Thanks. It seems maybe Italy works for the moment anyway.

Do you know of a working exit country/location? I’ve tried a few different locations with no dice, but if I know there is one that works for someone else, I’ll certainly try that.

I’m using Private Internet Access. It’s weird, because as soon as I turn it on, FreeTube fails to play anything.

I’m not understanding why it doesn’t work when I turn on my VPN, though. Is there a way to watch Youtube and have the VPN on?

Depending on what you have a taste for, I seem to remember seeing this in Emacs:

https://github.com/magit/forge

As @Arcidias@lemmy.world mentioned - cloudhiker.net seems quite nice.

Also - do you have any particular recommendations for sites on Neocities?

Sure thing!

I think one reason the [IM|microblogging|forum|other communication style] is not yet fully decentralized, but email is, is because:

1. Email existed and had wide adoption before Eternal September.
2. It had and has a clear business use, and being interopable with other companies’ choices of email service has clear value.

The lesson from USENET is rather instructive. Like email, it is defederated, had a standard protocol, and long predated Eternal September. Unlike email, there is no clearcut business use-case, and even though both systems suffered massive amounts of problems of spam and porn, there was no clear (financial) incentive to deal with spam on USENET, other than leaving it up to the end user to use kill files and so on.

I think IM could be solved much like email, like you say. There is obviously a good business case for it (companies spend untold amounts on things like Slack). When it comes to things that are social media-ish, I think it’s more complicated, as you point out, and probably why it remains in the state that it is.

Interestingly, the plugin (I used DontBugMe for FF) didn’t seem to load anything, but going to the page does find logins for that domain. shrug

Thanks, ended up going this route. Bugmenot plugin didn’t seem to find anything? Already use VPN, so I set up duckduck plugin and generated a new burner email.

Thanks for the video link.

My word, yes. This.

Ever since the 90s, I’ve wondered this about IM. IRC is good for many uses, but too complicated for many, so all these private options popped up, and continue to still be with us instead of an open protocol for IM. Jabber/XMPP tried to do it. Matrix, too.

And yet, we still use all this cruft like Slack and Skype and so on.

IMHO, nearly every other type of communication should figure out how to do it like email, including IM and microblogging and Reddit-like things.

Maybe Space Karen might end up actually resulting in innovation and adoption of good tech, but just not in the way that he had planned. XD

I pretty much thought federation was about trying to bring email-like qualities to other things where there was a gap being filled (and held back by) private enterprise, such as IM (Matrix, XMPP, IRC).

Email is an example of a lot things done right as far as being decentralized. Sure, there are entities within Big Tech that have been working to fuck all that up…but there is a reason email is still here.

Right, I would expect the form they take and the medium they use to (possibly) be different. For instance, and especially after Covid, using videoconferencing in addition to/instead of an in-person speaking circuit.

Lol, I remember when nearly everyone was talking about that, but the moral scolds were busy telling everyone they should not talk about it. One of the biggest stars, slapping one of the biggest names in comedy: no one should comment on it because something something reasons. Lol, as if.

Thank you! I’m checking it out right now. Pretty cool you can try it out without even signing up.

If you remember, please let me know. Maybe someone will recreate it on Lemmy, or I can browse via safereddit…

My co-worker just wrapped up a Masters in Comp Sci, and he’s nearly (or is) 60.

Oh right, forgot all about this. Thanks. I’ll poke around…