Spez (Steve Huffman) moderated a subreddit called /r/jailbait and now he's adding paywalls to the site. He's a pedophile with an addiction to greed.
in fairness to spaz, even though he doesn't deserve it, that was at a time where you didn't need to approve being added to a sub's mod team. I believe he tried deleting himself from there, but they kept adding him, which prompted them to implement the approval system. I could be wrong, I don't know.
I saw spez at the mall one time when I was Christmas early shopping. I recognized him, but I'm not gonna treat a CEO like a celebrity, so I just mind my own business. a while later, I was waiting to get a ticket for the AMC there, Steve Huffman goes up to a kid who is holding popcorn and starts to eat some out of the bucket. The mom tells him to stop and pulls the kid back, but spez just smacks the popcorn out of the kids hands and screams at the mom in the face really loudly (not actual words, literally a scream). popcorn everywhere. the kid is now crying and the mom is at a loss of words and looks so stressed to be in that situation and is about to cry too. At this point, I need to do something. I go up to the situation and tell spez to back off immediately. as a response, he tries to kick me in the balls (missed and tripped a bit), then makes cringry hissing noises.
As much as I dislike the guy, I don't need fake stories for reasons to hate him. Thank goodness this sounds 100% on-brand for that absolute spaz, no proof needed!
Oh man, I forgot about that. Thanks for reminding me of another reason I hate that guy.
In dark times of desperation, seeking help on the internet, I sometimes find myself tempted by the Reddit thread in the top of my search results.
But I know that if I click it, the only thing that will happen is the familiar cross-armed Snoo popping up and telling me, "You've been blocked by network security."
It's like a reality check for me: I don't want to use Reddit, and Reddit doesn't want me using it. So I'm going to need to either get better at searching for solutions, or try to solve problems in my own way.
In the end, introducing more barriers to entry has simply reinforced my decision not to go to Reddit. Their blocking of VPNs has conditioned me to ignore Reddit links in search results entirely, mentally filtering them out the same way I do with ads/sponsored content.
Nice work, Spez.
BONUS: I just came across a Google support page where someone asks, "How do I Block Reddit and Quora results from all searches permanently". The top answer is hilarious and sad.
This, and the response that demands you use the app to see the content, or of it’s marked NSFW for any reason, you cannot view it unless you login.
Really irritating to use reddit anymore.
Old.reddit.com still lets you bypass that.
Even NSFW?
So far, at least in the UK.
Huh, ok. Thanks. I’ll give it a shot.
Can't you ban the entire domain from the network at the router level? I think it would be very fitting to block them on your network in retaliation to them blocking you on theirs.
Try using Kagi search. It’s a subscription based search engine, but it’s much more customizable and doesn’t serve ads or push shopping pages at you as solutions. You can save a filter on there to exclude results from
Reddit and Quora if you don’t want to see them in your searches, but you can also specifically mention websites to whitelist if you find they give you good results for certain types of searches.
I still use Google occasionally because the one thing Google is great at is recommending products to purchase.
...or you could use one of these search engines that are not for profit.
https://www.goodnet.org/articles/7-search-engines-that-give-to-charities
People keep acting like Kagi, desite being part of the capitalist system and even celebrating how profitable they are, are the good guys. And I am tired of seeing people giving them free advertising on Lemmy.
Here's Kagi using some terrible marketing copy right out of freshman year business school to talk about how them making profits by people paying them to do what can be done for free benefits everyone:
We are also thrilled to report that we have achieved profitability. This significant milestone is a testament to our sustainable growth and fiscal responsibility. It demonstrates that our approach of offering a premium, ad-free search experience resonates with users who support a service aligning with their values. Becoming profitable allows us to reinvest in the business, further enhancing our offerings and ensuring that we can continue to provide a top-notch search experience.
You entirely missed the point of my comment. All the search engines you linked to in the article serve ads to generate revenue. Kagi does not serve ads because they generate revenue from subscription fees.
Giving money to charity does not mean that you will get customizable search results.
Two years ago, on June 1st, 2022, Kagi introduced a search engine that challenged the ad-supported version of the web. Kagi Search instead works for you, the user, and not an advertiser paying for your attention. At the time of launch, we did not know if anyone would pay for their search engine and web browser, but luckily, here we are two years later at the forefront of a movement to humanize the internet’s most-used products and put the user back in the driving seat.
The first paragraph of the Kagi blog post you linked states exactly this fact.
Literally no search engine out there is “free”. The “solutions” you linked sells your data to advertisers and gives part of it to charity.
I know I'm a data point of one but this seems sporadically applied. Sometimes it works on a vpn without logging in. Sometimes it doesnt.
The ones they know about.
I was using a VPN to access F*eddit, after 1 or 2 days i got a permanent red bar on top saying that my account was banned, needless to say reddit is no more my preferred media provider.
This also happened to me, i wondered why i got banned
Some mullvad server aren't blocked.
Some Proton aren't either.
What is becoming increasing difficult is Youtube. finding a patched client and the right VPN server is no easy task.
As VPN usage becomes more mainstream I believe "premium" offers will start to appear, offering servers with fewer people, regularly renewed IPs, things like that, for a higher price.
I sometimes have to switch servers to comment on Lemmy
i think the ones that evade the bans, use proxy servers, which are harder to detect than a vpn.
I was about to say, old reddit in browser works fine, but I use Mullvad, so I never noticed. I'm increasingly spending more time here too.
they are probably banning datacenter ip addresses to prevent AI companies from skraping. They want to sell the data for money 🤷♂️
people are also use proxies, and some use datacenters for that and reddit found that out too. i think people using mobile proxies which are better.
That's just not true, we go through a VPN at work and it works
It blocks popular VPN services. I doubt your work is a recognised VPN IP.
In my case, anytime I used a VPN, my feed wont update.
It's changed a few times. It's been blocked without login, then later, to a bunch of random interrupts and resets.
People have strange ideas about netsec, like lemmy.
i use it with proton vpn every day because my country's incompetent slop government blocks access to it otherwise
I wonder if you get banned if you use the TOR Reddit page
No. I'm using Tor for Reddit all the time since they banned VPN. Reddit even has their .onion site
I use it with NordVPN all the time
Yeah it's annoying AF to get around it, I sadly gave up and logged in.
YouTube too
Also if you block all cookies the website breaks too lol
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