If you have a monopoly and need to maximize profits then the question becomes: Why not?! You could extract more money this way, and it's not like your users would go anywhere else at this point.
That is why it's so important to fight and break up monopolies, and to limit what these companies can do. Because they have no reason not to squeeze every penny they can get out of you!
I've been running Gluetun for a few months now, and just the other day discovered that you can use it to seamlessly proxy Twitch streams (using it as http proxy for ttv lol pro), so they load via countries that Twitch doesn't show ads for. Setting it up was ridiculously easy, and now I have neither ads nor endless loading anymore. The whole thing was a really nice surprise!
Do Not Track
Such a simple solution for the cookie banner issue. But it prevented websites from tricking users into allowing them to gather their data, so it had to go.
pay for it with ~~advertising~~ your data
FTFY.
That part is not allowed according to the GDPR afaik, the decision about your personal data cannot be artificially linked to something else. They can absolutely show ads, but without using your data.
From what I understand the GDPR says you have to give users a real choice about the usage of their data, without any unreasonable negative repercussions. Having to pay money (at least as much as they are asking for) is such an unacceptable repercussion, no matter how FB might phrase it.
They are allowed to take money or show ads for access, but they can't couple that decision with the one about the user's data usage.
Yes. It makes it much harder to build a profile about you though, because you're not logged in and they don't know if those views come from you or someone else using your server. Even if you're the only one, the website doesn't know that.
I'm no expert on the topic, but I've also never heard of a case where a seedbox user was sued because of torrenting. As far as I can tell the seedbox providers only ever get takedown requests, they never have to hand over user data or logs. I believe that's mostly because of the jurisdictions they operate in, but some also have restrictions like blocking public trackers.
There are probably a bunch of things that contribute to this. Seedbox providers fighting against information requests, their logs not being as valuable in court, law firms not knowing whether the IP they'd get would even lead to an address (as opposed to IPs of providers they know to be cooperative), the fact that you only downloaded from the seedbox and never uploaded anything yourself, and so on. Torrenting lawsuits are already pretty weak, and adding all this uncertainty probably makes it not worth the effort.
The juristiction where the provider operates, and the logging/disclosure requirements are very important! ISPs are often required to keep logs, VPN/Seedbox/Hosting providers usually are not. I'm not a lawyer and so on, but I could also imagine that logs from some VPN showing your IP was used to download/upload something are not as good as evidence as a mandatory (and probably somehow checked/verified) logs of an ISP are.
Another thing are provider incentives. If you're running a general purpose hosting business you probably don't want any shady stuff on your servers, and so you're pretty happy to comply with any reasonable information request in that direction. As a VPN/Seedbox provider your business depends on people feeling safe and private on your servers, so you'll do everything in your power to fight these requests, and there is a lot that can be done to fight them. And ofc if they do as they say and don't keep logs then they don't even have the requested information.
You operate it behind a VPN and the seedbox is just a means to get a 24/7 running Linux machine
I don't think you need Seedbox + VPN. You can do that of course, but just one is usually enough. The important bit is that other torrent clients don't see your personal home IP address, and the provider that does know your IP doesn't have the obligation or incentive to disclose it. But if you want the extra protection you could search for VPN/Seedbox providers that accept crypto as payment, and chain multile VPNs or VPNs and a Seedbox, so none of them have the full picture. I think that's pretty overkill though, and probably hell to set up and maintain. At that point you should probably go with Tor or I2P instead, because that's basically how they operate (onion/garlic routing).
seedbox is just a means to get a 24/7 running Linux machine
They usually have very beefy connections, far better than what you get for your home internet, especially when it comes to uploads (asymmetric subscriber lines etc.).
Afaik the stated reasons for moving back were pure BS, or at least blown out of proportion. It mainly came down to the people in charge being very "friendly" with M$. Munich got a new major, he publicly called software-freedom "idiological nonsense", asked a consulting firm that partners with and sells M$ products to analyse the situation, and everyone was shocked when they recommended M$.
You mainly depend on the fact that the providers don't keep logs and don't have to disclose your info. It's not 100% safe, but nothing really is. The risk of misconfigurating your VPN and accidentally leaking your IP is very real as well for example.
Get a Usenet provider, a download client and a few indexers, set them up, and start downloading. Maybe automate with *arr apps at some point.
Some suggestions:
Most indexers let you search for free on their website, but grabbing download links and using their API with *arr apps is limited (e.g. 10 downloads and 100 API queries per day) unless you pay for VIP access (usually about $10/year/indexer). So you can try out a few, maybe pay for one or two that give you good results, and keep using the rest within the limits of free accounts.
If you're curious, here are the numbers added up for all Lemmy instances with 10+ users:
blocked/fedipact
federated