Just some guy saying some things
Sort your data into stuff you absolutely need to keep (personal files and such) and stuff you’d be okay with losing (less important files, device backups, downloads you can redownload, etc). Then only back up the former. As for backup medium, ServerPartDeals often has some pretty good deals on storage; they were selling refurbished 12TB drives for $80 a pop a while back.
Looks like I’ve been spreading misinformation, whoops. Edited my comment to clarify.
I don’t think it’s a good idea either, but it’s less egregious than filtering specific communities.
This filter is not part of any specific instance, it’s hardcoded into PieFed’s code. That means it applies to every PieFed instance unless the instance admin explicitly patches the code to remove it.
Got any other specific examples?
Each instance should be free to set their own rules. Individual instances blocking those communities is fine, but the PieFed devs hardcoding a blocklist that applies to all instances (especially one as opinionated and arbitrary as this) is absolutely not.
List of blocked words in community names:
shit
piss
fuck
cunt
cocksucker
motherfucker
tits
memes
piracy
196
greentext
usauthoritarianism
enoughmuskspam
political_weirdos
4chan
Seems like one of the PieFed devs has some opinions about the kind of content they dislike, and are unilaterally forcing that on every PieFed instance. I can somewhat understand filtering out curse words, but specific communities should not blocked by default, and definitely not hidden in a hardcoded list in the source code.
Edit: Important context here: https://lemmy.world/comment/21323475 Seems this blocklist is more limited in scope; it’s not blocking federation entirely, just blocking (from what I can tell) their appearance in search and automatically federating with them when adding an instance. Still problematic to exclude specific communities in a non-configurable way with little justification IMO.
It was never a free feature; they used to only allow up to 2X speed. Not that that justifies it at all of course.