Well this is a first. I have never heard anyone do this! Usually I’ll just do something like rinse off things like apples/oranges. If it’s something that is more easily bruised like berries, I’ll throw them in some water with some salt in there.

To my knowledge, a lot of these tracking and accountability applications end up in hot water because of their usage from bad actors.

I know there was an app on Android called Cerberus that was supposed to help you track your phone if it was lost/stolen, and it had the ability to open the covertly take videos/screenshots, so you could provide it as evidence to authorities.

Eventually, Google Play Store pulled the application after it became a fairly popular app for people to stalk their significant others without them knowing. I know for certain that iPhones already limit a lot of features from these types of apps. Just look at the limitations that CE admits to having when installed on iOS, including the inability to grab text messages, and only working through Safari.

The major players in tech, imo, have done a good job in preventing people in accidentally installing these applications that could invade their privacy (and instead, allow their own applications to steal your data...) It's another discussion to see how much personal data we allow big tech to access, but I can say that they've done a solid job preventing these third party tracking applications to stay on their devices. The only way they can be installed is if you agree to it being installed on your devices, or being coerced into it.

The only solution I can think that would work long-term is if people get educated on the benefits and sanctity of their right to privacy, and don't give these tracking companies any business, leading to their eventual collapse. I'm not holding my breath for that to happen, but until that happens, more and more of these stories will pop up.

Do any of these have the ability to link an album? I often put multiple photos together, and post the that link to my communities.

Sadly, I don't think he's wrong. It's quite easy to see how:

1. A lot of people currently on Lemmy still have a pretty big addiction to reddit - I've seen a lot of threads about how they instinctually pull up reddit
2. This is still a vocal minority. There were some statistics (I unfortunately can't pull up the numbers - I think I saw them on a subreddit that has gone private), where the number of people using third party applications was an extremely small number that probably won't move the needle for them revenue-wise.

That being said, I personally have been enjoying the discussions being had on Lemmy. It seems to prompt for better discussion, since it appears that most people here are more tech-adept and willing to go through growing pains. I'll likely stick around, but I wouldn't be surprised if the number of active users here drops once this blackout ends. Still hoping for a change.

NBA 2K

I've been an avid fan of NBA 2K since the early 2000's. I absolutely hate how money hungry the game has gotten; that being said, the core offline gameplay is still extremely strong. I'll pop in and play a few offline games just to decompress. It's gotten to the point where I'll put on music or a podcast and find myself idly playing through four quarters of basketball.

This is something that I've found really nice about the Fediverse. It seems like both instances don't really work for you; in that case, you can always find another that might fit your interests! Even if you have the ability to see the communities from each instance, you don't have to participate. Like another poster said, I've made lemmy.world my main instance because I enjoyed the rules and vibe stated there.

Not OP but I do the same thing. I read ebooks on my iPad and Kindle. There’s a feature if you have the audiobook and ebook on the Kindle app, where it’ll highlight the word that is being spoken, but if you move to the next page, the audiobook will jump to where you are.