modifier

Their brown wax seems to be selling well enough. Not sure why they would change it up now.

Be aware Brody is usually a pipeline to Billy Bob

Off what?

Apollo doesn’t show me post authors in my main feed but sometimes you just know a Stamets post.

+1 now, and that’s for introducing me to the feature.

My only quibble would be to swap “pay” for “invest” which captures both the dynamic of up front expense and expected savings from ending recurring subscription fees. That’s how I look at it. Every penny I put into my own digital sovereignty is an investment that will yield returns both financial and otherwise.

Just say “you should be funny more”

Many props to you. I feel like reddit doesn’t count as social media, but I couldn’t energetically defend that position. They are certainly engaging in social media tech bro behavior, so the distinction probably doesn’t matter at this point, but it felt different than social media before it went to shit. Now, obviously when it “went to shit” is a point in time that is highly relative to the observer, but always sometime after the observer joined. That’s just the nature of enshittification.

yeah and I gobble that shit up like candy.

I am not immune, and I don’t find all algorithms predatory - for example, I log on knowing that steam is selling me a product, but I am not the product. I just said in many ways I am successfully avoiding “the algorithm”, though the scare quotes immediately following a run down of social media networks was meant to indicate a specific type of algorithm that is meant to induce engagement or enragement (both are profitable) and change my behavior because I am the product.

I still have plenty of time for algorithms that serve me up games for that crucial 15% of my library that I bought but haven’t played yet.

One thing at a time Maxxie.

I am not a citizen of New Mexico, but I cannot begin to tell you how fulfilled I would feel to learn that my high was lifting others up somehow.

Me too but, sadly: paywalled. That’s how they get you.

That isn’t an accident.

There is this insight that I remember reading about internet scams, that they are poor quality with lots of misspelling by design. According to what I’ve read, this acts as a useful filter: If you’re smart enough to pick up on things like misspellings, we don’t want to waste our time scamming you.

That is now essentially the entire ethos of the modern internet.

There is a lot of heated debate about this. They’re saying due to COVID, that “early” can mean anything from 0-8 now, which obviously I don’t understand but what can you do? They are saying it.

I must assume from your helpful correction that 2006 is the actual year twitter came out but even then I literally cannot be arsed to look that up on purpose because, I cannot stress this enough, I very much do not care about social media, as per my comment. So if you say 2006, that is what we’re going with.

Can I just brag for a moment? I feel like I am among my people, and there is a little lesson at the end.

to calibrate: White dude in my 40s, nerdy by nature but non-technical in my education/employment

Twitter - signed up in the early 2000s when it first came out, pretty much stopped using by 2011

Facebook - signed up in the early 2000s when it first got big, pretty much stopped using by 2011, deleted my abandoned account last year

Google +, I’m sure I never signed up, but I had an account that I never used. Google being google negated me ever having to contemplate whether or not I would ever use it

Snapchat - never used

TikTok - never used

Instagram - never used

Are there others? I don’t know.

Reddit was the only “social media” I ever used for a sustained period of time and the only one where I felt part of any sort of community. I left reddit in June of 2023 when I made this account and I’ve never been back.

So, in many ways, I am successfully resisting/avoiding “the algorithm” and I am a good example of high media literacy with good resistance to manipulation by social media.

But, just to emphasize why community itself is so valuable and worthy of exploitation by techbros, here are life changes I’ve made since joining Lemmy, even without any algorithms or dark patterns. Not that Lemmy is strictly causal in all of these, but the relationship is there:

• I am now making my way through TNG, and am generally more Trek-literate

• Linux, natch

• Cancelled all streaming services (honestly most ‘subscription services’) in favor of a NAS running Plex (for now, will probably move to Jellyfin), Calibre, AudioBookshelf, Immich, Joplin, NextCloud, etc, etc, etc

• Now using Steam Deck as my daily driver for gaming

In other words, though I prize my independent thinking and avoidance of Big Cloud, and though I think all of these are positive changes representing a positive influence, I am clearly impressionable. And so are you.

Even knowing this allows for the questions being asked, Humperdinck. It is one thing to have franchisees operating in your country. That doesn’t answer the legal and technical mechanics of the actual Saudi Government arranging for this. It’s also well known but not common knowledge that the royal family owns a lot of the businesses in the country anyway so the lines are extra blurry but the point is that none of this is like…in the zeitgeist or something. Certainly not straightforward enough to rate such a shirty response.

There is nothing dumb about not knowing something, and asking honestly. It would be dumb not to ask or to shame someone else for asking.

But should we?

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I’m familiar with the move on the left, but the right hand looks like an Obama speech gesture.