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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 14th, 2023

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  • Yes, that is pretty much how WeChat works. It is mostly a glorified messenger and payment system (like current whatsapp), that they added a proprietary webbrowser with addons and storefronts on top (and wechat gets commission from said webpages and addons people access through them).
    You could maybe get a similar experience in Android if you install Firefox, save a bunch of commercial websites as favorites, save another bunch of social media websites as favorites, add whatever addons there are (ublock origin for the win), and access stuff only through it.
    Voilá, now you have an everything app.


  • If i was in a righteous mood, i would say :

    1 - Paying for consuming media older than 30 years is a perversion of the intellectual property idea, of supporting artists for a short window of time by artificial restriction of the right to culture and knowledge, and then to release the works to the public domain for the enjoyment of society. That the capitalists extended said window to be the death of the autour + 70 years, and then invented the idea of owning the art-invention-etc made by worker-artists is the real robbery of the situation. The current phase of studios trying to leverage AI tools (and AI tools that are essentially industrial scale pirates AND plagiarists) to make even more exploitation of artists is not surprising to me.
    I forgot to add: the original north american idea was 14 years + 14 years, if the artist made a request for extension to get the 2nd period. Imagine if we had 14 years copyright now, everything made 14 years ago would be released and available to watch or even to make derivative works…

    2 - I am not north american, i am third worlder (Brazil). So, since i have the money and time to spend, i prefer to spend money on domestic artists and domestic works to benefit my nation, which is a lot poorer than western artists and populations, and with much less famous cultural works. Instead of giving (more) money to Disney, i can go on music shows or theater here, or sign up one of the local streamers, and pirate the foreigner’s content i want. Brazilian artists, that really need the money and attention, i try to pay whenever possible (if it is even available). For films made by disney (and equivalents) … they will make enough money from cinema release here and from their foreign rich country, no need to give then a monthly transfer on top. The book Open Veins of Latin America is something of a reference in this type of reasoning.