I think the emphasis comes across wrong. When I read that in my head it sounds… condoning?

“Ashforth showed us how it works: you pay in advance online or at an in-store kiosk.” Aaannndddd you’ve just re-invented going to someone with a key to go unlock something. It does look to be a bit better, but considering half of the point they where making was allowing ease of ‘obtainablity’ to customers, you still need to go to someone to ask them for the item.

The thing is, at least in my experience, google is better. On avarage it takes me less time to find what I want on google than ddg. Yes I’m sure part of that is using google for a very long time, but there is one HUGE thing google has that ddg doesn’t: Quotation and minus search amendments. With google, if I can’t find what I’m looking for, add “” around it, and if something unrelated is showing up, use - The solution on ddg? Guess a different set of words to use, until you get it right. If ddg added this, I think I’d switch over entirely.

I don’t really know the legalitys, but there’s a few things in elons way:

1. Whoever has control over Lemmy would have to be willing to sell it, pretty sure Elon couldn’t take over lemmy like he did twitter
2. It’s open source, how/can does one even turn something like lemmy closed-source?
3. If it was made closed source by Elon, what of the forks that already exist? Can anything be does to threaten their ongoing existence?

I don’t know the answers to 2&3, but I’m pretty sure 1 holds true; Elon can’t buy something if the owner refuses to sell.