I wholeheartedly agree with this perspective.

I started on a privacy journey because I didn’t like that I’m being tracked (by basically everybody) and feel that the technology that I pay for should be service to me, not me as a service to it (and its related parties).

Anyways, along the way I did a few things. Namely, I turned off mail notifications (this was an inadvertent feature since my mail service couldn’t send notifications without google services that I removed). I also removed my sim and use data only via a hotspot, to which I don’t always have on. These sound like crazy things, and admittedly they aren’t for everyone, but the resulting mental shifts are exactly to this point.

Just because I have a device that let’s me be available to anybody in any place at any time, doesn’t mean I should be, or even need to be, available unless I want to be.

Now I protect my time, and the mental clarity that comes with it. I never was a doom scroller, but even now that concept is even more reduced. The phone is my tool, and I use when needed.

insurance companies need to be holding the car manufacturer’s feet to the fire by not insuring cars

I agree with the sentiment, but unfortunately that screws over the owners far more and for far longer before it even impacts the car manufacturers.

Maybe a better attack (aside from government regulations) would be banks to not provide financing for loans to buy those cars. In the end, if the car is stolen they are at a loss so that makes sense.

People can’t get loans, so don’t buy the risky vehicle. It hurts a little in the now to direct them towards cars that will not be a problem in the future. And the car companies feel the sting of lost sales right away.

This company needs to get shut down. Invasive. Illegal. Immoral. They are ushering in a police state and anti privacy world, and of course profiting from it.

You can piss on us, but don’t tell us it’s rain.

Not only does it not exist, it isn’t wanted. People are content watching videos on YouTube and Netflix. They don’t care for 4k. Even if they pay extra for Netflix 4k (which I highly doubt they do) I still question if they are watching 4k with their bandwidth and other limiting factors, which means they’re not watching 4k and are fine with it.

I’m OK with your opinion and I appreciate hearing an alternate view to offset the echo chamber effect.

But for a lot of us, or at least me, its far deeper than just cost and ads.

It’s the fact that steps keep being taken to make the platform worse. They don’t want the platform usable unless you pay, and in this case they’re even taking a stab at the people who pay…you don’t pay enough in their mind.

If they had balls, they would just make it a closed platform. Pay to access, and restrict that per account IP. But they’d rather gaslight everybody and slowly turn up he heat so the frogs don’t jump out of the pot. This way they maximize their profits for longer. Point of all of that is, they don’t care about he platform or service at all.

For me, its not even about that. Their algorithm was so jacked up I was sick of being fed videos I didn’t want to see over and over, and videos I’ve already watched over and over. That’s why they added the subscription bell…because you would subscribe to things you wanted to watch and they never showed it to you. It wasn’t “you” tube it was “their” tube.

I bailed on them years ago. I still watch some content on there because there really isn’t a viable alternative. I use a scraper that gives me a feed of just what I want and without ads. I watch what I like and move on with my day. I’m back in control of my video viewing.

Makes me long for the days of google music. It just worked. Streamed stuff and even allowed you to stream your own library that you had stored in drive. I would use that in the car. Then they ditched it for YouTube music, which was a worse experience and lacked the features.

I mean, I’m in the same boat. This doesn’t effect me except for work stuff. But here’s the thing, all of my documents are already backed up to the cloud via OneDrive settings. So this is redundant at best.

At the end of the day, one of the reasons I hate the MS experience is because they push things on you. Its not your PC, its theirs. Hey, you want to use OneDrive? No? Are you sure? No? Are you really sure? No? Why don’t I just turn it on for you so you can see how great it is. You must have turned it off by accident, let me turn it back on. OK, OK I get it you really don’t want to use onedrive. Oh, I forgot that fact once our annual update came out and undid that setting. You straight out uninstalled onedirve and altered your registry? Ok, how about we just upload Word documents for you.

Most millenials I deal with don’t know how anything works. They know apps and swiping screens. They are computer competent, knowing how to use them. Like knowing how to drive a car doesn’t mean you are a mechanic. They frequently know how do basic fixes like rebooting or reinstalling but less frequently have any true troubleshooting understanding. I don’t claim all millenials are like that, but broad stroke its not uncommon. I’d never say the generation as a whole is THE technical one though. I know more Gen Z that are technical by far, but that seems more matching Gen X to me. They either know technology or don’t. Nothing in between.

I use the term idiot instead of fool. I also use the term resistant instead of proof. Nothing is idiot proof. Things can be idiot resistant though.

Well, I was trying to bring a little humor to the conversation by just saying at least as a silver lining is that this other stupid crap is gone now.

If the AI “revolution” never came, I bet a thread just like this one would exist for metaverse or whatever saying how it’s destroying the internet. And think about it, entering an entire world just to hold this conversation where all users are known and conversations recorded…kind of like AI scraping.

You can see his it could get just as bad or worse. Hint: its not the technology that’s the problem, its the companies behind them - those wouldn’t be any different.

I’m not trying to downplay AI, I’m just being realistic of the world we live in and trying to not be so doom and gloom every second of the day.

But can we at least be thankful that it shifted focus from augmented reality? Prior to AI, the buzz was around things like the metaverse and digital avatars in your teams meetings.

Even crap AI is more useful than avatars in teams.

Exactly. I tired SuSE back around 2001 and Ubuntu around 2006. It was not a better experience so I never stuck with them. I started using Mint last year and it just stuck. There are some quirks and learning curves, but it’s a good experience. Linux has changed a crap ton.

I mean, if the company doesn’t think you’re worth it to show up and see if you are right for the position, then how crappy are they going to treat you when you work for them? It’s a red flag and saving job hunters time by eliminating that company as an option.

Sometimes in the darkness of the internet where all our worst sides come out and I get trampled by the evil of governments, corporations, and people in general…a small beam of light shines through illuminating the beauty of this world.

Today, your comment is that beam of light. You didn’t mean it to be, but sometimes little things have bigger impacts. Thank you. Have a great day.

…and that is how I quit smoking.

It didn’t help that the next post in my feed also had to do with an S… So I thought I missed something in current events.

I dont agree with every point made, but agree with the overall sentinent. My problem is that the same thing can be said about other retailers, especially the brick and mortar ones. Walmart, Target, Home Depot, …whoever. They’ve all done it, and continue to do it.

Small business? Yeah, those essentially don’t exist in this context.

I have always said, ecommerce isn’t killing brick and mortar retail. They are killing themselves. Why? Because I’ve never felt like a valued customer at any of the retailers out there. I’ve been absolutely shit on by all the big retailers out there. And that’s not even getting into their policies, politics, and other behind the scenes stuff that I do care about, but it doesn’t directly impact my shopping experience.

So then I can buy something online, from a wide selection, with competitive prices, have it delivered to my door quickly, and if there’s any issues have zero problem with returns? That works for me.

Now in modern times I can argue that they don’t always have great customer service, don’t always have great pricing (for what you get), and its not all sunshine and roses. But I don’t see a viable alternative.

Find me another retailer online or brick and mortar that can supply me well and treat me well and I’ll go. But small business cant compete. And big retailers when they had all the money and power they didn’t do that so now that they are the underdogs why would they do it? So it’s just not happening.

I get that, but it’s more logical to me that of I’m going to whistleblow on a company to not use one of their devices to do it. That way it doesn’t matter what apps are or are not secure, you’re not using their device that can potentially track you.

Not “you” necessarily, “one”.

I bring it up because you mentioned company MDM blocking signal. The fact that company MDM is active indicates its a company device (if it’s not that’s an entirely different conversation).

So why would one expect privacy on a device they don’t own?

Why would you expect any form of privacy on a device you don’t own?