I hate that social media business news qualifies as “technology” these days.

as bad as it seems

Based on anything in particular? General consensus seems pretty positive from folks who have tried it.

I don’t trust a man that doesn’t have something strange going on about him, 'cause it means he’s hiding it from you. If a man’s wearing his pants on his head or if he says his words backwards from time to time, you know it’s all laid out there for you. But if he’s friendly to strangers and keeps his home spick-and-span, more often than not he’s done something even his own ma couldn’t forgive.

-No-bark Noonan, Fallout: New Vegas

Like basically everything, there’s balance to be struck. If sites operate purely off of donations and enthusiasm, it’s easy to turn out like kbin.social instead of myspace.

Nothing’s stopping people from running websites for things they care about right now, but you have to care an awful lot to host/support something for other people without the potential for it to at least pay for itself.

remember when Myspace offered that for free?

This seems like a strange gripe. If their business model was sustainable, more of us would be reading this on myspace right now.

The first one. Can look up the name in the article to confirm…though “independent” implies not funded by the state, right?

Apple is continuing to operate in Russia and, in the process, are enforcing their censorship.

I’ll pitch Bandcamp as an option, especially if/when they bring back Bandcamp Fridays next year (where they don’t take a cut on specific days). Not everyone’s on it, but it’s generally a reasonable, legal option for those artists that are.