Product placement ads can be the best kind when they’re done well. The catch is they take far more effort to weave naturally into content, and that limits the kinds of sponsorships you can accept.
The sweet spot is when it feels seamless, but too often creators overdo it and the result is hilariously awkward. Think of someone discussing, say, the dangers of mountain climbing, then suddenly blurting out: “And you know what else is dangerous? An unprotected connection. Which is why you need X VPN!”
“Polish” is subjective. If what a platform provides aligns with your needs, it feels polished. If it doesn’t, that same “polish” can actually work against you. In other words, polish depends on how much you agree with the platform’s way of doing things.
iOS (and Apple overall) tends to be more opinionated. It says, “Do things our way and you’ll have a smooth experience.” Android, by contrast, has historically been more of a flexible “toolkit.” That gave you room to shape the platform to your liking, though it often meant less guidance and structure.
In recent years, Android has shifted toward more out-of-the-box convenience, closing some of that gap. But ultimately, it comes down to what you value: iOS offers a cohesive, guided experience, while Android gives you more leeway to adapt things if you don’t agree with the defaults. Neither approach is inherently better—it’s about what fits you.
The whole “the staff ate it later” routine is really just a symptom of a broader intolerance in Japanese media. After years of getting complaints over the most innocuous things, Japanese TV shows have started slapping disclaimers on everything, even the most trivial situations.
You see it everywhere: statements like “this is just one of many possible hypotheses” to appease people who might disagree, though to be fair, Western media sometimes include similar disclaimers, or “this was filmed with the owner’s permission” even when it is not really necessary. Then there is the excessive blurring—if someone with even a minor scandal appears, they are edited out or blurred, and a message like “this was recorded on MM-DD” pops up, all to avoid viewers asking, “Why is this person on TV?”
Of course, I understand the need for disclaimers in situations that really warrant them, such as scientific experiments that require proper oversight. But the disclaimers added just to dodge silly complaints do nothing but infantilize viewers, and honestly, they are kind of insulting.
Ultimately, this is part of a bigger problem with Japanese TV. It has dumbed itself down to the lowest common denominator, pandering to the most vocal complainers who often lack basic critical thinking skills. This is not unique to TV, either; Japanese businesses in general have long been hypersensitive to the “customer is always right” mindset. Thankfully, there is some pushback against that now. Still, TV is especially vulnerable since broadcasters get access to public airwaves at relatively low cost and are expected to act like a public utility, making them an easy target for complaints.
Ironically, all of this is helping drive younger generations away from TV, not just as a medium, but because the shows themselves feel less and less relevant.
Maybe shutting down the entire phone system would be too disruptive, but perhaps we could start by rethinking incoming calls for individuals—or at least shift the social norm around them. In a sense, that trend has already begun, since most people won’t pick up if the number is unfamiliar. And in circles where multi-modal communication is the default, how often do you actually get a legitimate call over PSTN anymore?
Legitimacy aside, the only people who still call me without prior arrangement tend to be those who assume they’re entitled to my time and attention on demand. The phone has always been a disruptive form of communication—even if every single call were legitimate (which is far from reality)—because it disregards the boundaries of the recipient’s time.
That’s why I stopped giving anyone real-time PSTN access. For me, it’s voicemail-only now, and honestly, it’s the best decision I’ve made for cutting down on annoyances.
Well, isn’t that essentially what voicemail is? We already have a mechanism to send voices as files—it’s just that not all voicemail systems deliver them in that format.
It wouldn’t solve everything, but considering how many scammers rely on real-time urgency in their calls, shifting phone communication toward asynchronous messages could actually help. It would undercut that pressure tactic, and it would also make record-keeping much easier.
The PSTN is simply not sustainable. It’s a relic of a time when there was no practical way to authenticate or validate calls. Today, with malicious actors able to dial in from anywhere in the world at negligible cost, the system is fundamentally unequipped to handle the abuse it faces.
Efforts like STIR/SHAKEN exist, but they’re little more than a band-aid—and not a particularly effective one—because the underlying network was never designed with resilience or trust in mind.
I know some people push back on this view, often pointing to edge cases where PSTN’s ubiquity still provides value. But as trust in the system erodes, so does its relevance. And if the majority of people already avoid answering calls from numbers they don’t recognize, its practical utility is clearly diminished.
This is a corollary to Chesterton’s fence. unsignedint’s public good.
If you can’t explain the benefit then you can’t tear it down.
The PSTN guarantees that all telco operators interoperate. Without it you get what happened with instant messaging. AKA walled gardens. You take for granted the ability to call an iPhone with an Android.
The FCC is responsible for maintaining trust, which they have done here. They can incentivize telco providers to curb the spam activity. You don’t need to throw the baby out with the bath water.
I think Chesterton’s fence is a fair analogy—but it only works if the “fence” still serves a protective function. With the PSTN, the fence is riddled with holes, and the people meant to maintain it can’t keep up with the erosion. Interoperability was indeed its greatest strength, but today that same universality is what lets malicious actors reach everyone at trivial cost.
Comparing PSTN to instant messaging walled gardens is interesting, but I’d argue the real parallel is email: a federated, open standard that also suffers from spam and abuse, yet still manages to limp along thanks to heavy filtering and layered trust systems. The PSTN never evolved those trust layers; instead, it relied on scarcity (call cost, geographic constraints) to keep abuse in check. Once those costs collapsed, the trust model collapsed with them.
As for the FCC, sure, they can try to incentivize carriers. But the fact that we need constant regulatory intervention just to keep basic trust afloat suggests the system is no longer structurally sound. Band-aids like STIR/SHAKEN prove the point: we’re bolting authentication onto a protocol that never envisioned it. That might extend its life a little, but it doesn’t make the foundation any less fragile.
So the question isn’t whether the PSTN once had value (it did, massively), but whether preserving it now delivers more value than the cost of propping it up. If a good chunk of people already treat unknown calls as spam until proven otherwise, then the social contract around the PSTN has already been broken.
> Comparing PSTN to instant messaging walled gardens is interesting, but I’d argue the real parallel is email: a federated, open standard that also suffers from spam and abuse, yet still manages to limp along thanks to heavy filtering and layered trust systems.
I think you're absolutely right to draw that parallel. But, today's email landscape isn't much of a federated open standard. It's a web of trust and distrust, filters, and deliverability issues. It's real work to maintain an email server and attain high deliverability with other email services. So much so that most don't even do it anymore. Most email is just delivered by a few large providers.
Really, email is suffering from a lot of the same issues that PSTN also suffers from. But email providers just decided to "solve" the problem themselves, mostly by taking a heavy hand at blocking things and deciding they don't really care if you're not a big provider.
Yes, absolutely — I’m not suggesting email is anywhere near perfect or free of abuse. But at least collectively, the layers of filtering, reputation systems, and standards make it usable for most people most of the time.
The key difference for me is that the PSTN moves at a snail’s pace, maybe because of regulatory entanglements, maybe because of interoperability constraints. The result is that problems which have been rampant for decades — spoofing, spam, robocalls — remain trivial to exploit. Email has plenty of its own problems here, but at least you get more signals to work with (headers, DKIM/SPF/DMARC, filtering, etc.) than just a string of 10–12 digits with no real context.
That’s why I’m less inclined to “cherish” a system whose shortcomings shift so much burden onto the end user’s well-being, all in the name of interoperability. If interoperability means putting up with abuse at this scale, then that interoperability isn’t worth much — and that’s where my frustration comes from.
> at least you get more signals to work with (headers, DKIM/SPF/DMARC, filtering, etc.) than just a string of 10–12 digits with no real context.
For most people it is a distinction without a difference because they know about as much what to do with a DMARC policy as they do an SS7 frame.
DKIM/SPF/DMARC as bandaids just as much as STIR/SHAKEN are, they just need to get a kick in the ass to implement them -- on both fronts. I get tons of official and sensitive email still from domains that fail DMARC.
Sure, but my point still stands — you have more tools to work with in email. For what it’s worth, I can usually contextualize a message from the subject line and the sender’s address without needing to dive deep into headers. (Phishing is definitely a real problem, but it’s not unique to email in this discussion.)
Now compare that to the PSTN: what does 555-123-4567 really tell you? Not much. It’s just a string of digits with no inherent context. And unlike email, I can’t even choose to outright refuse delivery of a call at the network level.
> Now compare that to the PSTN: what does 555-123-4567 really tell you?
It tells you exactly as much as the "from" field does in your email.
> you have more tools to work with in email.
Only if you're an engineer implementing a mail server configuration. But if you're implementing a telco you also have more tools to work with than a caller ID.
End users use DMARC/SPF the same way end users use STIR/SHAKEN... they don't. None of them are user-servicable values. And service providers use DMARC/SPF the same way end users use STIR/SHAKEN... they implement those controls for their users in the form of a managed service.
Even if I don't run my own mail server, I can still open an email header and see context. Last time I checked, I can't walk into a telco and ask for the telephone equivalent of that. On PSTN, there's nothing beyond a bare caller ID string, and that lack of context is exactly why I see it as a problem.
Email gives end users multiple signals and filters to work with. PSTN doesn't, and that's why I disagree with your equivalence.
DMARC/SPF/DKIM are not something that users can take advantage of by reading their email headers, because it is nonsensical to end users.
You can take advantage of it because you're an expert. Just because email vomits out more information that are useful for experts doesn't mean it is better as a real world system for normal people who use it.
I've been consistent in framing this as a structural critique. The question isn't whether most users inspect metadata. It's whether the system makes that inspection possible. That's the architectural affordance I've emphasized throughout. Email exposes trust signals. PSTN does not. Its opacity isn't a side effect of user behavior. It is a design feature. That's the distinction I've been drawing, and it remains central to the evaluative lens I've laid out.
You have more tools because the market created them because it’s a federated protocol. The PSTN is a different case where market forces don’t align incentives with spam reduction. This is why regulators like the FCC exist.
I get the distinction you’re drawing, but that just brings us back to the same fork: if decades of FCC involvement haven’t produced a trustworthy caller identity system, then the reliance on regulation isn’t solving the structural weakness, it’s just propping it up.
At that point, we’re repeating the same values clash — you see regulation as a workable fix, I see it as evidence of fragility. I don’t think continuing this line is going to get us any further.
Why are you so eager to give up interoperability when it’s not the problem? Spam exists within walled gardens too. Interoperability and spam are orthogonal.
I’m not “eager to give up” interoperability — I’m saying interoperability without trust isn’t worth much. Calling it orthogonal doesn’t change the lived reality that the abuse rides on that interoperability at scale.
If the only way to preserve interoperability is to accept decades of unresolved abuse and perpetual patchwork fixes, then that’s not a trade-off I find compelling. At that point we’re not debating facts, we’re debating tolerance levels — and mine is lower. I think that’s a good place to leave it.
After all, Chesterton’s fence most importantly is about a fence that we don’t know the purpose of. We (in a collective sense, not me personally) know everything about the phone system, it isn’t even really all that old in the grand scheme of things and is actively maintained. We know how it is supposed to work and can see that it isn’t working.
This is more like “Chesterton’s radio with a broken antenna,” a thing broken in an obvious way that we just haven’t gotten around to fixing or replacing.
The PSTN is working. That’s the point of the corollary. You mistakenly think it is broken in some fundamental way because you misunderstand the benefit.
I don’t find “good chunk” compelling. I think you need to do a more rigorous analysis of the costs and benefits. FCC is fully capable of creating the incentive structure to maintain a spam-free PSTN. This is a political problem.
IP addresses and phone numbers are indistinguishable in the context of spam. If you successfully argue that the PSTN cannot be operated at a net benefit to society because of spam volume the same argument must also be a valid call to shut down the Internet.
I only said “good chunk” because there are already more than a few reports pointing to a shift in behavioral patterns around calls. (Feel free to Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo it when you have a chance.) The point is less about an exact percentage and more about the fact that user behavior has already adapted in ways that erode PSTN’s practical value.
And if the FCC were fully capable of solving this problem, I don’t think we’d still be here after decades of the same issues. That longevity itself is part of my argument: it’s not that people haven’t tried, it’s that the structural limitations resist a clean fix.
Also, IP addresses aren’t a great analogy. They’re not a sole indicator of origination — we have layers of metadata, routing, and reputation systems around them. I’d accept that comparison more readily if phone numbers were spoof-proof. But they aren’t, and that’s yet another area where the FCC hasn’t managed to close the gap.
> I only said “good chunk” because there are already more than a few reports pointing to a shift in behavioral patterns around calls
Yes, such reports exist and they are easy to find when you look for them. My point is that you are not balancing these reports with the benefits of the PSTN or considering that people who happily use the PSTN aren't vocal about it. I think you are attributing way too much weight to the information you can find, especially when you are looking for it. You then draw an extreme conclusion that the PSTN is not worth maintaining and support it with this flawed analysis of behavioral change.
You might be right but the way you have substantiated your argument isn't compelling.
I’m not claiming universal truth. I’m stating that under the evaluative lens I’ve made explicit, PSTN doesn’t meet the threshold for viability. That’s the scope of my argument, and it stands on its own terms.
You’re welcome to use a different standard, but dismissing mine as "not compelling" without engaging the actual framing isn’t critique. It’s rhetorical displacement. If you’re not addressing the criteria I laid out, you’re not engaging the argument.
Speculation cuts both ways. If you want to challenge the standard itself, do so directly. Otherwise, implying imbalance or extremity without entering the terrain is performative, not substantive.
Or just make callers cover all the costs, like in some countries. Still, I really wish there were an option to charge incoming callers as you suggested—because honestly, about 90% of calls I get outside my circle are unsolicited. That way, only the 10% that truly matter would reach me. Right now, I’m on a strict “no-ring” policy: if a call turns out to be legitimate, I’ll call back. But nobody gets real-time PSTN access to me anymore—it’s simply not sustainable.
In the US, the receiver effectively covers the cost of mobile calls—though it’s a bit nuanced, so apologies for any lack of clarity. You’re essentially paying for incoming calls if you’re on a metered plan, since those minutes get deducted. With most rate plans now being unlimited, this cost is somewhat hidden.
In Japan (the only other system I’m familiar with), it works differently: the caller is charged for the recipient’s end, while the receiver pays nothing. For example, calling a mobile phone from a landline costs more to account for the mobile portion. I remember years ago using a prepaid phone card from a payphone to call a mobile number—the balance drained incredibly fast. This is one reason why younger generations in Japan rarely rely on PSTN for routine calls, since it can quickly become expensive.
Yes, it used to be around 15 cents or so to send or receive an SMS (depending on the rate plan). But, as with calls, unlimited messaging has become the norm these days.
It’s frustrating when languages are locked behind regional restrictions or selective availability, and it borders on being an accessibility issue. That said, things have improved compared to the past, at least when it comes to consuming foreign media from outside its home country. In my case, that means accessing Japanese content while outside Japan.
In most cases, I suspect the limitation isn’t the fault of the streaming services but rather the content owners. On Netflix, for example, expecting English subtitles for anime in Japan is about as hopeless as expecting Japanese subtitles for U.S.-made films while in the United States.
To Netflix’s credit, their original shows are often subtitled and dubbed in a wide range of languages, which has significantly increased the availability of non-English content worldwide.
The same trend can be seen with music, at least for Japanese music. Until around ten years ago, almost nothing was available abroad. While some regional restrictions remain on certain tracks, the vast majority are now accessible outside Japan.
You're correct (in the things I have checked) when viewing Japanese content outside Japan. But inside? No, it's never licenced (or available, I'm not sure).
I live in Japan, so we'll fuck me otherwise, right? xD
Well, my point is that what you’re experiencing with anime and other content from Japan when accessed within Japan is actually quite normal. It’s the same reason I can hardly ever find content here in the U.S., especially from major movie studios, that includes Japanese subtitles or dubs.
I’m sorry you have to deal with that limitation. I can relate, since I also want to enjoy media in Japanese. Fortunately, having lived here long enough, I can at least comprehend it without subtitles.
Am I happy about it? No, but unfortunately, that’s the reality for now.
I believe that in most networks, there’s at least some level of moderation to prevent the worst behavior. But beyond that, moderation becomes a much trickier issue.
When you have hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people in the same “park,” what kind of “ground rules” can we all truly agree on? It’s not like we’re gathered around the same dinner table, where a single moderator can keep things civil enough to avoid a brawl. Even then, heated arguments aren’t uncommon.
In an environment where one person’s truth can be another’s misinformation, I’m not sure moderation can ever be applied in a way that satisfies everyone involved.
I think a key facet of good moderation is that it doesn't have to be on content, specifically. Behavior is often more troublesome. We can smirk about "tone police," but it really can make a huge difference.
Yes, but that too is nuanced. There are, of course, clear-cut cases of unacceptable behavior that are already moderated as such. However, when you have people coming together from hundreds, if not thousands, of cultures and backgrounds, I doubt there’s a single set of rules that works for everyone. It ultimately becomes another question of where we draw the line.
Social media as a vessel for diverse discussion is a tall order. It’s too public, too tied to context, and ultimately a no-win game. No matter how carefully you present yourself, you’ll end up being the “bad guy” to someone. The moment a discussion touches even lightly on controversy, healthy dialogue becomes nearly impossible.
Think of it this way: you’re hosting a party, and an uninvited stranger kicks the door open, then starts criticizing how you make your bed. That’s about what it feels like to try to “fix” social media.
I really liked the Circles feature in Google+: you defined groups of friends, and you could make your posts visible to particular groups.
They were not like group chats or subreddits, the circles were just for you, it was just an easy way to determine which of your followers would see one of your posts.
This kind of interaction was common in early Facebook and Twitter too, where only your friends or followers saw what you posted, often just whitelisted ones. It was not all public all the time. Google+ just made that a bit more granular.
I suppose that these dynamics have been overtaken by messaging apps, but it's not really the same thing. It's too direct, too real-time and all messages mixed-in, I like the more async and distributed nature of posts with comments.
Granted, if you really want a diverse discussion and to talk with everyone in the world at once, indeed that's a different problem and probably fundamentally impossible to make non-toxic, people are people.
Whitelisting solves the problem for me. I curate every tweet I see with a browser extension. Strangers can't kick down the door. I only see content from my direct follows. It dramatically reduces the stress. Maybe a little like horse blinkers.
Do you mind sharing this extension? I would prefer if it also shows the retweets of people you follow as that is an endorsement no matter what people say.
> Whitelisting solves the problem for me. I curate every tweet I see with a browser extension. Strangers can't kick down the door. I only see content from my direct follows. It dramatically reduces the stress. Maybe a little like horse blinkers.
So you are fighting against the platform that you're using. It reminds me about people constantly fighting with their own computer (Windows) to remove ads and crap. In both cases viable alternatives exist which don't require this huge effort.
We'd just go back to human curation, you'd whitelist a few curators you liked, people wanting to promote their content would email a link to a curator, if they thought their audience would like it they'd share it, you'd see it via your whitelist and if you liked the look of it you'd whitelist them.
Is this really an issue? I only message on WhatsApp with people I’ve met in real life and I prefer it that way.
I only want to engage with people on Twitter if I specifically add that person to a whitelist. I don’t want to be subject to an algorithm that is trying to increase “engagement”. I don’t want more engagement with Twitter, I want to see random posts which an AI thinks are going to enrage me so I stay on the site longer.
> Social media as a vessel for diverse discussion is a tall order. It’s too public, too tied to context, and ultimately a no-win game. No matter how carefully you present yourself, you’ll end up being the “bad guy” to someone. The moment a discussion touches even lightly on controversy, healthy dialogue becomes nearly impossible.
Worth reading Jaron Lanier's Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now book:
I still think old school linear forums are the best format for online discussion. They’re not perfect by any means, but I think they still beat all the alternatives I’ve tried.
The old school forums also centered around a single topic or interest, which I think helped keep things focused and more civil. Part of the problem with social media is that it wants to be everything for everyone.
Linear is awful. Discussions are always so bad with them. The only advantage is that following the newest message is easier, which still doesn't prevent people from ignoring them if the thread becomes too long.
The main reason why you might think that way, is less the format, and probably more the moderation, and lower amount of people in those forums. I mean take this forum here, is far better than twitter or any other social media-sloop. Smaller Subreddits, especially with good moderation, are also far better than big Subreddits.
There's a couple really big things I like about linear. As you said you can follow the thread of conversation in chronological order. Another big thing for me is that it doesn't have comment karma. Upvotes and downvotes result in echo chambers that suppress alternative viewpoints. PG got it almost right here by making you have to meet a threshold to downvote, but I think it would be better if downvotes didn't exist here at all. It becomes an "I disagree with your opinion" button. Also, threaded discussions encourage people to just highjack one of the top voted threads instead of replying to a more relevant person later down the line.
Also on the topic of moderation, I feel like less is more. Unless it's spam, child pornography, or threats of violence, it should probably just be left alone. Reddit in particular is extremely over moderated these days. Outside of a handful of subreddits, it is impossible to post conservative views because moderators will ban you for them. Just basic stuff like "I support <Republican candidate> and here's why..." results in a ban. Even just being subscribed to /r/conservative is enough to be automatically banned from several other subreddits. While there are exceptions, most of the moderators are in actuality just a bunch of petty, censorious tyrants.
> As you said you can follow the thread of conversation in chronological order.
But it's not chronological, it's posting order. It's pretty common to have sub-threads with different focus and timeflow emerging in the middle of linear threads
> Another big thing for me is that it doesn't have comment karma.
Implementation-detail. And Linear boards can also have karma-systems.
But on the other side, it supports a community-driven moderation.
> It becomes an "I disagree with your opinion" button.
Yes, that is a problem. There should be more options available, maybe a limited set of emojis to communicate the impression of something, instead of bland down/upvotes. It kinda works well on Github and Discord, but has less usage by the systems there.
> Also, threaded discussions encourage people to just highjack one of the top voted threads instead of replying to a more relevant person later down the line.
Which is not bad? At least you can ignore them. Linear has no option for this, all is the same mess.
> Also on the topic of moderation, I feel like less is more.
Depends on the topic, community and size, also the country. Illegal content has always to be moderated by law.
And in general, offtopic has to be moderated.
> "I support <Republican candidate> and here's why..." results in a ban
Again, on or offtopic? Each subreddit has a focus, and if it's out of this focus, it's justified to remove it. For example, I would not like to see discussions about PHP in a C-Subreddit, this is simply a waste of my time and attention.
The internet has become a primary battlefield for making money, and we can't go back to the days when it was just a non-commercial hobby that people enjoyed. To make money online, it's crucial to spread content as widely as possible, and the most effective methods for this are clickbait and ragebait. That's why the enshittification of the internet was inevitable.
"Diverse discussion" is just something I don't want. Of course I've made up my mind about all kinds of things and I don't really need to see opposing points of view as though they are novel thoughts that I've never considered before. Sure, tell me again why your religion or your conspiracy theory proves that the scientific consensus is a hoax. Maybe you'll convince me this time?
I don't mind Mastodon, but I'm pretty selective in who I follow, and diversity of opinions isn't one of my criteria.
> I don't really need to see opposing points of view as though they are novel thoughts that I've never considered before
I mean, that's fine, if you think that you can consider all conceivable angles thoroughly, by yourself. I for one welcome opposing views, but I suppose if my idea of that meant "religion or conspiracy theories" I'd probably be avoiding it too.
no need to consider all angles about an issue. not possible anyway. think about how much time you've wasted on HN reading opposing views that add no value.
I will do that, right after I spend some time thinking about how much time I've spent on HN reading opposing views that add immense value and wisdom to my life. :)
Also bearing in mind that most of us can't really do much about issues in the news, apart from posting a few pithy comments of our own which will disappear into the noise.
I follow people I can learn from, not people who try to convince me that everything I already know is wrong. I don't follow people who post misinformation, reject science, or who think that ad hominem attacks are a valid form of debate. There are a lot of them out there!
A little off topic, but where do you get your news? I am having the hardest time finding credible news sources that aren't full of misinformation or bias to the point of being Soviet Union Pravda levels of propaganda.
The best I've been able to do is pick a few sources that are left leaning and a few that are right leaning and try to glean the truth myself using critical thinking and for particularly important topics, more in depth research independently. The problem is that this is very time consuming and exhausting.
Various, but including The Guardian and ABC News (Australia). I don't think they knowingly post misinformation in news reports, but there's still selection bias (I usually just read headlines, there's little I really need to know in depth). Their opinion and fluff pieces may or may not be interesting on the day.
I lost interest in "right-leaning" when they basically went mad some time before the first Trump term. Neoliberalism was already on its last legs as a credible doctrine. I'm more or less an anarchist at this point.
Edit: the ABC is somewhat right-leaning, and the Guardian doesn't really lean very far left.
The sweet spot is when it feels seamless, but too often creators overdo it and the result is hilariously awkward. Think of someone discussing, say, the dangers of mountain climbing, then suddenly blurting out: “And you know what else is dangerous? An unprotected connection. Which is why you need X VPN!”