I joined lemmy.one when people started moving from reddit to lemmy. In the early days there was not much choice, either this one or the woke beehaw and some other "just started" instances with one or two people. (and lemmingrad ofc) I have recently switched to another one.

Good for you. I haven't been that lucky.

Thank you! Tried almost every beta on the list, CS2 loaded every time.

Good luck if you have a laptop, where the manufacturer just shut down the servers with the drivers (Sony Vaio) and you have zero chance of getting Windows running properly.

Rather an ad platform. You can follow perfect influencers selling you sh.t they get a load of money for.

It annoys me as well and I rather not visit any website that refuses my visit because of my adblocker. However, ads work with your unconscious and unfortunately, they work on everyone, that's why the best is to avoid them.

My wife sends me products she finds interesting and they all contain the facebook tracker at the end. It is a scientific fact that women are better consumers, hence ads are mostly created for them. My wife hates ads while watching videos, but taps on them during scrolling all the time. Fortunately I haven't been asked to get her off pi-hole. It is tricky with ads, as you think that they are offering a solution for something, but in many cases they are establishing a desire you did not have before.

Indeed. That't when I knew that I had chosen the right solution. :)

I wish I could buy a second hand pixel phone anywhere here. (Central EU) They might be popular in the US, maybe a couple of them are sold in western Europe, but in this region they are imppssible to find.

On my phone e os came with microG preinstalled. Banking apps work. The only thing not working is payment with apps that want to use gpay. (Udemy, e-scooter renting) I could install google wallet, but I don'twantt any google app on my phone.

I wasn't that lucky. I had to nuke my account and start with passwords from 0.

Facebook is nowhere dead. Everyone I meet wants to chat via Messenger, small firms here don't bother creating a website anymore, they create a facebook page (' cause everyone's there) and local/company communities use facebook groups to talk. Not to mention event hosts, they create fb events. If you are interested in topics that are liked globally, the fediverse is getting better. But if you are looking for a local community, you'll rarely find any. The lemmy page of my country is basically dead, the sub however is thriving.