These companies seem to forget that the main thing holding them afloat is the ability to watch it simply at a low cost. Pirating is very easy and there are plenty of tools to achieve this same goal if prices keep going up.

I’ve already abandoned Netflix. I would rather pirate shows I hear are good than mindlessly scroll on that platform while paying $240 a year or whatever.

This is wonderful to hear. I hope this helps move people away from google and their products.

Pay moderators and app developers that help make communities thrive? Hell no. Pay people to contribute content? Yes! That’s the way! Force the community with money. Yes!

This article is well written, but the intense focus on TikTok is strange. I don’t understand how TikTok can be a source of true information or a town square for that matter. The videos are incredibly short and then the next one comes. You see a lot of dumb shit and stupid memes. It’s sometimes good at making people feel like they are learning something, but when you ask those people what they learned, they can’t synthesize or explain what it was they supposedly digested. To me, TikTok seems like pure dopamine hits without any sustainability.

Twitter, with its short character count, wasn’t any good for debate or sustained learning either. It was good for being a dunk tank—a place where people try to dunk on each other. It also became an echo chamber that helped polarize people politically. I don’t really understand the appeal of Twitter.

The interviewed protesters sound a little whacky. Maybe the cars are doing surveillance with the police, but that idea seems far fetched and unrealistic. Maybe I’m wrong.

I agree with more public transportation, bikes, and so forth, but I also agree with self driving cars. I dream of a future in which all cars are driven automatically without human drivers. Humans are very fallible and we all know, in almost every city, how many shitty drivers there are. Autonomous vehicles could fix this.

Great article. I especially liked the conclusion paragraph:

Fediverse can only win by keeping its ground, by speaking about freedom, morals, ethics, values. By starting open, non-commercial and non-spied discussions. By acknowledging that the goal is not to win. Not to embrace. The goal is to stay a tool. A tool dedicated to offer a place of freedom for connected human beings. Something that no commercial entity will ever offer.

I’m wondering what their motivation was for building it so that it could join the fediverse. I guess they recognize that the fediverse is the future, and they want their hand in that space.

I thought it worked well, but these homes aren’t “typical,” they are on the higher end. Most of them looked like million dollar+ homes, though I recognize many would be cheaper depending on the location.

Meta is sickening. You have to have it for promoting events, artists and such, but it’s toxic and needs to be replaced.

As a music artist, I don’t know how to avoid platforms like Instagram and such while still promoting my art.

Mimestream was promising in beta. The subscription model is too much for me though.

Outlook is good. Apple mail is good. But I still like Spark the best, I think. But I dislike Spark’s terms of service and feel like they don’t respect my privacy or data.

Apple TV+. They are releasing some really spectacular shows (Ted Lasso, Severence, Silo) and enough fillers between the spectacular stuff.

Same. I’m posting more because these are real communities on a platform that isn’t run by a bunch of corporate pricks. It’s real community. Not a business.