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.

steam on linux was officially launched because gaben said windows trying to build a walled garden can go fuck right off. and he was right on the mark; as microsoft keeps buying big studios and locking down their ecosystem more and more. steam going linux and the steam deck are direct responses to wrangle control out of microsofts hands - and with all rights, considering the debacle of directx when that launched and pushing gaming to make hardware development a priority which in turn made microsoft licenses sell for new computers.

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.

modern as in stable, good UX, plug-and-play, and supporting features a modern chat client is expected to have with zero hassle.

the stuff needed to convince your mom to install it.

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

In July 2019 Wire raised $8.2m investment from Morpheus Ventures and others. On July 18 of the same month, 100% of the company’s shares have been taken over by Wire Holdings Inc., Delaware, USA.

Should be noted that their canary was removed at the same time.

XMPP would be viable in theory but for whatever reason no one wants to build a modern client out of it.

there’s deltachat for gpg - i love the concept, since your friends don’t even need to have it installed in order for you to chat with them.

but i am forever stuck with telegram because i refuse to install software running on set-my-computer-on-fire-pls-Electron (which every single MODERN chat application does today, bar Telegram).

wire sold out years ago.

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

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.

.se mirror still up and working. looks like it was just a DMCA on the main domains.

i don’t understand the question. what does it matter what they do with it when the point is to make housing affordable again, in a permanent way.

i’m so tired of this bullshit. all because of greed. the only real solution to all of this (without completely bricking the economy) would be “one family one home policy” (married/legal) made into law. no more landlords, no more nonsense. got 3 homes? too bad, time to sell. market oversaturated? well go the fuck down in price to the damn value you bought your houses for 20 years ago. own an apartment complex? too bad, it’s now owned by the habitants council (those who actually live in it, like it actually works in many places). and make hotels the sole exception to the rule.

no more homelessness.

no more shelters.

no more trailer parks.

no more need for social housing.

no more assholes buying up property abroad and fucking the locals.

everyone’s happy except the 0.001% landlords and market gamblers. who now have to get actual jobs. or have well paid jobs already and didn’t need to sit on 4 houses because they got in early.

the problem is privatization for things that doesn’t even make sense to privatize. if the cost of discovery is too high for a private entity then why are they the ones to supply it? they aren’t actually doing anything but taking the foam from the top of what everyone else have collectively created. it’s like the privatization of energy, a natural monopoly that literally runs into negative value through surplus. or the privatization of mandatory services that cannot be sustained at cost such as nation wide mail delivery. if it doesn’t make sense the right choice is the only choice yet here we are lol.

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