Sigilos

This is plainly insane.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster has decreed to me that VPN use is totally cool and his worshipers should feel ok using them. 🍝

This hits like a cyberpunk dystopia

Any kind of surge pricing by for profit companies providing basic needs should be illegal full stop

Fixed that for you

I see someone else also listens to Factually! podcasts.

The logic of this is nonexistent. An argument could be made very convincingly that cars are dangerous to allow in the hands of criminals. 2 tons of metal, well known for and capable of ending a life, with the ability to aid criminal enterprises and avoidance of law enforcement. So should car sales now require a criminal background check? All this would do is further disenfranchise convicted felons, regardless of the actual crime committed, and create new difficulties for a group that includes a very high percentage of people already proven to give no shits about the law who will find and exploit ways to continue activities despite any laws attempting to restrict them.

I’ve already said I don’t pay for anything in Lemmy. If by support you mean, do I contribute code, servers or bandwidth to Lemmy as a project? No, because I don’t have those things to contribute in this field. I only know enough code to announce “Hello World”, I don’t own or operate a server farm or service, and I don’t have enough bandwidth to be able to contribute a reasonable amount to a project. However, I think your argument is starting to lose focus. I have not been advocating leaving social media of all kinds, that would be hypocritical since I’m posting this here after all, I have been advocating for avoiding the use of overly monetized platforms. I also noted that I don’t have an objection to paying for a service I find desirable. I pay for a streaming service for my household, and occasionally purchase apps that I find important. However, I think the over use of ads and subscriptions have polluted the market of software and services. Of course open-source projects, like Lemmy, are going to develop slower then a corporate alternative. But we wouldn’t be here if we all wanted the corporate alternative, would we? I can’t speak for your choice, of course, but I for one use Lemmy because I left Reddit. I use Linux because I prefer it over Windows and despise Mac, and I use Raspberry Pi’s because I prefer to self-host my photo back ups rather then use Google.

Twitter has become a shit show, not unlike watching Facebook devolve back in the early 2000s. I prefer not to use it because I have better options in life for my time, not because I think I’m better then those who do use it. My original comment was a sufficient explanation of this philosophy, I think. I’m not calling for such extreme measures as cutting all social media from use, I’m reminding with my own example to be cognizant of one’s time and use of services that are not under one’s own control. That can be Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Lemmy, Mastodon, Twitch, Youtube, or any of the numerous other platforms that are available today. Don’t avoid the path if it’s really the one you want to walk, but be aware of your choice and know you have one. That’s all I’m saying.

When I said there where other options for my time, I meant if I don’t like the service’s conditions, I can choose to not use it at all and do something else with my time. As an example, I don’t like Facebook, mostly due to its privacy violations and seeking disregard for security. So, I don’t use it. I spend my time playing games, or visiting a library, or pursuing a hobby. Facebook is unnecessary to my social life or my existence.

If I had to pay to use a social media service, it would have to be something I found utterly necessary. I’m not a fan of the trend toward everything being a subscription, so if any service unexpectedly changes to a subscription based service, I’m far more likely to experiment with cutting it out of my life and routine to see if I really needed it to begin with. So far out of the hundreds of subscription service I’ve had over the last 15 years, I’ve resubscribed to only 10 or so, and out of those only 3 where because I genuinely valued the service enough to pay for it, rather then because I had gotten an offer for 3 months free, then terminated the account before I was charged for anything. Why pay a provider to use my data for profit and show me ads I have no interest in or desire to see? If I wanted commercials I would watch cable, instead of using a streaming service I explicit choose for not showing constant ads.

I would treat Lemmy the same way. If I had to pay, I wouldn’t play. There are other options for my time, simple as that.

Yeah, the Meta logo on the commercial was enough to keep me away from this forever.