What are you referring to? I searched for this and the results were just the CMG story. That wasn’t even proof that the technology existed, let alone was being used.

You focused on the wrong part of my comment. The issue isn’t that you have Google accounts or use YouTube, it’s that you seem to have very little understanding of how much data is being collected about you through these avenues. Instead you focus on some conspiracy theory about phone microphones which is still yet to be proven despite years of technologically illiterate people telling us that “the only way they could have known that is if they were listening to me!!!”. I don’t understand how you get to the point of posting in a niche privacy community whilst still being so completely clueless and misinformed.

Person in a privacy community using YouTube and multiple Google accounts thinks the only way they are being tracked is through phone microphones…you can’t make this shit up.

I agree that this circular echo-chamber effect is problematic, particularly in forums like reddit and Lemmy where early user voting often determines the tone of a discussion. Too many people assume a comment is correct or incorrect based on its score, or the number of similar comments, rather than whether a credible source was provided that supports whatever claim was made. It’s particularly bad in privacy and security communities because so many of the people involved have a higher level of base paranoia that makes them vulnerable to conspiracy theories and misinformation.

No worries, it’s not surprising you thought that because there are quite a lot of people out there like OP who spread complete misinformation about browsers they dislike/don’t use.

You can read this reference to closed source in the most charitable way as alluding to the whole motley of things that render it less accessible.

Not when they use the conjunction “so”. If they’d used “and”, then sure - there could be any number of reasons. Using “so” as a conjunction like that in the sentence gives it an equivalent definition of “therefore”, so it’s like saying “Vivaldi is closed source, therefore it’s harder for users to investigate”, which is clearly an inaccurate statement.

In any case, OP has attempted to shift the goalposts many times in some kind of weird gotcha attempt instead of just admitting they were wrong or worded their argument poorly. If people want charitable interpretations of their misleading or inaccurate statements then they should behave in a manner that deserves them. Going full redditor ain’t it.

(Vivaldi is closed source, so it’s harder for users to investigate).

Please show me where you explained that Vivaldi’s source code is harder to investigate because “users need to download a 2 GB repo” or a “tarball dump”.

Is English your first language? Do you understand the definition of “so” in the sentence you typed?

But that’s not what you claimed. Direct quote from the article (bold emphasis is mine):

Vivaldi users point out that the built in blocker is noticably worse than uBlock Origin, with some guessing that Vivaldi doesn’t fully support uBlock Origin filterlists (Vivaldi is closed source, so it’s harder for users to investigate).

You clearly implied that the reason Vivaldi’s source code regarding ad-blocking is harder for users to investigate is because it’s closed source. This is not true.

This article has some misinformation in places. Like it claims Vivaldi’s ad-blocker cannot be investigated further because the project is closed source, but the only closed source part of Vivaldi is the UI (approximately 5% of the total code). The ad-blocker C++ code is published along with the other 95% of the browser’s code.

The article is about using your phone as JD…why would you turn it off if you’re trying to show a police officer your ID?

The XDA forums don’t have anything listed for your device. You can still improve your privacy by disabling applications (or uninstalling them through Universal Android Debloater) and replacing them with FOSS alternatives where possible. If you don’t already use F-Droid and Aurora Store (or equivalents), switching to those app stores instead of using the Play Store for everything will help you to change your app drawer over time. Take note of Aurora Store’s privacy report section that lists known trackers bundled with applications, it’s a very useful feature that is often overlooked.

The first game is much creepier than the second, I think due to a combination of the character designs, the writing and the general plot. The second game feels more akin to Danganronpa, in that the characters and setting are a bit surreal. Because it was a 3DS game, it also uses cartoony 3D models that make everything a bit lighter and less gritty than the original game. I haven’t played the third one yet (still need to get around to 100% completing the second game).

I found 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors to be very unsettling. I played it in bed at night with headphones on and it totally sucked me in. I guess this is a different type of horror to many of the games suggested here, which I personally don’t find scary.

I agree to an extent, but the problem is not so much the normies themselves as it is the massive commercial market they represent. You might point to mainstream social media as evidence of a problem with the people themselves, but you would be overlooking the fact that the surveillance and attention economies have meant these social media platforms are deliberately designed to position people against one another to drive engagement so these companies can charge more to advertisers. Discourse on the internet isn’t getting worse because there are more bad people online, it’s getting worse because companies have a financial incentive to turn us into bad people when we are online.

I haven’t heard of that one but I’ll definitely watch it, thanks for the recommendation! In my city the small Uyghur community has been quite vocal about the treatment of their friends and family back home, many of whom they haven’t been able to contact for years due to the crackdowns. In particular, there was a family who ran a restaurant I used to eat at semi-regularly whose story received worldwide media attention. I have felt quite strongly about this issue since then.

Only if we’re talking about total users.The number of monthly active users (MAU) shouldn’t be affected by this, unless Meta is counting an active Facebook/Instagram who has opened a Threads account as an active Threads user (regardless of their Threads usage).

They don’t clog the feed, the overwhelming majority of posts here are links to articles. Your lack of motor control is also not our problem.

This is a pretty good overview of the human rights problems associated with the Chinese technology industry. It’s why I decided to stop purchasing products designed by Chinese companies a few years ago, after watching a Frontline documentary about it. It just felt wrong to be putting money into a sector of their industry that I know is being used to oppress billions of people. That’s not to say non-Chinese technology companies don’t have their own significant problems but there is a very obvious and direct link between the Chinese state and the Chinese private sector that doesn’t exist elsewhere (at least not on this scale).

From my understanding, Bluesky (despite its recent growth) isn’t particularly big either. Threads claims to have a lot of users and I assume it would have the easiest time attracting normies, but I am still sceptical of its long-term viability. I feel like the people leaving X would have quite a bit of crossover with people who despise Meta.

So that leaves us with a fourth competitor, which is nothing at all. Anecdotally I think this is what I am seeing the most - people who leave X are just abandoning the entire concept of microblogging, since the point of it is to speak to a large audience and none of the competitors can really deliver that right now. The appeal of Twitter was that everyone (who was interested in microblogging) was on it; smaller, niche communities are fine for discussion boards and group chats but microbloggers don’t really want to be screaming into a void where most people will never hear them. Microblogging was never even particularly popular anyway (when compared with other forms of social media) and I wouldn’t be particularly surprised if the downfall of X eventually kills the concept for most people in society.

The first time I read that title I thought jt was implying conspiracy theorists aren’t human lol