Imhotep

You can pirate Spotify directly.

On desktop I use Spicetify, it simply removes all ads (among other things)
Are you referring to an Android app? Last time I checked it had stopped working, I should check again.
For downloading there's deemix also

I rarely listen to a whole album nowadays.
Pretty much since streaming music has been made easy I've seen people make playlists of thousands of artists. I don't see how you can easily achieve this by pirating or buying the albums.
Making playlists on youtube I guess, but it's not nearly as polished an experience.
There was Spotube that did a very commandable job at making a Spotify-like UI for that, but it was still way jankier than using the real thing. And it stopped working (might be back up)

I'm not trying to be a contrarian, but I see comments saying there are good alternatives all the time and I have yet to find one

I've stopped paying for Spotify years ago, switching between Tidal/Deezer/Qobuz a few times, but I still use it on my PC (spicetify...) It's what I want from a desktop client. And the "discover weekly" feature recommends me great music. Using youtube really doesn't cut it (also it's getting increasingly difficult to use)

Has this meme been remastered? I swear it looks like a filter or ai upscaling have been applied

yes please!

needed to tow those massive US johnsons is what you meant?

So that's why Americans love cars so much

No advantages privacy-wise, but it's like a seedbox! I keep the torrent client running. Also I'm on a limited mobile data plan on my router at home, so this helps.

When I found out you could get a free 200GB VPS (look up free tier vps) - and because I had another paid VPS already anyway - I decided to make a seedbox. It's not a ton of storage but it works really well, very happy with it.

Both comments are me. Configuring Tailscale (or Headscale?) is on my to-do.

To be clear, connecting to the VPS is not what I use for the anonymizing part, it's the gluetun container that connects to ProtonVPN servers. This way I can still access my VPS with its real IP. Not sure if there was a confusion there.

Simply using my VPS as relay would still attach my browsing to a single IP I'm the sole user of... or not? I do not know how that works.

VPN on VPS (easy to do with gluetun)

Basically you use a container that's a VPN connection and connect other containers to it.

ProtonVPN has started to become blocked on tons of websites. I have to switch servers all the time, to the point I won't be able to keep a VPN connection up like I used to.

I've read Mullvad has worsened as well. There seems to be a general ban on VPN use (there was always some of course)

My last hope: non profits who offer VPN. They keep logs, don't allow torrenting, and require a real name to subscribe. Very few server choices, if any.

I'm... fine with that. I just want privacy. No surveillance. And I trust the non profit. Plus I torrent on a VPS anyway

What I would like to see are local VPNs, with a small enough pool of users on each server to not get flagged. A rotation between servers from time to time. Compliant with the law of course (as long as the law doesn't require total surveillance, evidently). The goal is to hide everyone's activity from the providers and websites (yes, I know, fingerprinting)

But maybe there's some other existing tool/service I'm not aware of?

It's available DRM free on GOG now