They collect all kinds of data, and it’s tied to users Instagram account. There are tons of data that could indicate given users geographical location without IP (gps, phone service provider, credit card uses, user profile, etc.)

Their gadgets built their fame because they just worked and were built like a tank. My grandparents had their stuff (from Goldstar era) and they still keep chugging.

None of this “as a service” bs will please the lifetime customers.

Most of us will be overjoyed to see 1M deposited in our bank accounts. Not for Elon.

Assuming they don’t mess with fediverse protocols, here’s hoping that I could interact with their users without using Meta’s proprietary apps, when it’s absolutely necessary. (This is separate from mastodon instances choosing to defederate from Meta servers)

If anyone is chiming in with “just plain don’t”, I’m talking of situations like Spanish speaking countries where every single fucking thing is done through whatsapp. Everything. There’s no avoiding it.

If I can use a self hosted instance and foss app to talk to the borg instead of their borgware, that’s a tiny point in my favor.

Catering to natural language search queries are fine, I used to think, as long as we could optionally use our search operators.

Now they took the operators away, and all search results are either blatant ads or SEO spams pretending not to be spams.

Fuck.

Email analogy is good to explain the systems architecture, but it still doesn’t communicate ethics of proper use (decentralization). Just look how many people have gmail or outlook as their mail account.

As all adblocking solutions, Yay from the user, Nay from the corporate.

It’s like saying the police is preparing for thieves robbing the bank or the fire department preparing for a wildfire. It’s part of their job and it would be stranger not to have a contingency plan.

Are you in Russia right now? How are things over there?

Does that mean my actual home server is behind a VPN connection but has its traffic transparently routed to the external VPS, which eliminates the need for opening ports on the residential router?

There are several points to be made:

The Old Reddit, whatever it means, is long gone forever. Aaron is gone. Spez does not care. No apologies or retracting will be made and that’s it.

Reddit must have calculated that there are enough ‘casual’ crowd (not a long timer, does not use or care about 3rd party apps or the old interface, comes for the quick laughs and watches ads) so they could withstand whatever pressure the ‘hard-core’ crowd (long timer, uses and cares about old UI and API changes, does not generate ad views in general, spends long hours in site) generates.

Reddit must have also considered the possibility of the second crowd simply going away. I suspect Spez or the investors simply does not give a damn about it. Ad revenues are everything and there’s a loud minority that threatens to leave? Why should they care, after all? All they see is a potential for “more” growth.

What they do and must care is the eventual entrance of a sizeable competition that eats into their revenues - less visitors mean less ad revenues. Lemmy and Fediverse, as much as I love it and will keep using it, is not that threat - yet.

What will probably happen is that the wider internet will label the riot (as of now) a massive failure, laugh at the “bravery” of slacktivism or whatever the latest meme can be slapped at.

Despite that, it should mark the emerging of a sustainable group of Reddit-like communities that could, in one day, become the competition Digg never thought they would face.

No, I don’t think Lemmy is perfect. I do have an issue with the dev’s political stance. But as long as they don’t become the Spez of what was supposed to be the Federation, and the software and the protocol and the community can sustain and rule themselves, things might be alright.

Reddit will eventually die, like many other internet websites. Perhaps not now. They won’t go out in a spectacular way the Digg v4 happened, but simply wither away like Facebook. But we have another home, and it’s all that matters.

It does require an email.

I used a throwaway one, is that allowed? It still appears on my settings, and I wonder if they’ll make me verify again when I won’t be able to access the same throwaway account…