skype was way ahead of his time. The quality was top notch. MS fucked by changing the architecture from decentralized to centralized in windows servers - this fucked up the calls quality and it created an opportunity window for whatsapp, viber, etc…
MS turned skype to shit.
They are not free however from consequences, i.e. getting hit in the mouth,
I would say that this is wrong. If you get hit in the mouth for something you say, than it’s not freedom of speech. It’s the law of the strongest.
Example: You wouldn’t hit a UFC fighter for something he said to you on a 1 to 1, however you would beat him if you are 10 against him. This is the law of the strongest.
I don’t believe in absolut free speech. I think that it needs to have limits in it (very well defined limits), and there should be consequences for certain things. And the consequences need to be enforced in a way to counter them, like for example if you say hate crap then you should be forced to contribute to anti-hate orgs.
I register on reddit 17 years ago. Before the great migration from digg. I remember /r/programming being the first sub to reach 100k subscribers.
I got banned for saying in the /r/europe sub that russia banning youtube in russia was a good thing because then we in the west would get less russian propaganda. Got banned for a couple days. Left and never looked back.
/r/programming is dead already since around a decade. All the good discussions moved to hackernews and lobsters.
EDIT: never forget that spez admitted to silently edit user comments that criticized him
For video calls that was really bad compared to skype.
Unfortunately everybody was using it (i had to do it because everybody was using it).