PrimalAnimist

I even paste -inurl:[reddit.com] to the end of my google searches so I don’t even accidentally click on a link from Reddit in my searches. lol

Probably right wing populists are the majority there now. Intelligent people abandoned the dumpster fire. Just like Twitter. It’s just a far-right cesspool of hate now.

Modern billionaires are the manifestation of the rampant consumerism of the masses. Want to do your part against the billionaires? Start with consuming less. Buy less. Move toward minimal.

Since his handle is being taken against his will, he should get to take someone else’s handle against their will. Then let it be a chain reaction.

Maybe someone who hasn’t see Airplane.

To be fair, no user “owns” their account. Everything about your Twitter account, from the user name to the data you tweet belongs to Twitter. I hesitate to call it a dick move. It’s more of an Elon move.

They can still see your comments and posts.

BrowserX

I don’t think we should worry about an app we will never use. :)

Sir, we will give you two options, pay our fine or we tell everyone at your workplace that you pirated Happy Feet 2.

Back in the early days you wanna download a movie or some warez it would be like 358 parts and you would always miss some and have to ask for reposts. Hey anyone have parts 28, 34, 78, and 212-229 of “Dizzy Princess And the Shaven Dwarves?” Then you wait a day or two, watching replies. It was really an accomplishment when you get that final piece and decode the file(s) successfully.

Sir, you have a message from someone called, “A.I.”

The difference is people generally don’t care about a change if it doesn’t inconvenience them beyond their tolerance threshold. Losing access to 3rd party apps? Bad to some, but probably the profit of the move will exceed the cost. (their hope) But get a rep for ratting out your posters to authorities and it suddenly becomes very personal for more people.

Reddit understands it’s value is in content to sell. If reddit starts ratting out it’s free content creators, they lose value. Their actions are a profit calculation, not some noble stand to protect privacy.

You can’t tell anyone this, but I have a friend who is deep inside the insurance industry. Some of the big guys have invested heavy into LEDs. So to maximize the LED investments, they give manufacturers safety discounts for every LED they can attach to their shit. Big guys make some extra zeros for their accounts, and sharpie and 3M get some splash, too.

Money has no intrinsic value at all. The true wealth is labor. Labor has actual value. The masses own the wealth and we give it to others in exchange for “money”. The power of the rich only remains for as long as they can control the labor. This is why they spread so much fear about AI “taking your jobs”. Every time AI and automation take away a job, it takes away a little bit of power. Because capitalism has taught us, all things being equal, the service or product that costs less is what we buy. Products with an AI labor force don’t have to pay for that labor, and capitalistic competition will drive the prices down. As more and more labor is shifted to AI and automation, those who controlled human labor, the actual wealth, will lose control of that wealth.

If they are unable to stop it, the eventual progression would be replacing all human labor and do away with the need to even have a money system. This will do away with wage slaves, and allow us to focus on learning and having fun. But the billionaires would be no different than everyone else when that playing field is levelled. They hate that. They oppose it. They try and manipulate us to fear AI and to resist it. Capitalism is truly just another system of control.

I agree with that logic. But for me personally, I don’t feel “locked” into google. There are no contracts, no penalties for moving to some other service if I need. I never use customer support from any of these services because I find it’s easier to just look for the answers myself. I have no loyalty to any company, I simply use what best serves me at the time. All corps are interested in profit over people, so there’s really no company I have found to be fully ethical and transparent while offering a competing service that is as reliable.

I have the free 15 GB of cloud storage with them, but I don’t use it. I keep my data on my own cloud storage box. Yes, I have a gmail account, but I also have a proton.me account that I use more than gmail. Also, pretty much every big service out there is powered by Google and/or Amazon (see Twitter lol), so looking at the big picture, right now, we are dependent on Google in ways we are not even aware.

This is also why I am excited to see the shift to open source and self-hosting. I think a time is coming, too, where big companies are going to have to pay us for access to our data. I’ve made almost $200 just casually answering questions for the Google Rewards app. Sometimes it’s a dime, sometimes fifty cents, occasionally a question nets more. Those credits can be used to pay for any google services or purchases. I usually buy movies I can’t find on streaming services with my Google Rewards credits (my pirate days are long gone, it’s just not as convenient for me anymore and if I can’t watch it through a service or buy it, I just don’t need to watch it lol).

I really want to self-host a lemmy server sometime in the next year, I have a Core i5 desktop that’s not dead, just sits in a closet. My wish is to have all my personal social media self-hosted and I can choose who I want to federate with and who I don’t. But I’m not a pioneer. I’m waiting til this all settles a little to see if it’s worth the work.

Check out Google Fi. It uses the T-Mobile network here (US), and I get unlimited data, no rate limits. I have three phone numbers on my account and it costs me $85 a month total. Also the phones from the Fi store are super cheap if you stay on Google Fi. My pixel 7 got $300 off at purchase and $100 for my old phone. They are unlocked, too. Something I hate when buying from other providers. One of my phones had a Verizon sim and a Google Fi e-sim, so I can switch services with easy. Here in the mountains, service can be spotty in places with TMobile. Wifi calling is also available though, so that helps, too. I abandoned US Cellular entirely.

I still use Google news to follow some topics and it gathers articles from my local news sites, too. But any time if shows an article that prompts me to register to see it, I just go back to the Google news page and tell it to block that source.

You annoy me once and you disappear lol.

Being outraged against a system that exploits the labor of the masses for the profit of the few is not the same as being outraged at other people who disagree with you. You can support capitalism and I don’t need to insult you or make attacks against you personally. Outrage, when it is against something you feel to be harmful is normal. Outrage that is generated by corporate manipulation is not normal. For example, the hatred toward the trans community and drag queens has never been a “thing”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgkWQpgZ1JQ

This is a clip from a Love Boat episode. It aired in 1982. Nobody called them “woke” or even really talked about it the next day. Drag shows have been in US culture since at least the 1920s. I remember, back in the 90s, people would flock to this club in town called “Discovery” on Saturday nights. It was a gay dance club, but on Saturdays, there would often be an equal number of straight couples who came to enjoy the extravagant stage shows, which were similar to something you might see in Vegas. This was in the deep south, too. There were no protests. There were no attacks. There was no violence. There was no outrage.

We have been manipulated because it’s profitable. Oh and, yes, thank capitalism for that. :)