@AlmightySnoo
I see this from another angle. The 99% average people using stuff like this and judging people based on the color of a txt bubble simply are not worth hanging with. I mean the whole reason I use Lemmy and mastodon and not the platforms that the 99% use is for this reason. Let your honest choices filter the crap from your life.

Call me a conspiracy theorist but the amount and intensity of data they must get out of this is huge. They will know all the accounts that are anti-spez which they can monitor and algorithmically demote (soft censorship).

Reddit, like most captive-tech these days, is shifting to optimizing only for providing endless distraction to the 90% of mindless hoards which are easy to monetize.

I suspect Youtube will be next in line to squeeze the lemon, now that they are trying to block adblockers.

@devve

- Nextcloud
- Miniflux
- Gitlab
- HomeAssistant
- Wallabag
- Ghost (for my personal blog)
- Umami analytics
- Searx NG
- OnlyOffice document server
- ntfy
- Lychee
- LAMP Stack
- TheLounge (IRC web client)
- Cockpit (server manager)
- RSSHub
- Jellyfin
- Adguard

On an Intel NUC in my closet.

@MargotRobbie

As a fully remote/flexible/async SW developer contractor paid by the hour, I have a different situation than most.

Personally I do not install any work apps on my phone because I could easily end up "doing work" that I don't really get paid for.

When I work, I sit down at my actual PC intentionally, I start a timer, and I bill for my time that I take doing work only.

I avoid any work that I need to respond to outside of that and I make this fact known to anyone I work with.

I mainly use FreeTube on PC and NewPipe on phone, not to avoid ads, but I just find it a much nicer and more peaceful experience (free of recommendations, Shorts etc).

I actually do pay for YouTube Premium family subscription, but its mainly to protect my less tech-savvy family and friends from ads, and to avoid seeing ads on my Android TV projector.

Do you mean they mostly ate "animals"? ("meat" is a modern supermarket product). And by "fit" do you mean "not dead"? And exactly which "early humans" are you talking about? "Animals" consist of meat, organs stomach contents, brain matter, bones, skin etc. If they ate all of those parts then they would likely be balanced enough, and they all would have craved and eaten whatever veges they could forage too, particularly in tropical regions where fruit would be abundant.

Yeah this is annoying. If you are quick you can delete all the latest videos in watch history to stop the recommendations. Otherwise if you want to start the algo from scratch, create a new "channel" in the same login which will have a fresh history. I have 3 different channels I switch through depending on mood.

@MargotRobbie I used iPhones for 7 years when they first came out. Almost always kept it jailbroken where possible. Eventually switched to Android and I found I could do the things out of the box, that previously required jailbreak with iPhone. Around that time, Android UX had caught up to iPhone as well. Custom app stores (F-Droid), custom launchers and more.

Eventually got sick of Android too. Now I use #lineageos (only a subtle difference) and now I feel like I actually own my smartphone.

@fne8w2ah IMO there is little reason to use a big platform for listening to podcasts. I would recommend https://podverse.fm/ or just any old RSS reader which doesn't need any account nor is in any danger of being shut down ever.

@nostupidquestions
It is great! I just wrote a post about it: https://vijayprema.com/using-lemmy-from-my-existing-mastodon/

@binarybomb @fne8w2ah A long time ago I used Pocketcasts which is very good but not open source.

FOSS options are AntennaPod or Podverse depending on your needs.

AntennaPod is very popular but Podverse is newer and rapidly developing and it includes a great web player. I'm using Podverse currently, which works with or without an account.

You could also use any RSS reader, and just use Podverse to search and find podcast feeds to subscribe to.

@the_itsb No longer causes me problems 🙏. I mainly solved these things by re-arranging my lifestyle and meditating a lot and now my mind is comparatively clear, lucid and focused. People seem pretty trigger happy on the ADHD diagnoses these days. I think it's too easy to develop a distracted mind in todays world, but there are also practices that can un-distract it. If on rare occasion I find myself unable to listen, its pretty obvious that I am in distraction mode or neglected to meditate.

Yeah I thought ads are worthless too, as everyone I know just blocks them. But that's when I realized the people like us who block ads ARE the 10% they now neglect! the other clueless 90% of masses are the ones they are after. There are so many more of them and they are so much easier to monetize

They gave up on us because we are too smart and they cant squeeze anything out of us.

IMO that's why we have to accept that its time to leave and build our own better internet lol

I feel like I used to do this a lot. But less so these days, probably because my mind is less racing and distracted. I am more mindful in general.

It's also similar to someone talking to me and I'm nodding my head, and occasionally reply with something semi-coherent, yet I actually barely have an idea what they actually said. Its almost like a kind of shallow "chatGPT mode" of listening where I can reply in shallow ways but I have no comprehension.