More than “mildly infuriating”, this is deeply depressing.
(And seeing TikTok two times there don’t make things better…)
Isn’t tiktok free? Why would you need a lite version. Is it for old phones that can’t run much?
Yes, is for old phones and such. A mutual told me the main app is bad optimized, and a lot of smartphone here are very VERY old. Mine have like 5 years or so, I think that’s like 5 decades in more “develop” countries.
Third-world shenanigans, you know.
If it’s anything like Facebook lite, it’s literally a wrapper for the website. Not even a proper app. Usually a worse experience than using a real browser, but the main apps are usually so bad that people with older phones put up with the lite “apps”.
Is that because of the political situation? Like repression, internet censorship… Or an unrelated trend?
Yeah, is political. We can enter twitter (not that I care) and other sites.
Me and many others all run the Snowflake browser extension so that you can still bypass censorship with Tor. With Snowflakes it is impossible to block Tor without blocking the public internet.
Also Briar messager can be used for communication in the event of internet black outs.
Well, you see, is kinda hard to explain to someone that oy use Facebook and TikTok what Tor even is, so…
Just read the government is currently also on a VPN banning spree. I guess that list is going to change frequently now, if people continue with watching Youtube, Instagram and Twitter.
My top apps are all shopping apps, discount apps, WhatsApp, ChatGPT, TEMU, video streaming and TikTok is there, too. VPN comes further down along with dating apps and then it gets quite random. Guess in Germany our biggest worry is to save some money when grocery shopping…
You are the third person from a different third country to mention Temu. What on earth is so good about Temu? Legit question 😭
Temu has a pretty sketchy history and some how manages to be so much worse than Amazon.
Then why is so famous around the globe? 😭
Because it’s really cheap.
So thing is, the Chinese have so much money that they’re just spending money on getting you to buy things. You can get things order things and get them delivered to your country for probably what they cost to make, maybe even less. Idea is to stifle western storefronts and marketplaces so everyone orders from Temu, Shein, etc.
Like if I want to send something in my country, from one package locker to another, it’s 3-5€. By courier from my door to recipient’s door, it’s more like 10-20€. There’s a bunch of shit on these Chinese apps/websites that costs less than 1€ and shipping is included.
Because people like cheap stuff. Need a phone case? Harry Potter merchandise knockoffs, socks, a brush for your arts project? TEMU has that for $0.61, delivered to your door.
And as far as I know it’s sponsored by the Chinese government. They chip in with forced labor camps. And they also invested massively in advertising and making it a thing.
I wouldn’t buy from them. As far as I know the app is also spying on the users etc. But yeah, enough people seem to buy stuff there. I suppose it’s cheap and convenient and people don’t care. It’s kind of depressing. I agree.
Isn’t Alibaba the same shit?
I wish USA was as free as Venezuela to allow TikTok. It sucks living under a fascist terror empire.
“as free as Venezuela”
My brother in Christ, I have news for you.
May i ask how is the censorship in venezuela?
It looks like TikTok is still available so it’s better than USA.
Tiktok isn’t banned in Saudi either. Does that make us better than the USA, too?
Tiktok being banned in the US is pretty authoritarian, but using it as the only metric is a little BS.
Is not north Korea nor China, I can assure you that.
So it’s not too bad? with how corrupt venezuela is, you’d think they would censor a lot of things. That’s how it works in most corrupt countries including mine at least.
It is very weird. The normal thing here is to throw shit at the government, at least at street level. I have heard that in social networks they are much tougher, I just have not experienced it because I no longer use the Mainstream social networks. There are blockades and restrictions, but they are punctual rather than general.
It seems to me they know that if they were to go full North Korea or China, it would be counterproductive for them, since people are already fed up. China is restrictive, but at least it is prosperous in its own way; and North Korea has decades of propaganda educating its population. Here there is neither.
Hi! I used to live in a US city with lots of recent Venezuelan immigrants. They would tell me about how difficult things were in Venezuela, but that they missed it a lot. Their faces would light up when I would ask them about things they liked about home. They also seemed to have hope that things in Venezuela would improve and they could move back. It must be really difficult to leave one’s country to another for economic and political reasons. They didn’t truly want to leave, so they miss home, never really acculturate, and feel alienated. I have been to several other countries myself for extended periods. Many of them were well-developed and welcoming of Americans. Some even had characteristics that I found better than in the US. Regardless, I found myself missing home a lot.
I don’t know if it makes any difference what I tell you, but wanted you to know that the recent Venezuelan immigrants I’ve met in the US still have their heart in Venezuela.
It is difficult to eliminate Venezuela from one’s heart. Every brother and sister who leaves dreams of coming back, because for us there is nothing like our homeland…
I’m Brazilian and I know that feeling. “There’s no place like home.”
That’s very admirable of you guys. Unfortunately we in other third world countries are completely submissive, and will allow ourselves to be pushed around. I mean, we are pretty prosperous in KSA too, but it’s not worth living like a slave imo.
I don’t know about state violence in venezuela, but i’ll assume it’s like ours/other countries. So stay safe.
Have you been to any of those places? It feels weird to use North Korea as a comparison.
No. To be frank, it is a quick and superficial comparison trying to take as a reference countries with a “similar” ideological alignment to Venezuela.
Although that too is questionable, because, from what I have researched, Maduro’s government is only “socialist” in name.
I wonder if people know why they are downloading and using a VPN. Especially when you’re talking about the more sketchy ones.
Superficially, maybe. But not in depth, like knowing what a VPN actually does and such.
I wonder how much of that ‘education’ is from ads and influencers constantly pushing VPNs. LOL
Well, you know, no one hears about VPNs in school, so…
Considering that there is a ton of censorship there I think they definitely know why.
Source?
It’s my understanding the issue isn’t Venezuelan officials censoring, so much as other countries blocking access from Venezuelan users.
It is very likely Venezuela censoring.
What are you basing this assumption on?
Reports on the Venezuela government
Link? Let’s see this state dept propaganda firsthand.
https://freedomhouse.org/explore-the-map?type=fiw&year=2024
I don’t think anyone actually cares about Venezuela all that much. It is such a small country that it probably isn’t even on the radar of the majority of websites.
To avoid region locking. Anything else regarding security is just bogus talk they trying sell you.
Security as in cybersecurity, yes. Security as in not getting caught violating government bans, not so much - if you’re in a country where getting repressed by your government is a real possibility, it helps a lot for it to not be possible to see exactly what sites you visit. Reminder: even over HTTPS, the domain name (like
lemmy.world) is normally not encrypted. Encrypted Client Hello can solve this, but it has only started being commonly used a year ago or so, and more importantly requires the host to support it.Well, I agree, but that’s now how they are advertised, sadly.
at least its proton vpn instead of the scammy ones.
Should I still be using Surfshark? I only use it because it’s fast.
Careful who you trust, proton is trump scum
You fell for a sensationalising post.
Is it wrong?
If you mean that Proton is a scum you are writing something that is false. Proton is doing many things that are usefull and right. Should I elaborate?
I didn’t write anything, I just asked if the message about proton’s head supporting Trump was false.
Weird… No response.
I am in a different time zone. It was 3am.
Maybe you should have worded the question like that from the beginning. It is hard to tell what you mean otherwise.
No, you just didnt read. The sequence was
- Someone else says proton is pro trump
- You say they fell for a sensationalizing post
- I asked but is it wrong, though
This isn’t confusing or ambiguous.
Just found out today. this is why we cant have nice things.
What did they do?
Apparently the CEO of proton is a big trumper now :(
And?
Trusting shady people with your internet traffic and email is generally a bad idea.
They are not “shady” as a company and you know that, you are just doing a political protest
Nothing wrong with that
You read one title and one tweet and assume a guys whole identity. WTF. Also Proton is owned by it’s employees and a non-profit. https://proton.me/about/team There are many other people there. Also the tweet was a picture. Also if it is real it’s not that bad to compliment a president on choosing a guy that actually is listening about what you have to say against big tech.
Also if it is real it’s not that bad to compliment a president on choosing a guy that actually is listening about what you have to say against big tech.
I’m hoping Yen just fucked up and posted without thinking it through, but seriously, I can’t in any way take anyone seriously who says Trump is sticking it to big tech and fighting for the little guy when we literally know the going rate for a big tech bribe to Trump. It’s a million dollars from the CEO personally, donated to the inauguration fund. Zuck, Cook and others have each done it, and gained audiences with Trump.
I am not an American and maybe do not understand how the political system operates. However I did not write that Trump is sticking it to the big guys. You are making something up there. If Trump chose a minister is not the minister responsible for listening to the industry? Yen’s and Proton’s position (taking this from the now removed Mastodon post) was/is that the Democrats chose Kamala instead of Bernie and Kamala’s team did not listen. Trumps apointee did listen. If it were Bernie’s team I am sure Proton would complement Bernie for choosing someone who listens. I just do not think this is a big deal.
That was referring to Yen’s statement actually, not what you said.
Then why did you quote me 😵💫
Your ability to interact with people on a text forum is very questionable.
He quoted you to disagree with you on your overall point, then went to specifics.
Yes, I did assume that he’s extremely stupid if he thinks anything good could ever come from Trump. It’s not like he’s some mysterious unknown quantity at this point, we’ve been through this before. Also what happened to italics1?
It was taken.
Yeah, I’m not a “Trumper,” but the amount of preemptive conclusions and quick judgments people make, especially those who claim to be tolerant and empathetic, is quite hypocritical.
I don’t deny that I sometimes jump to conclusions too, but I’m amazed at how people don’t even bother to research for even a few seconds! They see a picture, realize it’s not a person destroying something Trump tweeted, notice other comments that jump to conclusions, and that’s all it takes for them to make their own conclusions.
If those in charge’s goal is to divide us and stifle critical thinking, they’ve been remarkably successful. It’s a shame because humans could achieve so many incredible things if we weren’t constantly divided and consumed by hatred.
The tweet said “this guy who is fucking Elon musk for money now is the only one supporting the little guys”. It doesn’t take a lot to think through this, it doesn’t take empathy. We are fighting an irrational cult of personality bent on destroying the united States as we know it, and for the worse. Supporting Trump at all is not an option.
How good is adguard VPN? Got a good deal on 5 years of it.
Same as Florida… but for different reasons.
Oh yeah, I know why lol
Venezuela is one of those countries that just constantly seems to be in a bad state. I can’t imagine living under a government that disrespects its people.
As it turns out unalienable rights are totally alienable
It’s in a bad state now because of the sanctions placed upon it. It was in a bad state before because of capitalist rule.
I can’t imagine living under a government that disrespects its people.
lol you in antarctica?
And I wonder whose fault it is for turning and keeping it in a state of perpetual decay 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
For a colonial power, Spain was a real douchebag. The effects of that douchebaggery seem to have real staying power.
There are plenty of other former Spanish colonies that are doing much better than Venezuela
But are any doing well?
Uruguay and Chile are kinda okay
Wasn’t Chile in the brink of a civil war recently? I’ve no clue about Uruguay though.
A colonial powers in the Americas were real douchebags. They genocided the natives, then went to another continent to enslave people and bring them over. All this was for sugar and tobacco. Millions of deaths and enslaved so some people in Europe could smoke cigarettes while they have sweets. It couldn’t get much worse than that.
It’s not about the sweets and cigarettes it’s just about the wealth acquisition. Same then as it is now. Companies are still using slave and otherwise coerced labor to extract all kinds of wealth from foreign countries.
If any countries try to take control over their own economy by closing it to Western “investment” they get wrecked by the world bank and invaded or sanctioned by the US and/or its allies.
Global capitalism is neo-colonialism.
Well, at least the No. 1 spot is a trustworthy VPN.
That only increased proton’s load and now it would be worse for other free users
Maybe pay for the service?
I don’t think people who watch tiktok videos which are heavier traffic would pay for it. And me, as a free user who only uses it casually once in a while, i don’t think i am needing it enough to pay for it.
Yeah, but the other two… (And fucking TikTok there twice! TWICE!)
deleted by creator
None of those apps are the official Ticktok app.
Honestly I would try to get most of your apps from F-droid. F-droid only has free and open source software which means it is typically much less sketchy.
- Yes, they are official TikToks apps
- I quit using Playstore apps a long time ago, F-Droid is my main source of apps. I just went to the list of successes of the Playstore to see if loops, the Fediverse TikTok alternative that just dropped, was on the list.
wait, did the loops app get on the play store? Pixelfed was added, and is the most popular new social app rn.
Oh yeah, I kinda messed up the two. I was referring to Pixelfed, not loops, but I am too lazy to edit the comment.
Its a shame so many people are trying to go for Proton since they expressed support for a Trump pick
Wasn’t it just the CEO?
Nope. They shared this from the company account on Bluesky and Mastodon.
What’s a good non-EU alternative, if it gets to that point?
They make some pretty good arguments there.
Yeah, it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting, although still alarming.
because of their incredible no logs policy. Its the best vpn according to piracy communities.
I for one, while being as anti-trump as it gets, do not judge a company and their service based on the political view of an individual that works there. Yes there are some principle decisions that one can make but the software itself is good and the service they offer.
While I am deeply disappointed by the message, their actions in the industry have still been generally positive over the years and their services remain one of the only reasonable alternatives to google, apple, and microsoft’s cloud services. Outside of the VPN, Their UX still needs work before I can say its ready for the average person - but It’s still good enough for most people here who have some base level of technological literacy.
Though I am now looking for and hoping for an alternative to crop up somewhere.
Proton VPN is one of the few great ones, along with Mullvad and Windscribe
They just came out in support of the Republicans today, sadly.
They as Proton did not.
Their current CEO did.
Massive difference, this may be their personal opinion but surely it does not speak for the whole company.
They shared this from the company account.
I did not realoze that, cancelling this shit now.
