Like basically everything, there's balance to be struck. If sites operate purely off of donations and enthusiasm, it's easy to turn out like kbin.social instead of myspace.

Nothing's stopping people from running websites for things they care about right now, but you have to care an awful lot to host/support something for other people without the potential for it to at least pay for itself.

remember when Myspace offered that for free?

This seems like a strange gripe. If their business model was sustainable, more of us would be reading this on myspace right now.

The first one. Can look up the name in the article to confirm....though "independent" implies not funded by the state, right?

Apple is continuing to operate in Russia and, in the process, are enforcing their censorship.

I'll pitch Bandcamp as an option, especially if/when they bring back Bandcamp Fridays next year (where they don't take a cut on specific days). Not everyone's on it, but it's generally a reasonable, legal option for those artists that are.

Want a hand-crafted wooden pen? Head over to Pen Island (.net, not .com)