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Remember when the internet was prviate, anonymous, cool, and had more than three websites?
Stop online concentration camps! Stop internet dystopian! Stop cyber dictators!
Fight for net neutrality! Fight for privacy! Fight for internet freedom!
Oh, dear child, you have already succumbed, you’re part of the machine, and you don’t even know it. 😔 “This form of the Internet” == you are a consumer, passively ingesting the content created by the few, big players who gatekeep the marketplace of ideas. This is the Internet the capitalists want; you’re just grousing about the details of paying for it.
The old promise of revolutionary change on the Internet was the idea that it would be an all-to-all media, that the users would create the content, and shape the message. So if you want to fight what the Internet is becoming, stop fighting the capitalists on their own turf. They don’t care if some people pirate their stuff, as long as the money rolls in from the masses.
The best the can possibly happen if you teach everybody to pirate is to destroy the funding for content creation. Then all that will be left is the propaganda, the political ads, the messages pushed by somebody for ulterior motives. Unless…
Unless we teach the children to break that paradigm altogether. A person can live a happy life without any Hulu shows, or YouTube algorithms, or AAA games. Really. Become the creators. Leave the corporate walled gardens for the open, peer-to-peer Internet.
Or don’t. It’s hard, I know. Just don’t pretend that your Jellyfin server means you’ve broken free of the system.
Stop using Discord if you care for the internet. Seriously, Discord is the internet but privatized. It’s the precursor of the future of the internet that capitalists want. Access only available if you login. Search is useless for anything older than a week. Data not accessible to search engines, even on public servers. Need to use their bloated (web)app. Charges for basic functions. Stop 👏 using👏 Discord👏 What is wrong with good old forums.
And Twitter is going the same direction as Discord.
I suspect Discord will die within months, till then I’ll keep using it…
Yes I understand the irony of that statement.
It’s basically just IRC but with integrated streaming crap. Discord is not ruining the internet. People using it instead of forums sucks, but it’s literally just a chatroom.
But now many projects put their community on a server discord. The information isn’t indexed since it is private, so if you search for the same issue that was solved on the discord channel, you won’t find any answer.
Especially stop using Discord as a support forum for your software project. That’s the most daft thing ever conceived.
I don’t like discord, but it is a MASSIVE improvement over all the meta-garbage. Stop using Facebook, instagram, whatsapp and really also twitter first. Discord is the smaller evil compared to those.
Yes forums have their application and are better than discord for a lot of things, but discord is really more a competitor to IRC-chats with a focus on life discussion, rather than long-living content. And it isn’t discords fault if some people completely misuse it as something that it really isn’t trying to be.
Need to use their bloated (web)app.
Which means that it works in a regular browser, which is so much better than a lot of other infrastructure that is increasingly mobile-app only.
Charges for basic functions.
Does it though? It charges for certain emojis and the like, but that is honestly a MUCH more healthy business model than what a lot of other places on the internet are doing. And if you just want to use it as intended, you really aren’t missing out on anything.
I’m really not saying that it is great, but I wonder whether some of the people ranting about this may get signal boosted by meta to distract from their even worse cesspool…
eh, discord started catering to people using it as a forum, so they are actively making the problem worse…
they introduced pseudo-forum channels where messages are grouped into threads, like a traditional forum…of course not indexed, and with their signature terrible “last message first” sorting, and terrible UI that doesn’t do any of the things a forum is supposed to be good at…
so yeah, discord absolutely belongs to the other awful internet diseases you mentioned, it’s not an exception…
People deciding to use threads as forums is not Discord’s fault.
I get that it’s stealing your data, what I don’t get is why it has to be accessible by search engines. First of all, most servers are private because they would rather be that way, they don’t want anyone joining or viewing the content. Second of all, the big search engines would have had the ability to gather all the available data and train AIs, give it to advertisers etc. I don’t want that. I don’t know what the Chinese are doing with the data, but I know what Google and Bing would be doing with it. Not everything on the internet has to be available to everyone, a lot of people want privacy. I get that ideally there shouldn’t be accounts with personal information required, but the rest I don’t agree with. Reddit and twitter are meant to be public, everyone on such social media is aware that anyone can see their comments and posts. But discord serves another purpose, it’s for private, closed communities.
I also don’t see what basic feature is charged. Everything charged has to do with functions that require a lot of storage/server space or stupid stickers and emojis. None of that is a basic feature and for the former I get why someone would charge.
I am not defending discord, I’d rather not use it, I know it aggressively steals our data and they probably plan on enshittifying it a lot more once they’ve taken out the competition completely, but that criticism I mentioned is not valid imo.
you shouldn’t use it because it’s a black hole for information.
anything out on discord should be treated as deleted, because it inevitably will disappear one day, with no hope of recovery.
when a public forum is indexable that means that projects like archive.org and wayback machine can save the contents, even if the site itself disappears some day, meaning the information is preserved for future generations.
communities use discord way more than they should, and all that those communities create is effectively non-existent. most of it is already as good as gone.
think of modding communities, which are by far the worst offenders when it comes to discord: not only are way too many mods hosted on discord itself, way too many communities are only sort-of indexed through discord, meaning the links to where the actual files are hosted can only be accessed through discord. so even if the files survive the inevitable purge, they are lost anyways.
so many communities have already just… disappeared without warning, because the server got nuked for one reason or another, often completely idiotic reasons. and all the knowledge stored on those is gone. forever.
that’s why discord is insanely bad for the internet as a whole, but for data driven communities especially.
it would be fine if people only used it for what it was meant to do, chatting, but misusing it as a forum is where the problems begin.
it gets even worse when people insist on using it as a support channel: questions and answers are constantly buried and impossible to find, search engines can’t show you the contents, so you don’t even know that your problems even have answers, questions are constantly repeated over and over, even though they’ve already been answered, and on and on the list goes.
discord is bad for communities. it is destructive. it is insanely divisive!
there’s a trend for every single creator/author to have their own server!
so instead of having one big community, where users can easily find information and content, and creators can easily exchange ideas and concepts, you get tiny splinters that either don’t talk to each other, or don’t even realize they exist at all!
and all of that is completely hidden behind opaque “search” and “discover” algorithms that only serve what discord itself thinks the user wants.
it’s top to bottom terrible for communities, but people flock to it anyways, for all the wrong reasons.
discord is the bane of online social groups!
and the worst part is: you are absolutely FORCED to use it, because damn near everyone uses it! and there’s no alternative way to access it, you HAVE to use it! that alone should set off alarm bells!
Search is useless for anything older than a week.
I mean, search isn’t a fantastic feature, but it does work. So this sounds like a you problem, not a Discord problem.
I’m okay with paying for Internet services if the price is right… I’m not okay with also getting milked (data mined) for profit in addition to paying.
Did TikTok just stop working in the browser completely? I won’t download the app, but my family sometimes send me links to it and the videos never load anymore. I thought it was my VPN.
You usually have to remove anything after the numbers and “?”, that should allow you to play it in the browser.
Seems to be so, it hasn’t worked for me in sometime.
I feel this in my very soul
That feeling of disappointment turns to aggression. The good kind of aggression which makes me work harder to (jail)break stuff.
I’m so glad that after signing up, Lemmy quickly showcased to me posts about opensource/ public alternatives for the apps/websites we normally use. It brings me such a reignited passion. In time I’m gonna change my email, cloud services, OS… Everything!
Nice. I felt the same way a few years ago and changed everything over 2 years. Best decision ever (besides having a child, that was a great decision as well.)
That’s so motivating to hear because doesn’t matter how long it takes as long as it gets done :') awesome!
So basically “Don’t pay a fee to use a product or service”.
I imagine this guy advocates for sneaking onto trains without paying the fare too, and shoplifting, etc. right?
Does he think products and services are magically free just because they’re provided through a computer rather than over a counter, and that business shouldn’t be allowed to charge money for them?
I get that this guy would rather go back to an internet where ad sales can pay for everything, but that’s just not viable for a lot of people now. Heck, many online services today didn’t even exist the way they do now 20 years ago, such as Netflix, and wouldn’t ever have been viable funded by ad sales alone.
Should we just stop innovating and growing as a society, stop offering new goods and services because they’re not viable in an ad sales only marketplace?
Plus, I bet this guy uses an ad blocker too, as most people that talk like this do. If he’s actively fighting the very financial foundation he’s advocating that we should go back to, what’s his end game? How does he see this actually working?
What’s his plan for how we’re should fund all these global businesses and products and so on? Can’t charge money, can’t passively fund free at point of use services using ad and anonymous marketing data… are businesses just supposed to print their own money?
Look, I don’t love how expensive a lot of these products and services are, I totally get why people pirate stuff, and I don’t like how the world wide web itself is becoming more of a small selection of walled garden services vs the millions of cool web pages and forums and such it used to be. That’s a deeper problem outside of this scope granted, but I think this guy longs for those days a little too, and that’s part of why he’s rebelling against modern online businesses.
I’m not saying every company handles charging for their products well, or that they’re affordable (but what is these days), look at Adobe for example. Or look at Unity’s recent crazy ideas.
I’m just saying that simply advocating for a boycott of businesses for having the audacity to charge money for a service that costs money to provide is, well, shortsighted to say the least.
These aren’t local government services paid for and provided free at point of use by our tax pounds like healthcare or the fire brigade, these are businesses - often global - that need to make money to survive (and yes I know a lot of them funnel too much of those profits to those who don’t deserve it rather than their staff, but that’s a whole other problem).
Yes, I long for a post scarcity, money free, star trek style society where everybody works for free just because they’re passionate about what they do and want to create and share cool things, without actually needing to work to survive or thrive. I would LOVE that. But that civilisation doesn’t exist for us yet, and we can’t expect one portion of it - the Internet - to become that all on its own in a vacuum.
The problem isn’t that people aren’t willing to pay for their products, it’s the fact that you give companies the little finger and they take the whole hand. They want to have their cake and eat it to. They want you to overpay and to be satisfied with bad service. They re-capitalize on content that has already turned a profit 20 years ago. I’m sorry but if I pay the equivalent of a movie ticket for a subscription and have to watch The Godfather with JPEG artifacts, they can kiss my ass.
Another keyword is “easily reproducible” which is the essence of digital data. If I steal something from the store, I stole a unique physical thing with inherit value attached to it. But if I am presented the choice between paying for lower bitrate movie or downloading the same movie for free in theater quality, I choose the later. Somehow the prices for subscriptions go up every year, but the amount of content and the quality decreases.
Additionally all streaming services take the liberty of revoking your ‘license’ to a bought (not rented or leased) product at any time. If I buy a movie on Amazon prime, they don’t give you a .mp4, no you can only watch it on their app with their quality. They do not disclose that if I buy something with a one-time transaction, it is just a lease and I am in fact not owning what I paid for.
Over the last decade I paid thousands of dollars for subscription services, but I haven’t gotten enough use out of them to justify what I paid. Hollywood made enough money off of me, so now I’m just helping myself to break even.
We don’t want these conglomerates to survive though… why do you? Opensource & public alternatives exist because people have a natural urge to help each other get their needs met. Why would you not want that over paying for a privatized internet?
Also, this logic doesn’t apply the exact same way for real life services because there are a lot more extra steps in regards to politics. But the principle is the same. Some services should be public and governments should see the incentive to facilitate that when they witness the people provide for each other instead of relying on the whims of industry giants. Where would the money come from, you ask? Probably the “99%”.
Let governments panic while conglomerates lose their money. Just let 'em! More people need to do this for it to make a dent though.
Fuck ChatGPT-bots.
I’m using YouTube and its music app so much that Premium feels mostly fair
For now. Maybe. But look at Prime Video, that offered services for Amazon Prime Customers. Then put stuff behind paid “channels”. Then started adding Ads to the start of a movie or episode. And it will water it down even further. Or Spotify that had ads every few songs. Then 2 ads. Then 2 very long ads. Then more ad breaks. Then You bought premium because the ads got more and more annoying. Now you are ad free. Except all the banners. Except the paid promoted Releases that get pushed in all the popular Playlists. Except ads during podcasts. Except “AI shuffle” that mixes in promoted songs.
The same will happen to YT Premium. Bit by bit ads will be smuggled in. I mean… right now they promote “Premium light” after (what I’ve found for European prices) raising prices for premium and family tiers.
And? If they do that I’ll just leave. It’s not like someone forces me to subscribe
Honestly YT Premium has been a thing for a long time and it’s done the opposite. There used to be exclusive shows that were made public later. (i.e. they were made public the day after i paid for my subscription)
I like YT Premium (and Twitch Turbo for that matter) for two reasons: they support creators (wayy higher CPM than ad-supported viewers), and they support the platform in a way that makes them less dependent from advertisers. If more people subsribed to YT Premium, their incentives would lean towards paid members and away from advertisers and music labels.
Having said that, i have ethical problems with both Twitch and Youtube, hence why i don’t subscribe to either and subscribe to Nebula instead. It’ll do until PeerTube becomes usable.
Wasn’t so long ago that someone would get laughed out of a room for taking the internet this seriously. People never planned for the inevitability of the internet being central to modern life, and, years later, here we are.
So, to whomever needs to hear it: Maybe start taking things like what this person is saying a little more seriously going forward.
Seriously man. The religious wars on YouTube. Cause they calmly debate their point of view right? WRONG. And it’s the same BS with politics. People are just so angry. And then there’s trolls who make things even worse. Like seriously man these mfs need Jesus.
Don’t get me started on TikTok. I don’t even like YouTube Shorts but my stupid monkey brain can’t stop clicking them lol. I’m not downloading CrapTok ever again.
So anyways, that’s why I insist that any cryptocurrency I use is 100% FOSS and 100% p2p. The future of the world’s money supply doesn’t belong in the hands of any foundation.
Inspiring plead
THE ONLY WINNING MOVE IS NOT TO PLAY.
- the best advice an AI ever gave (too bad it was a fictional AI)
That’s because all the good shit* comes from humans.
*but also so much bad shit. So so so much bad as well.
If you have android you can also use Firefox to play YouTube in the background or when the screen is locked.
also with https://revanced.app
I’ve been doing that, but then it doesn’t play the next video in the playlist. Which sucks because i can’t listen to my favorite audiobook
this post is 100% right, anyway stop buying phones, you don’t need them.
I wish to go even further.
