YoSoySnekBoi

The product in this article (Precursor) is not the same as what Lemmy instances use (Turnstile). Turnstile uses the same cryptographic proof-of-work puzzle as Anubis and does not track any of these other metrics. If you see a CAPTCHA-style “Verified” message with Cloudflare’s logo, you’re seeing Turnstile, not Precursor.

It’s not TTS at all. The dude writes and sings everything himself, then uses AI to make it sound more like the artist he’s imitating. I hate AI as much as the next person but you can hardly call this AI-generated

IIRC it was mainly backlash for them integrating Microsoft ads without tracker blocking. They did walk it back after public backlash, though they still use Microsoft ads, just anonymously.

That and their recent generally AI-positive messaging has alienated anti-AI people, but they seem to be walking some of that back too.

To me it feels like they are generally good, but somewhat out of touch with their userbase, which causes a blunder here and there. They’re also a US-based organization, so make of that what you will.

Personally I still use the NoAI version of DDG because no EU-based alternatives have feature parity yet.

I use strict HTTPS-only mode in my web browser and legitimately can’t remember the last time it’s broken a website that I wasn’t personally hosting as a dev server. At this point, I would never expect to be able to keep my interactions with any website that doesn’t support HTTPS private, VPN or not.

No amount of traffic/DNS encryption actually hides where your requests are coming from, or where they are going to. Your IP address and the IP addresses of the sites you visit are always unencrypted. VPNs hide both of these; realistically that’s their sole purpose on the modern web.