jet

Unfortunately you don't like the niche community, but to protect the members of that community you have been removed from the community.

Your welcome to voice your concerns across lemmy, but your negative view of the community by point 0 means your not a good fit for the community and your removal makes sense.

This gets tricky. The guiding principle is what helps the community be a safe space for community members. Your participation with questions could be a net positive, but if you also downvote everything and everyone in the community while raising your concerns a judgement call will have to be made. The first duty is to keep the community cohesive for community members, if third parties want to participate it should be done with mutual respect.

Sure, just let the moderators know you have read the community rules, and your ready to participate without breaking the rules and being polite to your fellow community members.

I actually agree with you, that sucks. Lemmy needs to mature and have opt-in for ALL, or opt-in for communities. Until then please feel free to express yourself in any of the other communities on lemmy, or make a post about the thing you don't like and vent about it!

Summary

This extensive interview with Victor, COO of IVPN, offers a comprehensive and pragmatic exploration of the VPN industry, dispelling myths and revealing the realities behind VPN services, privacy, and security. Victor shares his personal journey from advertising to privacy advocacy and explains IVPN’s history, ethos, and operational philosophy. The conversation covers critical topics such as VPN logging policies, jurisdictional concerns, the technological challenges with protocols like WireGuard, and the ongoing cat-and-mouse game VPNs face with content blocking and IP blacklisting. Victor emphasizes that trust in VPN providers is complex, often unverifiable, and must be carefully modeled against individual threat scenarios. The interview also discusses the pitfalls of affiliate marketing and sponsorships in the VPN world, highlighting IVPN’s stance against these practices to maintain integrity. The acquisition of Safing, makers of Portmaster and SPN, shows IVPN’s broader strategy to expand privacy tools beyond VPNs and offer integrated solutions. Finally, Victor offers a forward look into upcoming technical improvements for IVPN, including infrastructure upgrades, support for obfuscation on Android, and enhanced transparency through open-source initiatives. The interview is a rare, transparent, and nuanced deep dive into VPNs, emphasizing user education, realistic expectations, and ethical business practices.

Highlights

• 🔍 IVPN debunks common VPN myths and industry falsehoods.
• 🛡️ Logging policies are unverifiable; trust is a spectrum requiring vigilance.
• 🌐 Jurisdiction matters legally, but “Five Eyes” fears are often overblown.
• ⚙️ WireGuard protocol needed significant privacy-focused adaptations.
• 💰 IVPN rejects affiliate marketing due to conflicts of interest and misinformation.
• 🔐 IVPN acquired Safing to broaden privacy solutions beyond just VPNs.
• 🚀 Upcoming projects include diskless servers, multi-hop improvements, and system transparency.

Key Insights

• 🔎 Transparency vs. Trust: The No-Logs Paradox
  VPN providers universally claim “no logs,” yet legal cases reveal some keep logs contrary to claims. Victor stresses there is no foolproof way to verify logging policies without full access to servers and configurations—making trust a delicate balance. Audits offer snapshots but can be gamed. Users must accept a trust spectrum and engage in threat modeling to decide what level of risk is acceptable. This insight warns against blind faith and encourages critical evaluation of VPN providers.

• 🏛️ Jurisdiction Complexity: Legal vs. Covert Threats
  Victor differentiates overt legal jurisdiction—where data retention laws apply—and covert intelligence operations that transcend borders. While jurisdictions like Gibraltar offer strong data protection, covert cooperation among intelligence alliances (Five, Nine, Fourteen Eyes) complicates privacy guarantees. However, reliance solely on jurisdiction to ensure privacy is misplaced because geopolitical influences and intelligence-sharing can undermine it. Users need to understand their own threat models rather than blindly choosing “safe” countries.

• 🚧 Technical Challenges: WireGuard’s Privacy Concerns
  WireGuard, though lauded for speed and efficiency, lacked certain privacy features like forward secrecy by default, requiring VPNs like IVPN to implement custom solutions. Many providers either delayed WireGuard adoption or modified it improperly. This highlights the technical nuance behind VPN protocols, where performance and privacy sometimes conflict. It underscores that VPNs claiming modern protocols must also invest in privacy safeguards beyond default implementations.

• 🥊 The Cat-and-Mouse Game of Streaming and IP Blocking
  VPNs frequently face IP blacklisting by streaming platforms, leading to user frustration. Victor explains that server IP changes and multi-hop configurations are temporary mitigations but resource-intensive. Larger providers may manage this better due to economies of scale. However, privacy-focused VPNs avoid intrusive user monitoring to maintain neutrality, which ironically attracts abuse and faster blocking. This insight reveals a fundamental tension between usability and privacy preservation.

• 💰 Affiliate Marketing Undermines VPN Integrity
  The interview exposes how affiliate programs incentivize overselling, misinformation, and unethical promotion of VPN products, often by influencers lacking expertise. IVPN has abandoned affiliate marketing entirely to avoid these conflicts of interest. Sponsorships, while more acceptable if the promoter is knowledgeable, remain fraught. This illuminates a widespread industry problem where commercial incentives can distort consumer education and trustworthiness.

• 🌱 Expanding Privacy Beyond VPNs: The Safing Acquisition
  IVPN’s acquisition of Safing, creators of Portmaster (a firewall and DNS filtering tool) and SPN (a Tor alternative), signals a strategic shift from a single-product VPN focus toward integrated privacy toolkits. This acknowledges that VPNs alone are insufficient in the expanding digital privacy landscape. Offering complementary tools under a unified vision better serves user needs and strengthens privacy defenses.

• 🔮 Future-Focused Transparency and Infrastructure Upgrades
  IVPN is committed to evolving with projects like diskless servers, open-source system transparency (enabling external audits of server software), and improved multi-hop routing to counter traffic analysis. These initiatives aim to increase user trust through verifiable transparency and strengthen privacy protections against emerging threats such as AI-enhanced traffic correlation. This foresight is critical for users seeking long-term privacy resilience.

Additional Notable Points

• Payment methods: IVPN accepts cash and Monero, rare choices reflecting a commitment to privacy and anonymity in payments, despite logistical challenges.
• Device limits: IVPN’s simultaneous device policy is driven by technical constraints around WireGuard, balancing usability and security without compromising privacy.
• First-party servers: IVPN opts for securely managed rented servers over owning physical servers due to resource constraints and supply chain complexities; the privacy benefits of first-party servers are marginal relative to costs.
• Education and resources: Victor endorses independent privacy guides and community-driven resources as essential for educating users beyond commercial VPN review sites plagued by affiliate bias.

Conclusion

This interview stands out for its rare candor and depth in an industry often obscured by marketing hype and misinformation. Victor and IVPN exemplify a privacy-first, ethics-driven approach, openly discussing limitations and trade-offs rather than making exaggerated claims. The discussion equips users with practical frameworks—like threat modeling, realistic expectations, and skepticism toward marketing claims—to select VPNs wisely. Furthermore, IVPN’s broader vision to integrate complementary privacy tools reflects the evolving nature of digital privacy challenges. Overall, this conversation is an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to understand VPNs beyond the surface and navigate the complex privacy landscape with clarity and caution.

Summary

This video provides an informative overview of histamine-related issues, particularly in individuals following a carnivore diet. The presenter explains the common symptoms of histamine intolerance such as flushing, redness, rashes, sinus congestion, headaches, heart palpitations, anxiety, and digestive problems. Emphasizing that the carnivore diet itself does not cause histamine problems but can exacerbate or reveal existing sensitivities, the video details why this happens. Key factors include the consumption of aged, cured, or preserved meats—common in the carnivore lifestyle—that are high in histamines, and the repeated intake of the same histamine-rich foods leading to accumulation. Additionally, the shift in gut microbiome when switching to carnivore can reduce beneficial bacteria that help break down histamine, worsening symptoms.

The video offers practical advice to manage histamine sensitivity: eat only fresh meats, avoid aged, frozen, canned, or preserved meats like bacon and deli meats, and minimize leftovers to prevent histamine buildup. Cooking methods matter too; long-simmered bone broths increase histamine levels, so using pressure cookers for shorter cooking times is preferred. The presenter also encourages gut health restoration through microbiome testing, potentially addressing underlying causes such as SIBO or leaky gut. Recommendations include exploring gut-healing protocols like the GAPS diet and consulting practitioners experienced in gut health. While antihistamines can manage acute symptoms, they do not resolve the root cause. Finally, the presenter shares that with proper dietary management and gut healing, histamine issues are often temporary, and individuals can recover over time.

Highlights

• 🥩 Carnivore diets can reveal underlying histamine intolerance due to aged and preserved meats.
• 🔥 Common histamine symptoms include flushing, rashes, headaches, heart palpitations, and digestive upset.
• 🥚 Egg whites may contain high histamine levels and can cause reactions in sensitive individuals.
• 🥩 Fresh meats are recommended over aged, frozen, canned, or preserved meats to reduce histamine load.
• 🍲 Avoid long-simmered bone broths; use pressure cookers for shorter cooking times to limit histamine.
• 🦠 Gut microbiome shifts on carnivore diets can worsen histamine intolerance; gut healing is crucial.
• 💊 Antihistamines help manage symptoms but don’t address the root cause of histamine intolerance.

Key Insights

• 🥩 Aged and Preserved Meats as Histamine Triggers: The aging process of meats like dry-aged steaks, bacon, salami, and deli meats increases histamine content significantly. When consumed repeatedly, these histamine-rich foods lead to accumulation in susceptible individuals, triggering symptoms. This insight highlights the importance of food freshness and preparation methods in managing histamine intolerance on carnivore diets.

• 🔄 Repetitive Consumption Amplifies Histamine Load: Many carnivore diet followers consume the same cuts of meat daily, often aged ribeye steaks. This consistency causes a build-up of histamines that the body struggles to clear, worsening symptoms. Varying the diet or ensuring freshness can interrupt this cycle, underlining the role of dietary diversity and timing in histamine management.

• 🦠 Gut Microbiome’s Critical Role in Histamine Breakdown: Transitioning to a carnivore diet alters the gut microbiome drastically. Beneficial bacteria that degrade histamine may be lost, while others that potentially increase histamine may flourish. This shift can amplify histamine intolerance, suggesting that gut health restoration—through testing and healing protocols—is essential for long-term relief.

• 🥚 Egg Whites as a Potential Hidden Histamine Source: Although often overlooked, egg whites can contain elevated histamine levels, leading to reactions in sensitive individuals. This emphasizes the need for careful food selection and monitoring symptoms beyond just meat consumption on restrictive diets.

• 🍲 Cooking Methods Influence Histamine Formation: Prolonged cooking, especially slow-simmered bone broths, increases histamine concentration. Using pressure cookers to prepare broths quickly reduces this risk. This insight stresses that histamine management requires attention not only to what is eaten but also to how food is prepared and stored.

• 💧 Hydration and Electrolytes Support Histamine Clearance: Staying well-hydrated and maintaining electrolyte balance helps flush histamines from the body, reducing symptom severity. This practical strategy complements dietary adjustments and gut healing efforts.

• 💊 Antihistamines as Symptom Relievers, Not Cures: While antihistamines effectively alleviate immediate allergic-like symptoms such as rashes and flushing, they do not address the underlying histamine buildup or gut imbalances. This distinction is critical for managing expectations and encouraging comprehensive treatment approaches.

• ⏳ Histamine Intolerance Can Be Temporary with Proper Care: Many individuals report eventual improvement or resolution of histamine issues by reducing histamine load and healing the gut microbiome. This hopeful insight encourages patience and persistence, reinforcing that histamine intolerance is often manageable and not necessarily a lifelong condition.

Conclusion

The video offers a comprehensive, practical guide to understanding and managing histamine intolerance within the context of a carnivore diet. It balances symptom identification with actionable advice on diet, food preparation, gut health, and symptom relief, all framed by the presenter’s candid acknowledgment of their non-medical background. The emphasis on gut microbiome health as foundational to resolving histamine issues aligns with current scientific perspectives, while the encouragement to seek professional guidance and further education empowers viewers to take control of their health. Overall, this content serves as a valuable resource for carnivore dieters experiencing unexplained allergic-like symptoms and seeking effective strategies to mitigate histamine-related challenges.

Summary

In this extensive and candid conversation between Dr. Eric Westman and Bart K, a former health science professor turned influential keto and carnivore diet advocate, the discussion primarily focuses on the flaws in nutritional epidemiology, the misinformation surrounding low-carb and ketogenic diets, and the challenges of implementing evidence-based nutritional advice in modern medicine. Bart K shares his journey from academia, where his radical views on carbohydrate requirements and fiber were met with resistance, to becoming an online influencer educating the public about metabolic health and nutritional myths. He underscores the fundamental flaws in nutritional epidemiology studies, particularly their reliance on self-reported dietary data and inappropriate statistical adjustments, which often lead to misleading conclusions about diet and health.

The dialogue also tackles the prevailing misconceptions about low-carb diets, such as the unfounded fear that high fat intake causes heart disease or cancer. Both speakers emphasize that type 2 diabetes is fundamentally about chronically elevated blood glucose, not simply insulin resistance or deficiency, and criticize the medical system’s reliance on pharmaceutical interventions over dietary solutions. The conversation highlights the challenges physicians face in promoting nutrition due to systemic constraints, commercial interests, and professional risks.

Bart K expresses optimism about grassroots changes driven by informed individuals and emerging research, including the growing acceptance of ketogenic therapies in cardiology and the rise of carnivore diet proponents. However, he acknowledges the difficulty of conducting long-term, rigorous clinical trials on diets due to ethical and practical constraints. The discussion concludes with a call for critical thinking, individual experimentation, and skepticism of authority in nutrition science, encouraging people to explore low-carb or carnivore diets gradually while monitoring their own health outcomes.

Highlights

• 🥩 Bart K advocates for a 100% carnivore diet as the species-appropriate human diet.
• 📉 Nutritional epidemiology is deeply flawed due to reliance on self-reported data and improper statistical adjustments.
• 🔬 Association does not imply causation; many diet-health claims are based on misleading correlations.
• 💊 The medical system favors drug interventions over dietary changes due to financial incentives.
• 🍽️ Type 2 diabetes is fundamentally about elevated blood glucose, not just insulin resistance.
• 📊 True scientific causality in nutrition is hard to establish due to ethical and practical research constraints.
• 🌱 Emerging research and grassroots movements are fostering new perspectives on keto, carnivore, and metabolic health.

Key Insights

• 🔍 Flaws in Nutritional Epidemiology: In-depth Analysis
  Bart K explains that nutritional epidemiology studies are inherently unreliable because they rely on infrequent, self-reported dietary surveys that are inaccurate by nature. These studies often use complex statistical techniques like multivariate regression that violate key assumptions such as independence of variables, leading to invalid conclusions. For example, adjusting for age while studying long-term diet-related disease incidence creates collinearity, making the data mathematically invalid. This calls into question much of the dietary advice based on such studies, including the demonization of saturated fat and meat consumption.

• 🧪 Association Does Not Equal Causation: Critical Thinking Needed
  Both experts stress that a high correlation between a dietary factor and disease does not prove that one causes the other. They illustrate this with humorous examples (ice cream sales and sunburn incidence) to highlight how such data can be misleading. This misunderstanding fuels pseudoscientific claims in nutrition and public health. The takeaway is that consumers and practitioners must critically evaluate scientific claims and not accept correlations as proof.

• 🍏 Misconceptions About Low-Carb and Keto Diets
  The conversation debunks common fears that low-carb or ketogenic diets cause heart disease or cancer. Bart K and Dr. Westman emphasize that these diets often reduce hunger and promote steady weight loss, making them sustainable and effective. They also argue that insulin resistance is not the root cause of type 2 diabetes but rather a protective response to chronic hyperglycemia caused by excessive carbohydrate intake. Thus, reducing carbs is a logical and effective intervention.

• 💊 Pharmaceutical Industry vs. Nutrition: Systemic Challenges
  There is a critical view of the medical establishment’s preference for drug treatments over dietary interventions, largely driven by financial incentives. Drugs like insulin or SGLT2 inhibitors are prescribed widely for diabetes and heart failure, despite the potential for dietary approaches to achieve similar or better results without adverse side effects. This systemic bias inhibits the adoption of nutritional therapies even when evidence supports their efficacy.

• 📈 The Role of Ketones and Emerging Research in Cardiovascular Health
  Interestingly, new research in cardiology is exploring ketones as a therapeutic agent for heart failure, often via drugs that induce ketosis (e.g., SGLT2 inhibitors). This paradoxically introduces ketones into mainstream medicine, though through pharmaceutical routes rather than diet. This development might pave the way for broader acceptance of ketogenic diets in clinical practice, but the financial motivations behind drug promotion remain a barrier.

• 🥩 Carnivore Diet as the Ultimate Species-Specific Diet
  Bart K strongly advocates the carnivore diet, claiming it to be the natural, optimal diet for humans based on anthropological evidence such as nitrogen isotope analysis of ancient human remains showing high animal product consumption pre-agriculture. Despite skepticism and lack of long-term randomized controlled trials (RCTs), he asserts that the carnivore diet has solid scientific and clinical foundations and is gaining traction, evidenced by new educational courses and patient interest.

• 🧬 Challenges in Conducting Long-Term Nutrition Trials
  Both speakers agree that high-quality, long-term RCTs to definitively prove causality in nutrition are nearly impossible due to ethical, practical, and financial constraints. Human subjects cannot be locked in controlled environments for decades, and dietary adherence is difficult to monitor objectively over long periods. Consequently, much of nutrition science remains observational or mechanistic, and individuals must rely on personal experimentation and biomarker monitoring.

• 🧠 The Need for Critical Thinking and Personal Experimentation
  Ultimately, the dialogue encourages moving beyond blind trust in authorities, government guidelines, or even academic consensus. Instead, individuals should engage in personal experimentation, using modern tools like continuous glucose monitors, artery ultrasounds, and lipid profiles to assess their health responses to different diets. This pragmatic approach empowers people to find what works best for their unique biology and circumstances.

• 🛑 Critique of Medical Education and Practice on Nutrition
  Bart K criticizes medical training for lacking robust nutrition education, leaving physicians ill-equipped to counsel patients on diet. Physicians are often “trained monkey grinders,” bound by professional norms and punitive licensing boards to avoid deviating from established dogma. This institutional inertia suppresses innovation and honest dialogue about effective dietary therapies, forcing patients to seek alternative sources of information.

• 🌿 Grassroots Movements and New Generations of Doctors
  Despite systemic obstacles, there is optimism about change driven by younger physicians and researchers independently exploring ketogenic and carnivore diets. The growing grassroots interest, online education, and patient-driven demand are gradually challenging the status quo. This bottom-up momentum may eventually influence mainstream medicine and public health policy.

Conclusion

This conversation offers a profound critique of the current state of nutritional science and medicine, revealing the deep flaws in epidemiological research, the misinformation surrounding diet and chronic disease, and the systemic barriers to adopting effective dietary therapies like low-carb and carnivore diets. Bart K and Dr. Westman advocate for a return to rigorous scientific principles, critical thinking, and personal experimentation, while highlighting the growing momentum of grassroots movements and emerging research validating metabolic health interventions. Their message is clear: individuals should be empowered to explore dietary approaches grounded in evolutionary biology and clinical outcomes rather than flawed statistics and commercial interests.