These kind of pirated IPTV services are very popular in middle eastern countries. You message some guy on whatsapp, pay him a couple bucks and receive a link to an APK file + login info. The app gives you access to basically any channel in every country. They have to do everything through word of mouth because its high risk, obviously, and even in developed countries you can get sent to jail pretty quickly for running something like this. I was expecting esoteric OPSEC lessons from this post, because if thats not the highest priority, its pretty stupid to even consider doing this.
I found the whole site a very interesting (and fairly quick) read. I don't really have anything else to add, but I'm glad the owner manages to be honest and take good lessons from the whole thing.
It's interesting to me how from his account, everyone is fairly sympathetic to him regarding his charges (he mentions his employer showing up to his interview in a sports jersey in reference to his charges!), and how he mentions he knows several actual sports players used his site. It really goes to show the state of modern streaming.
I would call it a hero-site. That's what they are - they are heroes for unrestricting information.
Take ublock origin. Now, many say it is an ad-blocker; the ublock origin author says the extension is a generic content blocker. I agree with that but I go further: I call ublock origin a hero-blocker, or better, a heroic blocker. It blocks unwanted things in general. For similar reasons I think the term "piratebay" is old. It made more sense in the 2000s. Now I would call it herobay.
People may wonder about those terms, but I think it is important to use better terms than old terms. The old terms often were hijacked by the law system and mega-corporations with their own particular interests. It is time that the people re-define the law. Law should serve the people.
> My proudest growth hack involved Reddit's API. I filtered posts mentioning phrases like "NBA League Pass," "blackouts," or "where to" on team-specific subreddits. Then I gave my users lists of those posts and encouraged them to comment—transparently—about why they liked HeheStreams, including their referral link.
Any goodwill I felt towards this guy evaporated at the end. Reddit spam, unraveling the social trust in user recommendations, is a scourge. I’m sorry he wasn’t sent to jail longer.
And as with most criminal cases, it’s astonishing how little money he made for his trouble.
Author here. This is funny to wake up to. A version of this microsite was posted previously (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45434062) though it didn't have much of the content that exists here.
If anyone has any general questions (it seems like my little “startup lessons” page is as popular as the others) I’m be happy to answer them as long as they’re not too technical or related to my finances. However, the specifics of the technical side of my site are best found on TorrentFreak, and, in short: curl commands.
I recently learned that, just like most other businesses, a lot of free pirate streaming sites are actually powered by a few big content aggregators[1][2][3]. They don't do much beyond providing a nice-looking frontend to an unauthenticated API that those aggregators expose.
One could probably spin one of these up in an afternoon (if making money was not the goal). The barriers of entry to this ecosystem are a lot lower than I ever imagined.
Those aggregators serve their own ads (what you get through the API is a link to a web player embed, not to the video directly). I suspect that bigger sites get some kind of kickback for bringing in traffic to those players.
> My copywriting was tongue-in-cheek and self-deprecating. It was all me, no bullshit. I treated every message—even transactional emails—as an opportunity to build trust.
What does this mean? what is this 'trust' that is built ? how does an email build 'trust' Is this to do with whether I beleive the email came from where it says it does ? or somethign else. A lot of this article seemed a little vague in the business buzzword bullshit type way.
Bro, you gotta just build Trust(tm) for this one growth hack(tm)
I'd absolutely hate being on the receiving end of some of these. e.g.
>I gave my users lists of those posts and encouraged them to comment
A service doing this would instantly be on my shit list. I'm trying to buy a service in exchange for money, not get spammed about being someone's guerilla marketing team for free / and or getting roped into a referral scheme.
I don't mind organically advocating for things I've had a good experience with but not like this
The UI of some piracy streaming sites are better than legit sites with much less hoops to jump through than torrents/Usenet or region locked legal services for rare stuff.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 43.0 ms ] threadah, it's this kind of pirate streaming
It's interesting to me how from his account, everyone is fairly sympathetic to him regarding his charges (he mentions his employer showing up to his interview in a sports jersey in reference to his charges!), and how he mentions he knows several actual sports players used his site. It really goes to show the state of modern streaming.
> Contrast what society says rehabilitation is versus what it actually feels like. How much of it depends on luck, personality, or privilege?
> people want linear redemption stories, but real self-improvement is messy, nonlinear, and impossible to A/B test.
> There's a certain freedom in owning your story publicly. People can't weaponize what you've already made peace with.
Yes, do that. Also a tangent: remind me why you're sending me an email if you haven't sent one in many months.
Sometimes I see an interesting project that hasn't launched. They just have an "sign up for news updates".
Then 12 months later I get a standard news email and I have no clue what it is and ignore it.
At least start your email with something like "Hey, 12 months ago you signed up for the mega cool electron thunder splitter. We've launched!"
I would call it a hero-site. That's what they are - they are heroes for unrestricting information.
Take ublock origin. Now, many say it is an ad-blocker; the ublock origin author says the extension is a generic content blocker. I agree with that but I go further: I call ublock origin a hero-blocker, or better, a heroic blocker. It blocks unwanted things in general. For similar reasons I think the term "piratebay" is old. It made more sense in the 2000s. Now I would call it herobay.
People may wonder about those terms, but I think it is important to use better terms than old terms. The old terms often were hijacked by the law system and mega-corporations with their own particular interests. It is time that the people re-define the law. Law should serve the people.
Any goodwill I felt towards this guy evaporated at the end. Reddit spam, unraveling the social trust in user recommendations, is a scourge. I’m sorry he wasn’t sent to jail longer.
And as with most criminal cases, it’s astonishing how little money he made for his trouble.
If anyone has any general questions (it seems like my little “startup lessons” page is as popular as the others) I’m be happy to answer them as long as they’re not too technical or related to my finances. However, the specifics of the technical side of my site are best found on TorrentFreak, and, in short: curl commands.
One could probably spin one of these up in an afternoon (if making money was not the goal). The barriers of entry to this ecosystem are a lot lower than I ever imagined.
Those aggregators serve their own ads (what you get through the API is a link to a web player embed, not to the video directly). I suspect that bigger sites get some kind of kickback for bringing in traffic to those players.
[1] https://torrentfreak.com/mpa-highlights-rapidly-expanding-hy... [2] http://vidsrcme.ru/ [3] https://streamed.pk/docs
What does this mean? what is this 'trust' that is built ? how does an email build 'trust' Is this to do with whether I beleive the email came from where it says it does ? or somethign else. A lot of this article seemed a little vague in the business buzzword bullshit type way.
Bro, you gotta just build Trust(tm) for this one growth hack(tm)
>I gave my users lists of those posts and encouraged them to comment
A service doing this would instantly be on my shit list. I'm trying to buy a service in exchange for money, not get spammed about being someone's guerilla marketing team for free / and or getting roped into a referral scheme.
I don't mind organically advocating for things I've had a good experience with but not like this
the reason noreply addresses exist is to avoid endless autoreply loops caused by poorly programmed mail software