I mean yeah, i could dig up my old computer and set it up as a vpn. That doesn’t make it helpful though, it is still in my name / using my home connection.

When i say vpn i mean a realistic alternative to existing offers, including a variety of locations and acceptable speeds, as well as the reasonable expectation that my data stays private as long as i don’t engage in wildly illegal activities.

Now for lemmy, the instances are either funded through donations such as the one i use, or are so small that the proprietors can afford to pay for running one themselves. A lemmy instance also doesn’t need to provide broadband speeds and global locations to its users.

I think what makes “free” and a vpn contradictory is that the infrastructure required to provide a reliable, public vpn is expensive to buy, run and maintain. Even a non profit or other benevolent entity needs to at least cover its costs and that means some sort of income.

And if that income is not from a monetary usage fee there really must be some other catch, be it data harvesting, user side crypto mining, ad injection, or some other, similarly shady thing. Maybe it’s donations by some rich person, but that just puts the organization under their sway indirectly.

“My excuse is i don’t have one, and i’m also irresponsible towards others”

If you wanna die so much you should seek help instead of endangering others through your carelessness. The belt doesn’t just protect you, but also stops your sorry ass from becoming a giant projectile hurtling into others.

I threw my vuvuzela away after that season

Oh i’m sorry, I forgot to specify that I’m not talking as an absolute, and that I am refererring to the western/capitalist cultural hemisphere and not uncontacted tribes or Islamic societies. Didn’t think of the average lemmy nitpicker deliberately interpreting any possible uncertainties in communication in the worst possible way.

We have engaged in gender centric tribalism for the last decades. Feminism, counter-movements, topped with a bunch of social media induced dissociation and social isolation.

Now women are scared of men, men are scared of women, and everyone is lonely and miserable.

There is the old social media user type “pyramid” of 90% just lurking, 9% commenting and interacting, and only 1% of users being active posters themselves (iirc the numbers correctly). So by that logic, any OC is the most “valuable” since the least people post it. Ultimately anything beyond just passive lurking is very valuable.

Personally I mostly comment on things, which is generally either my opinion or the first dumb thing coming to mind. Works well either way for conversation or just entertainment.

When I make posts I tend to only make some when I have a question or need help/input on something. Churning out memes is not up my alley I suppose.

TLDR: Just post and/or comment whatever you want. Valuable either way

Your instance does…

Snek 🐍 😎