Yeah, fair.

http://longeepsiteaddress.i2p. Bonus points for having an option for a human-readable domain as well.

I do use cash when possible indeed! But Monero is for things that you can’t physically receive in a store’s office, like a domain name. It’s not a lot, but it is necessary. Gift cards are not available everywhere, and the ones available somewhere would not necessarily work in other countries.

I think cash-like anonymity is something we do really need in online payments. For me personally it is not critical. But I would still not like my VPS and domain name KYCed to me, for example if, say, something like censorship evasion is prosecuted retrospectively.

That doesn’t have any of the privacy and anonymity features. I’d have to read more on this project, though - did hear about it before. Also, what’s relevant right now is that it’s not accepted as commonly as even Monero (which in itself is sadly not as common as Bitcoin).

Alternatives - like what? I understand the concerns but for now Monero is the closest we have to “digital cash”. Hope there would eventually be a more energy-efficient successor.

If the initial swap is from Bitcoin, there is Bisq - that’s been around for much longer than Haveno. Not tried myself, though.

yes

For me it’s pretty much mandatory because Youtube is normally blocked :/

To be fair, while Microsoft is absolutely vile for such restrictions, I think people overestimate how many people would switch computers just to get Windows 11. It’s probably a concern for big corporations indeed, but regular users? I don’t think so. Most people don’t see anything wrong with staying on an OS that doesn’t receive updates. A lot of them already do so - on their phones, because the support is so short! I am now in the process of switching my father to Linux, and it’s genuinely hard to explain him why he has to get used to a different OS: his reaction to “But Windows 10 would no longer receive security updates!” is “So what?”. Windows 7 probably would’ve still had a high market share if 10 had a similar system requirements change.

It is in Futo’s own F-Droid repo. But there have been license issues so that it is not actually open-source, and I prefer Newpipe (or, rather, Tubular now, because Sponsorblock) anyway.

Less likely to be blocked, both by the censors and by the target websites. Actual flexibility in what obfuscation method to use. Can be a convenient proxy rather than a full-device VPN. Can host other things there, or use it as a static IP to access things hosted at home.

Same, although I use a personal VPS rather than a VPN.

It recently was in the news for refusing to work on degoogled mobile OSes, and the website is not fully-functional compared to the app.

Bur what about servers that are not based in the UK? They are not officiallly doing business there, they just happen to be accessible from there. And with Fediverse, you can specifically choose a server that suits your jurisdiction needs.

I got my mother on XMPP - if you set the person’s account up, Conversations is as easy to use as Whatsapp or Signal, but doesn’t have the central server dependence.

While storage is my main concern (my VPS is very limited in this regard), there is also the fact that you can very well end up with nasty materials stored on your server without a convenient way to delete it. Even if you don’t let strangers have accounts on your server.