Yeah, but I don’t know whether you’ve recently taken a look in one of the local newspapers— being able to select topics you want to read about may very well be worth the extra effort (also, fun of course)

iOS user here, uYou++ is quite good, but only a mod for the regular YT app, not a complete alternative.

YouTube is/ its ads are are extremely privacy intrusive and there isn’t really an alternative to the platform. Next to the comparatively obvious network effects all social media platforms rely on is also because YouTube on its own is not that profitable and probably only really makes Google money via the data collected on the platform. This means only platforms that have a gigantic ad network themselves and are able to monetize said data as well as Google can can actually compete with YouTube— and as you see, there are basically none.

Also, the whole blocking ad blockers thing is trying to fundamentally reverse the power equilibrium between the website (the server) and the person visiting it (the client); because for the last 40 years or so, the server had the purpose of delivering content to the client which could decide what to do with and how to present said content. This sharing of responsibility between the two comes in many forms, starting with simple things such as screen readers or a reading mode for the browser.

This is not necessarily the case.

You could only use this new system if the old one fails, ie. only for the say 10% of users that block ads, and so even if it were more expensive it would still be more profitable than letting them block all ads.

But I don’t think even that is the case, as they can essentially just “swap out” the video they’re streaming (as they don’t really stream “one video” per video anyway), bringing additional running costs to nearly zero.

The only thing definitely more expensive and resource intensive is the development of said custom software

I’m actually not too sure about that. I am currently using an older iPhone (and I really dislike Apple, it’s just that the stupid device just does not stop working) and from an environmental perspective, throwing that away would surely be worse than continuing to use it, right?

Yeah I get all of that, but for a person living in Germany, the original comment is just plainly false and potentially harmful, so it should rather have been “plastic recycling is a scam in most of the world”, which makes regional differences clear and does not appear like there was something inherently non-functional with recycling plastic.

Interesting, that seems to be the reason for most. Under which circumstances if any would you upvote a perceived advertisement?

Would you upvote a well written advertisement that you think makes the company’s intention very clear to the reader? Would you do so if the intention not only sounded realistic, but also like they want to achieve something net-positive?

Or is it really just being an advertisement that makes you downvote?

Yeah, I don’t agree with the conclusion (like at all), but I still found the first 3/4 of the article very nicely put and definitely worth reading.

Why are there so many downvotes on this?

I agree, although some very unsympathetic part of me internally screams every time I read that.

Data is already plural, so the form datas does not exist. It even has the rarely used singular datum as it is just Latin for “given”, but using data instead is generally also regarded correct.

It is, a gaming focused Fedora distro to be exact.

The “problem” here (if you think so) is that if law enforcement in Germany gets to know about a case like this, they cannot choose themselves not to act on it.

I would suspect because there is probably space for errors in the detection system

Spacebar, Revolt, Matrix in ascending order of completeness and descending order of Discord-likeness

Maybe you want to take a look at Spacebar, a FOSS Discord reimplementation with its own client and server for self-hosting in development

I would state it even more generally, something like “when chatting with WhatsApp/Facebook Messenger users Signal can only ensure no data is shared with third parties from your device …” or something around the lines of that

Thank you, I’ll eventually look into that

• I’ve did some distrohopping and in effect switched from Fedora to Fedora Silverblue (very enjoyable)
• I’ve completely removed all centralized social media apart from YouTube (I’ll have to invest some more time in PeerTube before I can make the switch) from my life
• In general I spend less time doom-scrolling and way more time actually reading interesting stuff (I’ve found LessWrong, a forum about the art of rationality/more rational thinking)
• I have replaced all remaining proprietary software components on my desktop with open source ones (e.g. I now use FOSS frontends for Discord and Spotify, namely gtkcord4 and Spot), the only exceptions being the Nvidia driver (I hope that will change in 2024 with NVK) and some games (although 80% of my very limited gaming time is now spent in open source games like Beyond All Reason)
• I got a tablet/ChromeBook convertible (Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 5 8GB) which I installed PostmarketOS on and am now daily driving Linux in school where everybody else is using iPads
• I am in the process of finally building my own NAS/homeserver
• On the negative side I spent way less of my free time programming than I would have liked to

I do also have some goals and ambitions for this year:

• Host all my stuff on my own server, this includes files (documents, photos, backups, media) as well as services like my website and automations
• Write audio and camera drivers for my tablet
• Learn some more Nim
• Write more code than last year
• Finally make the switch to Vim/NeoVim
• Become independent from YouTube
• If my iPhone happens to break, get a Linux phone as a daily driver
• Gradually unsubscribe from (streaming) services like Spotify

Crazy stuff