything and everything. I would be ecstatic if that changed.
I don’t think it’s the options that make Linux a hard pill to swallow. For me it’s the lack of support for hardware and most software. Sure there are alternatives or WINE but that’s usually a big downgrade from just running it on windows.
My Ubuntu box I use for browsing/watching videos and listening to music just barely works and was frustrating to get properly configured. Linux for the dozen professional softwares I use for work is basically impossible. As much as I hate it I had no choice but to stick with windows.
It’s not the fault of Linux developers. The hardware and software companies just largely do not support it still.
Maybe I’m missing something but you can tell a compromised account from a secure account by the user behavior, no? If an account is compromised the activity will be spam/harassment, etc at which point a ban on that account would happen. And compromised accounts could be accessed from a non-vpn Ip also.
Think of it from the reverse direction. If you have a twitch account in good standing that’s verified with a valid email and has no violations, why all of the sudden would it make sense to apply a ban to this account? Perhaps preventing new accounts from being created on a sketchy IP could be a sensible solution, but shadowbanning an existing account makes no sense and is a lazy approach to security. In addition, fingerprinting makes it so a service can easily differentiate between users using the same IP.
I’ve only experienced a shadowban while using ubuntu. I switch between all the major operating systems on the same twitch account and with the same vpn service/servers. The bans have only been initiated while on linux, although they did follow over to the other OSes until some type of timer was passed.
This follows what some online shopping services do, which is to assign weights to certain user metrics and if a set threshold is crossed it rejects your payment or otherwise blocks you from a transaction. So VPN+MacOS might work but VPN+Linux matches some type of metric fraud systems associate with criminals.
It’s trivial for twitch to differentiate between users who are logged in and have verified accounts. Slapping bans by IP is archaic and lazy when you have more precise metrics to go by. And at the very least, they should make you aware that you are banned before accepting your money for their services.
Your question is a good one. I’m not the one who downvoted you fyi. To answer your question, it is absolutely a personal anecdote based on my own experimentation. I’m sure others will add their own experiences. Based on my experiences there’s no doubt about twitch shadowbanning based on VPN use. I’ll admit I don’t have a basis for Linux and adblockers being a part of the equation, but I made it clear in my original post that those were assumptions.
To further speculate, I have an idea that the shadowban may actually be triggered by somebody using the same VPN server doing something that triggers it, affecting anybody else on that server. I can’t possibly provide evidence for that theory, but it would explain the seemingly random nature of the shadowbans.
Unless you automate this to run a search at random intervals, wouldn’t google see a blast of searches and just ignore it as noise? I imagine they employ AI already to filter out nonsensical activity or bot activity.
Really, just stop using google. I migrated from google many years ago. It’s been great. The frustrating part is when they buy up good products and run them into the ground (Nest, Fitbit). Seriously fuck google.
Yeah pimeyes absolutely needs to be shut down and laws need to be in place to protect private citizens from having their information sharable and searchable without their explicit consent. “Publicly available information” is always the line people use to defend these services. I’m arguing that our modern capabilities needs to be adjusted for. Things shouldn’t be so publicly accessable in the first place and personal data aggregation should be a much more vetted and potentially licensed business. Can we talk about what other purpose these facial recognition databases serve other than to stalk, expose, or extort people? If they required proof of identity and only allowed searches of your own face then I could understand the value.