VPN Registrations Increase by 1,000%, less than Hour After PornHub Blocked France From Accessing its Website.

Comments

• skinnydugan@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Dr. Cox was right: “I’m fairly sure if they took porn off the internet, there’d only be one website left, and it’d be called ‘Bring Back the Porn.'”

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  • WhiteRice@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Tumblr the Depraved?

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    • mienshao@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I hate how hard this made me laugh

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    • CrowAirbrush@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I still miss og tumblr and my little porn account i had going there.

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  • 0x0@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Does oglaf count as porn?
    Asking for a friend.

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    • Uebercomplicated@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Scared to click, someone pls provide context

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    • HakunaHafada@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I had totally forgotten oglaf existed, thanks for the reminder!

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    • Iceman@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Oh, they’re trying!

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  • FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Bro’s name is Dr. Cocks

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    • tomenzgg@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      You don’t like Cox?

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• Object@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Blocking porn has got to be the most “why even bother” thing

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  • Etterra@discuss.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Political theater. “Won’t somebody think of the children?” is an easy win for politicians.

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    • 0x0@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Plus an excuse to collect more data.

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    • rottingleaf@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Except it’s fucking awful to wait for buffering over Tor or a VPN

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  • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    It’s not about blocking porn.

    It’s always about control. Conservatives want to control how you consume sexual content.

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    • Fermion@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      It’s not about that either. It’s about connecting photo ID to browsing profiles and deanonymising the internet.

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  • Schmoo@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    VPN companies and data brokers have a financial incentive to lobby for intrusive age-verification and restrictions, and prudish politicians are conveniently present in every political system. The porn lobby is powerful, but it seems they’ve been losing this battle recently. Or maybe they’re cutting deals with the data brokers, who knows.

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  • shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Politically speaking, it’s easy money. You pander to the conservatives with blocking propositions, get votes.

    *Who is going to champion the flip side?!"

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    • Liz@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Me. Porn is fine. Teach your children how to handle it. Teach them that it’s not realistic and some of it is straight-up dangerous. Put a filter on your internet if you’re too scared to talk to your kids about uncomfortable topics.

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  • FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Like Reddit or YouTube with proper keywords didn’t exist

    Been there, done that

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    • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Reminds me of when my buddies discovered our friend’s YouTube account… He only had one public playlist, and it was 100% full of softcore porn. Nothing else. It was all softcore porn. We gave him a pretty good ribbing for that one, and still make a point of reminding him that better porn sites exist every time it comes up.

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    • aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Meanwhile in Australia, they just passed a bill requiring social media to verify the age of their users to make sure they’re over 16

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    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I feel like reddit and YouTube are completely different leagues when it comes to porn… Porn is the only reason I haven’t deleted my last reddit account

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• BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I have to admit, of all the nations on earth, I never expected this sort of puritanical theatrical authoritarianism out of the french.

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  • FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    They’ve been trying to block it for many years now.

    France has been going downhill for quite some time. Many proposals for chat control and tracking… even recently, we got a law proposal that aimed at banning E2EE 😵

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    • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Damn, the whole world really is going authoritarian.

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    • chunes@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Politicians are always trying to ban encryption in every country. I remember it happening constantly in the 90s. And it happens because politicians don’t understand that you can’t ban math

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  • NotKyloRen@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    They should actually take to the streets (again). Not joking. What is this nanny-state BS?

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  • Vermingot@jlai.lu ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    To clarify, the french didn’t ban pornhub, it’s the company behind pornhub who decided to deny it’s access in France to protest a law proposal that is currently getting examined in parliament

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    • aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Ps : The law in question would require all porn sites to verify the age of its users

      This is how young boys learn to computer. It won’t do shit to stop anything. It’s a waste of time.

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    • echodot@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      The law in question would require all porn sites to verify the age of its users

      Wait aren’t they proposing the same thing in the US as well? It’s a fairly standard thing of right-wing governments to just demand the impossible with no understanding about it could possibly be achieved.

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    • ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      The law in question would require all porn sites to verify the age of its users

      Isn’t that already the case on a lot of the internet?

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  • HulkSmashBurgers@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    I know right? Aren’t there nude beaches in the south of France where people will fuck in broad daylight with others watching?

    French citizens please confirm (for ugh science, and not vacation planning)!

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    • BlueMagma@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Yes, there are. But you misunderstood the news: France didn’t block pornhub, pornhub blocked France as a protest against a new law.

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  • NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Democracy and general Egalitarianism is so 2008.

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    • Manifish_Destiny@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I can’t wait for a severe overcorrection

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    • FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Democracy and general Egalitarianism is so 2008

      Bold of you to assume it ever was!

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  • MisterFrog@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    The percentages of respondents in surveys on infidelity from France are a bit of a cultural difference (from Australian perspective, anyway)

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• passepartout@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I’m shocked that this many people feel the need to disobey a rule that is only there to help the children. Next step must be to ban VPNs altogether, and enforcing all Internet users to be identified with their real identity (/s obviously).

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  • scott@lemmy.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Jokes on them I just have an incredibly high volume of DNS traffic

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    • masterofn001@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Image

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    • rottingleaf@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      That’ll be really slow.

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    • passepartout@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Wait, this can’t just be another useless DNS blocking, or is it?

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  • IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    The VPNs will be harder to ban. Not just from a technical standpoint, but politically as well. Big businesses will be absolutely opposed to VPN bans.

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    • passepartout@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      There will be a lot of businesses who feel the (justified) need to hide the entrypoint to their infrastructure behind a VPN.

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    • ifItWasUpToMe@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I feel they could easily ban VPN companies (maybe?), which is what 99.9% of people that want to browse from a different location use.

      This won’t affect companies at all as they would be using their own VPN.

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  • Lembot_0003@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Teacher, leave the kids alone!

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    • Raverbunny@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      All and all its just a-nother dick in the porn.

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  • affiliate@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    if the VPN ban doesn’t work then the only reasonable course of action would be to ban the internet entirely. it’s the only way the children can be truly safe.

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    • synapse1278@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Back to the Minitel !

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    • meliaesc@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Honestly and truly, I don’t think humanity is ready for the internet.

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  • FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Don’t give them ideas. If they block no-log VPNs I’m going to become a real threat 👀

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  • unautrenom@jlai.lu ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Fun fact: they already tried. In the same law where they tried to ban E2EE a few months ago. It went about as well as you’d expect.

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  • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Does the rule in question even apply to end users? All I had heard of it was that it put some kind of requirement on the website itself to identify people, which a person seeking out a noncompliant or foreign website presumably wouldn’t be the one violating?

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• BetaBlake@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  How about you just parent your children? But it’s not about the children, that’s just always the convenient excuse

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• Finch9678@europe.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Out of the loop here, why did Pornhub leave France?

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  • Stillwater@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    French conservatives passed a law requiring porn sites to verify age of all site visitors. Pornhub is blocking France instead of forcing its visitors to provide ID.

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  • pressedhams@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Age verification requirements.

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  • oppy1984@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    As one headline put it “PornHub pulls out of France”.

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• devolution@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Why do the French even need Pornhub when their basic movies are very porn adjacent?

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  • FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    You mean they like to fuck people?

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• meowmeowbeanz@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Peak French stupidity, this isn’t about protecting kids - it’s about building surveillance infrastructure. Back in 2024, critics already called this the foundation for a “Great Firewall of France”. Once you have the legal framework to block websites and force ISPs to implement monitoring, mission creep is inevitable.

  The technical approach is laughably naive. They’re essentially creating a centralized system that could easily become a database of citizen sexual preferences. Even with their “double anonymity,” you’re still creating digital fingerprints and metadata trails.

  Most importantly, it won’t work. Kids will just use VPNs - the same way adults are already doing. You’re not protecting anyone; you’re just pushing everyone toward circumvention tools while normalizing government control over what adults can access online.

  It’s perfectly French because it combines maximum bureaucratic complexity with zero practical benefit, all while creating new opportunities for state overreach. Classic.

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  • Noodle07@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Amen

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  • xor@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    i think it should be a little harder for a child to watch anal prolapse fisting porn than “click yes if you’re of legal age”….
    but… not a good excuse for creating a citizen surveillance database.

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• HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Image

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  • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Reminds me of the running joke I had with a French bloke in a place were I worked in about how Jacquie-Et-Michelle (NSFW) was a part of French Culture which none of our other colleagues seem to - or at least admitted to - get.

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• Krompus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  There are other, much better sites, lol.

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  • Jhex@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    go on…

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• Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  At first I suspected this was the French government demanding that 40% of the videos be made in europe using the French language.

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  • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Which is weird since I often don’t hear much spoken dialogue in most porn films other than fake moans and screams.

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• Taleya@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I remember when the French used to respond to this shit with fire instead

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  • FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Now we get tear gased and shot with rubber bullets until we become disabled

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• sturmblast@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Why do people even go to pornhub… there are so many other options

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• trk@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Or as they call it in France, Le Porn

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• Ledericas@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  pornhub is so sanitized now, im guessing its mostly because of the OF videos.

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• webmuc@lonestarlemmy.mooo.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  once again porn leads technology

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• njordomir@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I hate how VPN access is the scaffolding holding the building up making things look normal. You can visit all your normal web sites, you can bypass georestrictions, you can be a little less tracked than you might otherwise be. But what happens when they decide to do away with that scaffolding and we all find out they tore down the house behind it while we were enjoying “normalcy”. Too much of making the web functional depends on vpns and adblocking. We shouldn’t have to do this stuff and Chromes adblocking scandle should impact millions of users all around the world unilaterally removing adblocking from the web. I fear for the day we have a US only internet and a global internet, not just on paper, but in actual practice.

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• kepix@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  this only means that americans dont know about proton vpn

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• WarlordSdocy@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I mean for context with the TikTok comparison using a VPN didn’t get you around the TikTok ban unless you also made an entirely new account.

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• superminerJG@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  France underestimated the power of horny

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• Etterra@discuss.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Anyone with more than two brain cells to click together could have told them this would happen. Some of them did. Not that they would/did listen.

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• sircac@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Intrigued by the quarter a day oscillation in that graph… 🤔

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• MangioneDontMiss@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  wtf, france?

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• judgyweevil@feddit.it ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I don’t understand, why not just open another porn website?

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• devolution@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Also, when in France, who needs porn when you have Eva Green?Image

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• rottingleaf@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  BTW, who even had the brilliant idea to block pr0n for French of all people?

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• bold_atlas@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Don’t people realize there are hundreds of free porn video sites besides Pornhub? With bigger selection too because the smaller sites usually don’t get DMCAed.

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• commander@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I guess this bodes well for Proton becoming increasingly a Google One products replacement with more users potentially paying

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• june@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  More than TikTok’s US ban doesn’t mean much given they blocked users who originate from the US regardless of VPN location

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