Fjord pee-per N
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Call this a prediction post.
If you've listened to any podcast or watched any YouTube video, you've probably come across an ad for a certain vpn company. Let's call them "Nord VPN" because that's their name. Like most "brands" they encourage "influencers" to "organically" include their "brand awareness" into "audience engagement" through "calls to action" .
This means lots of flowery talk about the importance of "privacy".
Okay, sure, privacy is great. But let's think about this for a moment.
That whole "in every fucking video and podcast" thing, right"? Those spots run hundreds to thousands of dollars per, depending on the influence of the influencer. Plus kickbacks from promo codes. That's a HUGE advertising budget.
This can only mean a few things:
- They have a huge influx of cash from VCs
- They have a massive amount of money backing them from ~~ other sources ~~
- They make their money from a revenue stream that isn't subscriptions
- They're blowing their wad on expansion and it will never be profitable
I refuse to believe they have a large enough user base paying a few dollars a month to justify how big they claim to be.
That means it will play out (depending on funding source):
- The VCs will want an ever-growing return, which will surely outpace realistic expectations for profit. Results in either a crash-and-burn (see #4) or will require alternate measurement streams (see #3)
- Let's say this is very possible, given how much backdoor spying certain fascist regimes (ie: USA) does. But let's give them benefit of the doubt and assume they aren't a FBI front (yet)
- Alternate revenue streams means selling personal information of their customers
- Company crashes and burns. But no company is going to admit defeat without first exploring alternate revenue streams (see #3)... or at least they will be acquired by a venture company, leading to #1, which will just keep looping between #1 and #4 until someone tries to recoup investment via #3
So you have this company ostensibly built on convincing people they need privacy... Trying to get a huge user base to use a product that ostensibly provides privacy... By routing all their internet traffic through a central server AND holding onto PII for billing purposes... Which only provides privacy if there is trust in the operators of that service... Except that the only possible endgame for those operators is to sell all the PII and internet traffic they've logged over their operations.
The probability of a VPN company being large AND profitable AND having a huge advertising budget to expand AND remaining a way of protecting privacy is absolute zero.So this is my prediction that sooner if not later we'll be reading the articles about "big name VPN caught selling PII and browsing logs to highest bidder"
Or they get hacked and lose all that data before they can sell it. Either or.
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I did as much research as I could a while back on the popular VPN services, and NordVPN seems to actually have a good service with strong anonymity.
So I'm going to go with:
@Lorne-Kates said in Fjord pee-per N:
The VCs will want an ever-growing return, which will surely outpace realistic expectations for profit. Results in either a crash-and-burn (see #4) or will require alternate measurement streams (see #3)
Edit: The bloody annoying ads everywhere is a big reason I'm not using their service yet.
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I think that any prediction which plots a trajectory of an online service going from awesome when it first appears and then slowly descending into shit as reality and operating costs catch up is a correct, if oversimplified one.
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@Lorne-Kates I've seen the same for Private Internet Access, ExpressVPN, and etc. In fact I'm pretty sure I've seen ExpressVPN shilled for harder than NordVPN. I think you're just looking for a conspiracy.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Fjord pee-per N:
If you've listened to any podcast or watched any YouTube video, you've probably come across an ad for a certain vpn company.
No, not at all. It was all stupid basic Python training company ads for me (back before I installed a video ad blocker because fuck people who over-monetize their tracks).
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@Lorne-Kates said in Fjord pee-per N:
Let's say this is very possible, given how much backdoor spying certain fascist regimes (ie: USA) does. But let's give them benefit of the doubt and assume they aren't a FBI front (yet)
Alternate revenue streams means selling personal information of their customersI'm going to hedge my bets on these although if pushed I'm going with selling personal information.
There's too many of them charging to little. Bandwidth is cheap but it isn't that fucking cheap especially when their main advertising angles is circumventing geo-blocking on video streaming services and hiding p2p bandwidth.
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@dkf said in Fjord pee-per N:
@Lorne-Kates said in Fjord pee-per N:
If you've listened to any podcast or watched any YouTube video, you've probably come across an ad for a certain vpn company.
No, not at all. It was all stupid basic Python training company ads for me (back before I installed a video ad blocker because fuck people who over-monetize their tracks).
YouTube has ads?
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@dkf said in Fjord pee-per N:
@Lorne-Kates said in Fjord pee-per N:
If you've listened to any podcast or watched any YouTube video, you've probably come across an ad for a certain vpn company.
No, not at all. It was all stupid basic Python training company ads for me (back before I installed a video ad blocker because fuck people who over-monetize their tracks).
Most of the ads I see for Nord VPN aren't that sort of ad but actually part of the video as the Youtuber is being directly sponsored. I just skip the video forwards a bit and ignore them.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Fjord pee-per N:
Or they get hacked and lose all that data before they can sell it. Either or.
Just dropping in to say so.
NordVPN confirms it was hacked | TechCrunch
NordVPN, a virtual private network provider that promises to "protect your privacy online," has confirmed it was hacked. The admission comes following
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If I'd get a VPN service I'd get the one from my ISP because I trust them to be full on my side when it comes to protecting my privacy. But for going abroad I got my own home VPN server setup too that I can route my traffic through, just for the extra layer of security.
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@Atazhaia said in Fjord pee-per N:
If I'd get a VPN service I'd get the one from my ISP because I trust them to be full on my side when it comes to protecting my privacy.
You trust your ISP a lot more than I trust mine.
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People keep telling me I need a VPN (spoiler alert: other than the corporate VPN I need for work, I don't) because PRIVACY then telling me I should use some random company who are trustworthy because the company says they're trustworthy.
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@brie said in Fjord pee-per N:
@Atazhaia said in Fjord pee-per N:
If I'd get a VPN service I'd get the one from my ISP because I trust them to be full on my side when it comes to protecting my privacy.
You trust your ISP a lot more than I trust mine.
There is one ISP I'd trust to be on my side in Sweden, and that's Bahnhof. They've given the authorities the finger lots of times when they come creeping with "help us spy on our citizens"-schemes. The big ones? Fuck no.
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the only ISP i trust to be on my side is..... i'm sure there's one out there, but i've never met them. they must not have coverage in my area.
as for VPN providers. I trust Nord VPN to get me into region locked content. I don't trust them to protect my privacy..... because if i need my privacy protected then the Internet isn't the place to do it.
That's why i shit in the woods, not on the internet.
....
what?!
.....
-fascinated- Really? That's a thing?
......
Why?
......
oh. I see
....
This just in.... Thanks to Internet connected deep woods cameras..... I shit in the woods AND on the internet.....
and they don't even have a decency to pay me royalties!
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@Carnage said in Fjord pee-per N:
There is one ISP I'd trust to be on my side in Sweden, and that's Bahnhof. They've given the authorities the finger lots of times when they come creeping with "help us spy on our citizens"-schemes. The big ones? Fuck no.
And that is exactly why I use Bahnhof at home. And set up my parents to use them too. Sadly I am also using the worst ISP in that regard (Telia) for my mobile phone, but I don't really do anything weird while on mobile data anyway. And I can just VPN home for that anyway. Mobile phone I have the priority of having coverage and Telia is best at that, especially here up north.
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@Atazhaia said in Fjord pee-per N:
@Carnage said in Fjord pee-per N:
There is one ISP I'd trust to be on my side in Sweden, and that's Bahnhof. They've given the authorities the finger lots of times when they come creeping with "help us spy on our citizens"-schemes. The big ones? Fuck no.
And that is exactly why I use Bahnhof at home. And set up my parents to use them too. Sadly I am also using the worst ISP in that regard (Telia) for my mobile phone, but I don't really do anything weird while on mobile data anyway. And I can just VPN home for that anyway. Mobile phone I have the priority of having coverage and Telia is best at that, especially here up north.
If I could, I'd use them too. Unfortunately, they are not on the list for my fiber.
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@Vixen said in Fjord pee-per N:
I trust Nord VPN to get me into region locked content.
I understand they can also be trusted to get your connections out of China.
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@levicki said in Fjord pee-per N:
@Vixen said in Fjord pee-per N:
That's why i shit in the woods
Admit it
NEVAR!
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@Vixen said in Fjord pee-per N:
@levicki said in Fjord pee-per N:
@Vixen said in Fjord pee-per N:
That's why i shit in the woods
Admit it
NEVAR!
Does that mean it's true?
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@PleegWat said in Fjord pee-per N:
@Vixen said in Fjord pee-per N:
@levicki said in Fjord pee-per N:
@Vixen said in Fjord pee-per N:
That's why i shit in the woods
Admit it
NEVAR!
Does that mean it's true?
i will never admit its truth. and i will never admit its falseitude.
it shall forever remain like Schrodinger's cat. both true and untrue.
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@Vixen said in Fjord pee-per N:
@PleegWat said in Fjord pee-per N:
@Vixen said in Fjord pee-per N:
@levicki said in Fjord pee-per N:
@Vixen said in Fjord pee-per N:
That's why i shit in the woods
Admit it
NEVAR!
Does that mean it's true?
i will never admit its truth. and i will never admit its falseitude.
it shall forever remain like Schrodinger's cat. both true and untrue.
Truly falsey.
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@Tsaukpaetra Is that the game Australians play with truth values?
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@hungrier Yeah, nah
... 
... Yes.... 
