Agreed.

For instance, G Suite is now so thoroughly integrated into school workflows that, even if they collect nothing from students while under 13 (ha!), they are setting kids up to harvest their data in the future by forcing them to learn how to perform basic tasks only on their apps. It’s like advertising fruity cigarettes or vapes, but for data.

It’s not just that all of these companies harvest everyone’s data, but so many of them are specifically targeting kids from as young of an age as they can.

My issue was with that type of sarcasm, which is why I responded with a similarly dismissive sarcastic remark.

Dismissing people’s complaints by saying “you can go use something else/move someplace else” is unhelpful and used to negate their complaints without ever having to address their source.

I doubt many people see an anonymous counter as a huge problem itself, I don’t. The point is that this is a first step in a direction we don’t want to see the software go. If you don’t push back against these things from the moment they show up, they will continue to slowly inch in that direction until you end up in a nightmare like Chrome or Edge.

Seems like a good idea except for how often these states already force their own spyware and backdoors onto projects. Ideally, the state would fund it, but given their history, I’d prefer costs were covered by user donations as the interests of the users are the only interests I trust. We are the only group that is truly independent of competing interests.

Crowd funding and donations obviously have their own drawbacks. Maybe we can find a work around to avoid the privacy violations of states in the future, but I don’t have a simple answer for how to accomplish this. The way the FOSS community operates is currently the best alternative I’ve seen, but I’m sure it’s not always lucrative for developers. People need to be compensated for their labor and our current systems tend to put development interests at odds with user interests.

While we’re at it, we should add Microsoft to the antitrust case…again.

Typical. You post a reasonable response and get a bunch of ad-pilled shit takes:

“But will you eat shit if I put a little chocolate on it?”

“If you don’t eat shit, you don’t deserve to interact with the internet eat.”

“Maybe if you pay them a little money, they’ll stop trying to serve you shit?”

Advertisers contribute nothing of value to our society and contribute little of value to even the companies they serve. Let them burn. Every action they take to “serve” me ads will be met with an equal counteraction.

We deserve to live a life without being constantly bombarded with messages telling us to buy, buy, buy! This significantly decreases our quality of life and is endemic within our entire society. What the hell are all of you who defend advertisers thinking?

Give them an inch and they will take a mile. It definitely won’t be the first time.

“Why don’t you just move to another country if you don’t like it here?”

“I say this as a true patriot.”

There’s your issue.

The article is listed on ResearchGate.

For anyone looking for an alternative to Sci-Hub (the GOAT), you can make a free account on RG and send a request to the authors for a copy of their paper (about two clicks to perform).

Most researchers will send you a copy within a day, maybe two. If you copy the title or the DOI link into a search with “ResearchGate” it usually shows up in most search engines.

I think we have more pressing issues in certain airplanes at the moment, but that’s a good point.

Wise words.

The rich have power in money, but the poor have power in numbers. We can improve our lives by organizing and standing together. Unions are a great start.

It was rigged against us from the beginning. Reagan didn’t help, but he was only one more straw in the pile of bullshitters.

The concessions granted by those in power to the people are only meant to keep them in check, not to fulfill all of their needs. If our needs were met, there would be little incentive to slave away most of our lives.

Living longer: technology has improved childhood and old-aged mortality, but how is this relevant if we are expected to work for a larger portion of our lives? Retirement age continues to increase, while the increase in life expectancy provides relatively marginal improvements to quality of life in old age while the years we have the most energy are spent toiling away doing work that we are coerced into by way of the threat of homelessness and death.

Luxuries: technology has improved and many of what were considered luxuries in the past are now commonplace. As our definition of luxuries has changed, has our access to the contemporary luxuries expanded? Relative to someone 100 years ago, can you afford access to a different amount of luxuries than past generations could? Compared to even a couple generations ago, younger generations have less access to necessities such as housing and food security than previous generations. We do not own necessities any more. What good is having access to 500 different brands of wine when you struggle to keep a room over your head and food on the table? Maybe this access is different for your boss than for you.

How we define how society is doing is subjective without clearly-defined goals. Is our goal to improve the living conditions of the people? On average, this has been decreasing for decades. Is our goal to grow the wealth of our people? When adjusted for inflation, most people have less money relative to what we had a few generations ago with the exception of those who own to make money instead of working to make money.

I would argue that most countries do not have clearly defined goals, so they are, in essence, floundering along with no roadmap for our progress. Regardless of how this relates to the past, this is not a good place to be in.

If your boss is the owner, remember that even if he is nice, you are working to produce value and he is taking a portion of that for himself based on owning the company. A manager is not useless, but an owner is. You could own the company. You and your coworkers could all own the company together. An owner brings no value to the table that could not be achieved by other means. The owner does not create anything of value by owning, they just benefit more than the people working to create value. You trade your work and time for payment that is not 100% of the value you produce. Maybe that’s fine by you, but chances are you could take more of that value home without a single boss. Maybe you don’t see this as theft now, I don’t know, but when life drives home the fact that you can never regain lost time and health, maybe you’ll see your relationship with your boss for what it really is. I promise you that he is well aware whether he’s a middle manager or an owner.

Is it that people don’t notice the source or that they prefer sources that are open about their biases? How is it any less useful to know that this source is generally pushing a pro-China story when we also know that the NYT, BBC, etc will push a pro-US and pro-NATO bias and then strut around pretending that they are somehow balanced and unbiased?

Talk about eating up propaganda…

A big part of seeing through the bias of an organization is reading around through other sources with different biases and then taking a critical look at all of them so you can get closer to what is actually going on and challenge your own biases. I find the users on Lemmy tend to actually read the sources that are provided whereas people are so bad about reading sources posted to Reddit that commenters not reading the source became a meme on Reddit.

This comment is just another example of the pretentious Redditor attitude that an exudes an air of, “Here, let me grace you all with my superior intellect as you are all a bunch of uncultured swine.” Instead of blindly applying a negative judgement against the community, why don’t you stop and think about why it may be this way? Better yet, ask others why they read outside of mainstream sources instead of assuming you know better.

No source is ever unbiased and to pretend otherwise and place sources that confirm your own bias on a pedestal is pure, uncritical drivel. Be critical of the Chinese media, but don’t pretend that Western sources are any better. Every public communication you see from any organization is propaganda.

I feel like this trend was outlined in economic theories over 100 years ago.

Why did this CNN article not address the issues with falsified rape reports from Ukrainian officials? Seems like they didn’t bother to do a proper job exploring the issue. This isn’t to deny that sexual assault is occuring in the conflict, it is instead meant to counter the broad painting of racist tropes being spread about Russian “Orcs” raping everywhere they go.

Rape tends to go hand-in-hand with war no matter which country is the invader. Something you’ll need to contend with at the personal level is that if you are war-mongering, you are indirectly supporting sexual assaults among the people involved in the conflict. Maybe you should reconsider your justifications of war.

And racists gonna say dumb shit.