(Sorry for the late response.) Well it depends a lot on the site. Since I focus on books and scholarly articles, the ideal way is to find the URL of the original PDF. The website might show you just individual pages as images, but it might hide the link to the PDF somewhere in the code. Alternatively, you might just obtain all the URLs of the individual page images, put them all into a download manager, and later bundle them all into a new PDF. (When you open the “inspect element” window, you just have to figure out which part of the code is meant to display the pages/images to you.) Sometimes the PDFs and page images can be found in your browser cache, as I mention in the OP. There’s quite some variety among the different sites, but with even the most rudimentary knowledge of web design you should be able to figure out most of them.

If need help with ripping something in particular, DM me and I’ll give it a try.

I never said I follow the law, I’m just wondering what the law says ;)

Honestly much of your reply is confusing me and doesn’t seem to be relevant to my questions. This is what I think is crucial:

Just because a file is cached on your device does not mean you are the legal owner of that content forever.

What does being “the legal owner forever” actually entail, either with regards to a physical book or its scan? And what does that mean regarding what I can legally do with the cached file on my computer?

This so much. Years ago I’ve had it push Moon landing denial videos in my recommendations, even though I’ve never watched videos on conspiracies or anything of the sort at the time. The closest I got were pop-sci channels such as Vsauce, Numberphile… It’s just trying to hook you onto the garbage content and garbage ideas because they have good and loyal viewership.

Could be so, though it doesn’t look like a site where the devs have a fixed time schedule. (Not that I know much about managing a website, just my impression.)

Nope. I actually tried using a proxy and it got rejected for that very reason (with a different message), whereas two normal IPs had the problem described in OP.

My suspicion was correct, I can’t figure it out.

I know, as I’ve said, I’ve sent them an email through that form two days ago but have still gotten no response.

No, I have no idea what that is and I suspect I won’t be able to figure it out, but I can give it a try.

I don’t think this is the exact cause for the situation, but having more book related forks would probably just do harm by splitting up the audience. The book reading trackers are absolutely dominated by Goodreads, and any alternative desperately needs as much user concentration as possible.

BookWyrm was my first dip into the Fediverse, back when I was looking for an alternative to Goodreads.

The point isn’t so much to actually block all the garbage, that’s impossible, but to suggest to the Facebook algo to show you less such stuff.

I’ve also seen people getting semi-pornographic adverts on Youtube, so your experience sounds entirely expected. Putting everything else aside, it’s “funny” how any other smaller independent website or a user on these major websites can and will be sanctioned (the user getting banned, the small website gaining a negative reputation) for hosting/posting pornography, but when a major website shoves pornography right into your face (and probably minors’ too, which is unambiguously illegal) nothing can be done, there is never any sort of uproar or criticism, I doubt you could even report it to some authority…

This. It’s horrible and outright unusable. I used to block each and every “recommended” post/page, after a few weeks they stopped appearing so frequently.

This. In the west among the younger generations, sure, Facebook is outdated/dead. Among other generations, and across much of the world, it is still almost as essential as email.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Zero

A criticism also stated that Facebook is practicing digital colonialism because it is not introducing open internet but building a "little web that turns the user into a mostly passive consumer of mostly western corporate content”.

An article by Christopher Mims in Quartz in September 2012 stated that Facebook Zero played a very important role in Facebook’s expansion in Africa over the 18 months following the release of Facebook Zero, noting that data charges could be a significant component of mobile usage cost and the waiving of these charges reduced a significant disincentive for people in Africa to use Facebook.

To me as a kid with a rudimentary phone and little pocket money, this was also how I got onto and used to access Facebook.

One issue is that lemmy is too anonymous and that leads to it not attracting content creators that don’t actually want to be anonymous and want to create a presence

That’s not an issue. Reddit was equally anonymous yet it did just fine (relatively speaking). The different users’ usernames that can theoretically appear the same can be fixed by making it mandatory to show your instance next to your username, rather than hiding it if you change your default username. But even without that anyone can hover over your profile name and see which instance you’re from, so really you can’t actually deceive people regarding the nature of your account.

:o

Your word choice is just bizarre. Nobody would be excluded, they’d only have to make a profile on a different, normal server. And nobody would be “hurt” by not having access to Lemmy’s memes about Linux and similar stuff.

just don’t follow any of them if you’re not interested in any of them

Except that theoretically my “All” feed would still be full of garbage-tier content that people typically expect and post on Meta’s services, and that userbase with its same mindset would eventually spill over into the communities that I do follow too.

Yeah, but they’re separate

They’re literally not.

Threads accounts are closely integrated with Instagram accounts. By default, Threads and Instagram accounts share the same username, profile picture, and display name, although the profile picture and display name can be customized. Users can choose which accounts they follow on Instagram will carry over to Threads, either with the other person’s Threads account already created or set to automatically follow them once an account is created.[36] As of August 2023, if a user decides to terminate their Threads account, they must delete their associated Instagram account as well.[37] Adam Mosseri, the CEO of Instagram, has acknowledged this limitation and stated that they are exploring options for a user to delete only their Threads account.[38]

Users are required to have an Instagram account to use Threads. Threads is a companion app to Instagram, and it uses Instagram to authenticate the user’s identity and connect with their network.[32]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads_(social_network)

Downvoting makes comments less visible. So downvoting is the equivalent of taping someone’s mouth shut because you don’t agree with them. Is that really what you are trying to do?

This is ridiculous, especially the comparison with physical violence. Upvoting a comment also makes all the other comments less visible, by promoting the comment you’ve picked, taking up the place where some other comment could’ve been. Nobody’s mouth is taped shut by either upvoting or downvoting, all the comments are still visible, it’s just that their order will be determined by the upvotes and downvotes - and removing the latter from the equation won’t negate the “discrimination” (comment sorting) created by the former.

People who don’t recognise my shoddily delivered irony (among others) ☹️