Has everyone forgotten that Trump mainstreamed the ban-TikTok rhetoric?

I think about this often-- followed by Homer Simpson’s voice saying, “Better say something or they’ll think you’re stupid.”

I’m with you. Another perk is a sense of where you are on the planet. If I get up with the sunrise at 22:00 somewhere, then travel somewhere the sun rises around 18:00, it’s obvious the sun is hitting this part of the planet sooner.

If UTC were widely adopted, it’d be interesting to see what employers near time zones would do. EG start work at 19:00 or 20:00? 19:30? Flex-time with mandatory core hours from 22:00 to 02:00? Maybe I’m over optimistic, but it seems like it would encourage more flexible work hours.

Dang, that’s rough. I’m glad things turned around. Speaking to my own psychology: It’s easy to internalize a string of bad luck. Then when other people go through it-- whether in group therapy, a global pandemic, or a massive recession-- it shows how random or circumstantial life and luck can be. It helped me internalize it less and get out of my own way.

I was unemployed, isolated, and anosmic-- then covid hit and I was like, “hey everyone, welcome to the club! Yes, it does suck but at least now there’s people to empathize with.”

It’s available to whoever is willing to pay. Consent is given when users agree to privacy policies and ToS. Unfortunately, unless you’re in the EU, it’s legal, and when companies violate permissive laws or suffer a data breach, the penalties are often inconsequential. The original comment was vague and didn’t specify the case. In the context of linux users vs MS and Apple, I’m leaning towards a distrust of big tech and “readily available for anyone” being inclusive of a multibillion dollar ad industry and the ecosystems developed around it. Though, technically not anyone can access every piece, so I guess we could dismiss it as a thing of the past.

Data brokers getting a kick out of this one.

I would say there’s been a mass migration from Twitter to Mastodon and from Reddit to Lemmy. The current numbers are still a small fraction of the original services, but the federated services have reached a critical mass where they now offer comparable value. YouTube hasn’t been ubiquitous for that long and it’s already pretty enshittified. I see a lot of people who are fed up with it and looking for an alternative. The peertube platform is there, I think with more people and content and it’ll join the ranks.

Me if that happens:

jk, i barely use YT as it is. I’m waiting for the YT ToS update that causes a mass migration to peertube

I’m convinced Mark Zuckerberg had a wet dream about pupil tracking when he bought Oculus.

People who are proud of getting a good deal via an app break my heart. Most folks I know like that are not strapped for cash. They just like the feeling of getting a bargain. They don’t consider that the prices are artificially inflated. They don’t need the sale item. And in the long run they’ll probably end up paying more when the stores know their purchasing habits and have A/B tested them enough to know how to provide as little as possible while charging as much as a customer can stomach.

If a coupon requires an app, I don’t by that item. Especially when it comes to groceries. When it comes to store cards, most let you use a phone number instead of scanning the card. So plug in a random number at checkout. You can often get a hit on the first try. Then pay in cash. Dirty up someone else’s data and give these stores nothing on you. Seriously, if people keep giving in, it’s guaranteed to get worse. First the store card, then the app, what’s next?

I’m with you 100% up to the “little recourse,” I think there’s more options now than there have ever been. Open source (including linux and self hosting) are about the only tech-future things I’m genuinely excited about.

There’s still a learning curve and progress to be made, for sure. However, anecdotally, I’ve seen programming and hosting become vastly more accessible in the last 15 years. Also, not everyone needs to self host, people just need to know someone who is willing and able to set them up.

Not saying it’s a guarantee, but it’s a possible way out, at least. And being here on lemmy, reading and writing about these issues is a good sign there’s movement in the right direction.

Good point. And it wouldn’t surprise me if google was still using YTP subscriber viewing data to target them on other platforms and websites. Actually, I’d be surprised if they weren’t doing that.

But if you pay for YouTube premium you won’t have ads… for the first couple of years until they corner the market, and change the terms of services several times to maximize profits. uBlock and donating to open source FTW. shout out to yt-dlp

Logs your usage, lets you see one week of history. Meanwhile sells the entire usage history of you and everyone in your contact list to anyone willing to pay.

Clients try to get you to pay as much as possible for toilet paper (subscription tp anyone? Will be cheaper in first stage of enshittification until they monopolize the market). Other clients try to correlate the success of political propaganda with how regular you are. Elected officials won’t regulate, because it’s a tool they had to master to get elected.

On the plus side, Lemmy exists and that’s a step in the right direction. Would work that into toilet metaphor but don’t wanna ramble.

Tolerates decades of spam in his mailbox. Has melt down when one contains a black female politician.

Not to mention it would reduce all the underride crashes.

All these improved vehicle safety standards are generally for bumper-to-bumper collisions, not windshield-to-truck-bed. Frontline released a well-done 2023 episode on it. Highly recommend.

Edit: md link

And all that data probably takes up less room than a few pictures, could easily be stored locally, and encrypted locally before backing up on a server. But why give individuals control and privacy over their own behavior and history when you can sell it to anyone and keep the profits for yourself? /s

GM marketing. They purchased the hummer brand from AM General. OG Hummer (later renamed H1) was based on AM General’s military Humvee design, but released to the civilian market. H2 and H3 were designed by GM for mass marketing. Can be seen in the price. H1 nearly 10x more than H2 and H3.

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I’ve been surprised by how effective it’s been to say, respectfully, “this is important to me,” maybe adding “here’s why.” Got all my siblings, mom, SO, and best friend on Signal, that’s a vast majority of my online conversations.

reddit is orders of magnitude bigger then lemmy, but I find lemmy high quality and has more people with similar values- more than i could ever keep up with.

Back when Adobe went subscription-only, I stopped using it on my personal work and devices even though a lot of my previous work depended on it. Had to switch to different tools, but now there are better options. Not only has Adobe stagnated, but they caused an even bigger exodus when they messed with the ToS to train ai on user data.

I switch to linux a few years ago and now when I have jobs that use windows I realize how clunky it actually is, and it’s only getting worse while linux has been getting better.

I’m fully degoogled (also a graphineOS user). It took me years to eliminate each service, but I was sick of these giant companies that could never give me the things I wanted because in interferes with what they want (ad revenue). The only thing you can do is take it all back. Participate as little as possible. These companies will not stop getting worse while people continue to use them.

It can be inconvenient, time-consuming, and hard, but there are options, and it is a lot easier now than it was a decade ago. I see no reason why it wont continue to get easier and more accessible. That’s why it’s important for tech savvy folks to do what they can, now, and make it easier for those who come after them. Personally, I’ve done a lot for myself, but need to learn more about hosting securely so I can offer close friends and family better alternatives that they can easily access.