are you 12? it seems you have no experience or memory of a world before 2012. everything which is currently being controlled by a handful of companies like Meta or Google today existed in huge volumes before these snakes paid their way into global dominance. i.e. there were hundreds of big community websites long before facebook. there were several great search engines before google. there were several streaming sites before youtube. there were tons of chat applications before Messenger/WhatsApp. there were thousands of email services before gmail, hotmail, and yahoo created their “whitelist”, etc etc. Heck, Messenger (and google talk, etc) - all used XMPP originally, but isolated their network when it grew big enough to kill competition and force users onto their platform. we all USED to be able to use whatever client we wanted and still keep in touch with family and friends. we all USED to be able to run our own mail servers. we all USED to…

fuck it. why am I putting effort into this lol.

these techs existed long before web based ad companies. but, ad companies exist, so obviously they will contribute to the technologies they need to continue to exist. to do otherwise would be corporate suicide and it’s a stupid argument to pretend like we wouldn’t be fine without them just because they are putting their fingers in the cake. nothing was wrong with the older browsers; modern browsers are essentially just a war of proprietary rendering to try and kill competition bringing us back to the era of fucking internet explorer; which no one sane would want.

heck, firefox came to exist from netscape, so its basically ancient history at this point, and chromium (blink) is a fork off webkit which in turn is a fork of khtml from KDE (linux) konqueror browser - and as a matter of fact, khtml was discontinued just last year. i don’t see the relevance of ad companies when things have been fine and still are; without them.

but as we continue to abandon the practice of IT and todays kids grow up thinking google created the internet and all they know is how to touch the rainbow icon on their screens, the future is fucked.

there were tons of video streaming sites around before youtube came around. i even ran one at the time.

the internet doesn’t run on ads. we were all fine before the megacorporations came in and started pushing ads down our throats for delivering the exact same services that already existed for free. it just so happens ads are more profitable, and with more profit, you have more ways to achieve exposure, which gives you more profit, ad infinitum.

point is, we’d be fine without ads.

well this sucks. i’m on my 4th LG TV because I can’t stand the quality from other brands; but when the choice is ads vs picture quality, i’ll take the inferior quality every single time. fuck ads.

i seem to remember something similar. and blocking advertisers seems like it should be common law but i guess chrome killing adblockers takes predesence.

definitely the case for Valve. Corporate vultures will be all over it the second he’s gone.

steam came at the exact right moment to prevent region locking regulations for online gaming. granted companies and special interests still want to de-globalize gaming for licensing cash, but that’s never going to happen as long as steam is a monopoly. any company taking a cheap shot at steam such as epic or discord or EA can go suck it.

As long as Gaben is alive steam will be the good guy. Even if they charge 30%, and I thinm it’s why things are actually pretty neat on steam on the consumer end, because they can either choose to bill the consumer or the developer, and I’m personally always pro-consumer first - albeit for small indie publishers they should (if they already don’t have); a means to launch a company with their game and not give 30% to Valve and be kept from much needed resources to grow their business, much like Valve would benefit from such deals long-term if the developers do a good job and bring in a lot of buyers with their next title in the future. AAA companies is a whole different matter, no passion, no soul, just money-milking-bullshit, should charge them 50% to 70%! they get off easy with a measly 30%.

But yeah, as for the overall topic itself, I do not understand why anyone would want another netflix situation. I don’t want 300 game libraries and accounts installed on my computer, eating up resources, time, and email space - if I could have just one, super convenient and nice place where all is collected and no foreseeable concern that it will suddenly go bankrupt and die and take my investments with it (like some of the game libraries already have). If that ever becomes the case (e.g. when Gaben dies one day), I’ll be the first to sail the high seas out of spite and convenience. I’m fine with monopolies as long as they benefit the end-user first, like Valve.

nah, it’s basically my experience with flatpak and snaps on ANY distro on ANY machine. the fact that everyone’s moving to this crap is beyond me. Am I the only person on the planet that expects a modern computer to run snappier than a PC from early 2000? sure seems like it sometimes, especially when pretty much any software released since 2018 runs electron. Hell, now every manufacturer is moving to ARM like it’s some revolutionary hardware - no, it just vastly improved energy usage AT THE EXPENSE OF PERFORMANCE. we might as well stick with what we have and just pump less energy into the damn thing and have the exact same results.

blimey.

I get the convenience; I do …but it can’t possibly be worth the sacrifices?? sigh.

the day of coders who knew what they were doing is long since gone. now it’s just click and play frameworks to pump out garbage and oversaturate the ecosystem.

yes. they’re “censoring” algorithms designed to create engagement=profit, which are causing massive harm to society. i don’t see anything wrong with it at all. and like you, i’m on the fediverse because there isn’t an algorithm, our exposure is curated by us, not by engagement-bot-5.

what’s wrong with MX? isn’t it basically just debian stable but with xfce as default?

just like email.

well to be fair bitcoin is on point as a decentralized currency.

using cinnamon. and yeah base software is largely fine. but non-base productivity apps are largely built in electron. cinnamon even offers a webapp tool so in some cases i can at least avoid it.

people who like fast apps should care because like 99% of current software developers are building electron apps instead of giving us something that actually lets your high end computer behave like a high end computer.

the only modern chat application that doesn’t run electron today is Telegram.

the only cloud note taking app that doesn’t run electron is …uh. doesn’t even exist.

the only…

i can’t even think of something i use that was released after 2016 on my computer that doesn’t run at a crawl because of electron. fuck electron.

bs. discord is absolute trash for anything but live chatting. it does nothing different from plain old irc with a bnc and bots. they just took irc and made it easy for stupid people to use and slapped voice comm on top; which also already existed. using it as an archive, broadcast and support system is like trying to use a hammer to screw in a screw. people just use discord because people use discord. just like people just use facebook because people use facebook.

if you want to manage a community, you should use discourse. it’s the most modern alternative. if you want a public chat, use any chat you want that supports public chat, the only difference between all of them is what level of privacy they provide.

There are currently a wave of people moving certain activities to Band of all fucking things (using it side by side with facebook due to facebook policies). It’s basically a shitty korean clone of facebook but slower and with less stability and even less features.

They could have picked ANY of the platforms actually designed for the intended purpose. But Band? It’s the OPPOSITE of useful.

People don’t make sense.

Photopea. Not foss, but a free clone of photoshop.

almost every hobby has moved to facebook and it’s the same damn thing. utterly useless for the purpose people try to use it for.

i don’t know what the fuck is wrong with people, but this is definitely one of the pinnacles.