I as well was curious, but it was clear to me that this was a bad idea from the get go. Long before I became truly privacy focused, it was still blatantly obvious this was a bad idea. It sucks that it was such a hot trend and terms written in a horrible, and dare I say predatory fashion.

Flossing! I floss frequently. I floss more than I brush my teeth (yuck) but it works. Logic behind the lack of brushing is that in the morning I'm drinking coffee and running out the door. At night, sometimes I fall asleep before I brush. But I have floss on my desk at work and in my coffee table at home (as well as obviously in the bathroom with my toothbrush). My dentist can't even tell I miss brushing at times. But can definitely tell I floss regularly.

You don't have to floss all your teeth, just the ones you want to keep.

Correct. And the same is true for the mobile phones, carriers, and a slew of apps that all look at contacts. They know who you are and who your friends and family are.

The description of the Matrix users is hysterically accurate.

First time I went there, I had an obscure problem with an app. A very friendly and helpful person jumped in and said they have that app but don't use it often. Then proceeded to run multiple tests on their end to validate my experience. I was blown away. Super solid dude.

Every other time I've been mostly ignored. Which is fine if people can't help. But as I check in all I see is forum fighting about what is right and best, as if there's only 1 answer.

This sounds like a great movie.

AI sends police after him because of things he wrote. Writer is on the run, trying to clear his name the entire time. Somehow gets to broadcast the source of the articles to the world to clear his name. Plot twist ending is that he was indeed the perpetrator behind all the crimes.

I was thinking more along the lines of:

We were woken up to check out this signal.

Shine that, let's go home and get paid.

But you know, we're required by law to do so or we forfeit our payment.

OK, so what's the story we all say?

Yeah, nothing there. Must have been a glitch.

OK, let's go home.

Hot tip in the US. In an elevator the floor with the star is the ground floor, regardless of what number is present. This helps clarify any confusion between systems and also is clear for locations that have floors below the ground floor (I've most commonly seen this with parking structures)

Evel. Not Evil.

The appropriate view of your money is that you should never have to pay for the priveledge to use it. Do not ever use a bank, credit card, or any financial account that you need to pay for. They are making money off of you, which I'm OK with, but I'm sure as hell not going to pay them so they can make money with my money.

I just filled out my survey and noted twice that I use Lemmy and not their current communities. Maybe they'll listen if enough of us ask.

Proton and Mullvad are the only 2 I'd trust. I suspect that they get similar results.

Proton has gotten a lot better since launch, but it's always a moving target with these things. I really only have issues with some store sites that just don't load with a VPN, which only tells me I don't want to shop there.

This is a good discussion point, rather than an arms race discussion of ads vs adblockers.

Some key points to make are that Google is making a crap ton of money from ads, they are keeping most of it so creators must resort to sponsorships and patreon. Google additionally makes money by selling your profile data.

It's not like I have a true answer to your question, but a "workable" system should consist of: Google makes money Creators make money Customers are reasonably private The concept of making money isn't about making the entire system worse, just so you pay for it not to be

My problem with Google is they don't really care. They'll burn it all if it makes them money until it's dead.

There could be some key features that get implemented on a paid tier, but paying is just ads vs no ads.

An equally valid question would be, what can YT do to incentivize you to pay? They could ad features only available to subscribers, but they really don't.

I would make it a semi walled garden, with free and premium content. Subscription tiers would be for customers and creators alike. Vimeo has a good system (though not perfect) with feature sets only available certain tiers. There's incentive to upgrade if you want those features.

Here's a big differentiator though. YT has this magic algorithm that feeds you what it wants to. Creators have no say in that (nor do customers). But if I post a video you like, I want you to watch more of my videos, not videos from somebody else similar to me. YT takes full control, and sends people away just as fast as sending them in. Why would I pay for that?

Platforms like Vimeo don't do that (I'm not advocating vimeo, they're just the example I think is most comparable). Wouldn't having some level of control over that as a viewing customer and content creator have value? No, let's just slap ads on it.

I can also argue that this goes against my final criterea point, that YT just made things worse with their algorithm and this is just paying to remove it. There was a day where subscribing to a channel meant you got to see their videos. No bell ringing needed.

And I'm sorry I just vomited my brain into these thoughts and wall of text. If you made it this far, bless you.

But this is why I don't use YT directly. I was with vanced but ended up with newpipe, because its a simple scraper. That fact not only removes ads, but it gives me control of what I watch with my time (which has value). That is the lesson YT forgot, and the root of why any of this is an issue.