I remember iTunes only letting you change computer like 2-3 times max before the drm would make mysic not work any more, but maybe it was no-drm in the beginning.

I had a chinese 1GB shuffle though so IDK if that’s correct.

The chinese shuffle also doubled up as a usb key (very useful back then) and also didn’t need iTunes to function smh.

Meanwhile, in a dark and forgotten corner of my PC, I STILL have several thousand MP3s I downloaded from Kazaa back in the day.

I don’t think that’s necessarily true - maybe it depends on (a) the owners of the platform and/or (b) whether there are sources of funding besides advertising

E.g. here in the UK, the BBC and Channel 4 are both broadcasters owned by the government, and both are funded at least in part by adverts. But I think both of them are relatively healthy and aren’t on the brink of destroying themselves.

I think most of the BBC’s funding comes from the licence fee (British people pay for a TV licence) but they make some money from ads shown to international audiences. Channel 4 is solely funded by adverts I think, but it’s owned by the government and I think they have to abide by certain rules and targets.

Panics while using Boost to view this post

This is all spanish (as in castilian) media. The torrents are sparse and usually really badly encoded, I’m talking stuff like AVI codec in media produced in 2024.

There’s a better chance if you try to find it in the open with those sketchy links you mention or you are “lucky enough” to get invited to a Telegram group that has it uploaded to the platform, severed in hundreds of multipart files.

I’ve seen more Spanish people using the outdated Ed2K protocol through a/eMule rather than torrents even, it’s so depressing.

There are in the videos as sponsors for a lot of channels on YouTube, and as sponsored results on Amazon

Brand awareness gets you subconsciously

Here’s a really horrifying fact about ads, they don’t expect you to go right out and buy their product. Ads target your subconscious and manipulate your way of thinking. There was a study done by some university and tested by a few people across different fields of study that proved this to be correct. I wish I could remember off the top of my head where this was published. If you do a little browsing you can probably find it and you should because you can’t trust a stranger like me to properly relay the information.

You’ve never seen a DNS poisoning attack have ya? I’ve seen Google infect systems just because they looked up a particular football game, because some bad actor somehow poisoned the DNS cache.

So no, “legit” sites aren’t always safe either.

I remember my first time on the internet

Edit: Ublock Origin, Sponsorblock, Violent Monkey with anti script and ad block blocker scripts. Countdown bypass, autoclick skip ad and shortlink scripts, and what ever other specific scripts for your needs

I decided to be helpful for others instead of just a smart ass. Not you OP, you have it coming for spreading misinformation

Ah no, most “malware” is just false positive of AV software, since repacked games look pretty similiar. And no such dangers with media files, as long as your system is uptodate.

Wasn’t there statistics a while ago already, that most malware comes from “legit” sites, especially newspapers (malvertising), by quite a margin? Hard to find now, too much noise.

Not to say you don’t need to be careful. But not much more than always with executing something from the internet.

One rule of thumb: torrent sites usually have a colorful pirate skull things for torrents from reputable groups (if not, look for a better site). They have a reputation to lose if malware gets slipped in. And they do what they do mostly for reputation and competition.

Edit: found this, SO had maintenance today.