Comment by mzhaase
Comment by mzhaase 3 days ago
We need more paid stuff. Making everything advertising funded has given advertisers too much power over society. We don't see real human opinion anymore, we see advertising friendly opinions.
Comment by mzhaase 3 days ago
We need more paid stuff. Making everything advertising funded has given advertisers too much power over society. We don't see real human opinion anymore, we see advertising friendly opinions.
Ads have many more perverse effects than wasting your time or being ugly, and you can't fix all of those with an ad blocker. They're a constant pressure to make everything retain your attention for the longest time possible, or to editorialize out content that would detract from clicking them.
You also end up paying for all this advertising indirectly, in the price of everything you buy. So you might think you get free content, but you're really not. And let's not even mention the insanity of constantly pushing everyone to consume more trash in a world that really doesn't need it.
Google is also getting pretty aggressive about blocking people with ad blockers from YouTube. I think it is great. I ad-block everywhere, but if people don’t want me around for that reason, that’s their right. If I wanted to watch short videos, I’d actually have to become a paying customer somewhere!
This is a very, very Western-centered take. It's been growing in most other areas of the world, although from a much lower starting point. I'd say it's been "reverting to the mean".
> when the purchasing power of the working class has been falling steadily for the last 45 years
Yeah? How much did an always-on pocket sized computer connected to the internet cost in 1980?
This is my kept-warm take on Signal.
Signal personal should continue being free. Signal needs to develop a business line for enabling authenticated, private communications to individuals on Signal.
There's at the very least an entire area of secure healthcare messaging which is full of terrible bespoke systems, or just goes over SMS, which would more effectively and with better user experience go over signal (i.e. the ability to send longer messages, encrypted attachments etc.)
This is the Threema business model: https://threema.com/en
Public app, and a separate business offering - both with E2EE
Firefox is free, none of its users are paying for it.
Hard agree. I pay for monthly hosting like FreshRSS, Wallabag, etc and support the devs who make those projects. Privacy and developer support. And it's not that much.
Definitely interested in making Firefox, Thunderbird, etc sustainable too.
Welcome to the world of MacOS X, where there is a very healthy ecosystem of pay-once apps made by everything from giant corporations, to boutique software shops to individual developers.
I have found that whatever software I need or want, I can always find the best-in-class option to buy for a very reasonable price.
The best part: If you experience a bug or a problem, it's usually fixed within a few days at most after you report it.
Nothing can compete with the ad model + ad blocker.
The suckers can watch the ads, and we can ride for free. (And we can complain that the content progressively caters to the suckers and not us).