Yeh and their own ‘R and D’ may have been leverage in the negotiation.

Loneliness is also a thing, and I’d guess it’s rising. Falls under mental health also I guess. I also don’t relate, but we can look at the history of sex tourism, ‘mail order brides’ , dating sites etc, scams in general and there is a fair bit of cross over maybe. Add to the mix these pseudo intelligent LLMs that seem to serve to please and here we are. What I don’t get is how users falling for them aren’t having the bubble burst by the context issues and inconsistent coherence. Perhaps loneliness and other mental issues result in us hearing/seeing what we want to. Self reinforced illusion to fullfill some sort of need. Just speculating tbh.

I’m amazed it didn’t already as someone who has never used or heard one being used. What’s the business model? Just the data harvesting for purpose of their other businesses?

Is this done manually , or there’s a system thing for it ?

You’re right, but also They get alot more from the deal than you acknowledge. The service has never been free. They already had a profitable model, and now they want even more. I call it evil, but in a sense it’s standard corporate behaviour.

The two approaches you mention need not be mutually exclusive. I ditched google services more than 10 years ago, while loving somewhere they did some truly despicable antidemocratic things. but so what? They’re a corporation. There are political lobby groups, privacy foundations and advocacy groups you can contribute to. Despite being respectfully evangelical with those around me, most other than a fringe really don’t care enough about this. Doesn’t mean I’ll stop. I will still suggest alternatives. They’re my principles. you’re working in their interest if you tell your allies to give up. I understand and share the cynicism around political process especially in democratic nations with disappointing levels of corporate influence over legislation, we can only engage in it best we can, as well as exerting our rights as consumers. The critical mass required may seem insurmountable but negativity toward those effectively on your side is not going to help either.

To a degree perhaps. It has also monopolised industries that feed into each other. Even if you choose not to use their consumer products, you are being used by them as the product in these industries if you use the web at all, which is most of their business model. That isn’t consumer choice. Political intervention is one hope, which in some countries I guess there is some consumer power over, if consumers were to collectivise to a degree more valuable than the lobbying power of this monster. The internet was turned into the yellowpages with sharp teeth by google .

Thanks for the headsup. This is the final push I needed. Been running Jellyfin for 6months or so but need to put more time into it. Plex has been great, and I’ve also been paying (though felt a little conflicted) a sub which I’m willing to do if it keeps a worthwhile project on an honest trajectory aligning with my needs and restrictions, for a good service or product. However they’re now doing exactly why I started on the self hosting path. Who’s to say the third party is jot going to be a heavy handed industry body, corrupt authority , let alone the problematic world of adsales? They’re walking a very strange line and seem very confused about their purpose. Other than the all ruining ‘growth’. Seeya plex.

They would still have everything else to make up for and improve, but maybe it would be a start. Unfortunately self criticism is not in the programming, and its a very dangerous failing. Saying that, the boom in mental health awareness in China is an interesting cultural development occurring since covid, and Beijing has been involved in it.

I ditched it around 2014 when I noticed it had effectively become the yellow pages. Its pretending to be one thing to the ‘user’ when its actually serving someone else. This is transparent of course but the balance/compromise or tradeoff of it still providing some utility to the user despite this is what may vary for different people. My threshold was low. That and the privacy violations. Unfortunately its a corporation.

raindrop.io works well for me for most of what you’ve mentioned, but its not selfhosted so I’m interested to find out other options also.

Thanks both. I’ve seen enough. Beyond problematic on substicks part.

Mind providing a bit more context to this so I can look it up ? I’ll boycott substick if need be.

Why would we believe the promises of the ones who ruined the primary utility of their core product in the first place, and convinced or blackmailed the rest of the internet to take part in the ruination ? An advertising corporation will tell us to put cyanide on our pizza if it makes them an extra buck this quarter, and google is worse than that. Profit despite the social costs is doing no evil /s

Never looked into this. Do VSTs not work on Linux ? Not withstanding the host ( ableton) of course . What about bitwig ?

News sites also need to stop going on about it. Its like feeding the troll. I’ve never used the thing other than looking at it briefly in its early days, and yet I’m constantly hearing about it. And here I am commenting about this apparently (Western) globally important website which has served no purpose in my life. What a waste of energy all around. Self perpetuating negative feedback loop tech wank. Digital town square my arse. The little I know about it is from bad headlines which I wish I could unsee as its of zero consequence.

Yeh. Never truely completely captive, but the potential shaftings they give us are hard to take. Full on denial can set in, I’ve noticed with some I know, the more we have invested into the given shittersphere. Understandable and sad. We are also talking about a relatively niche area here unfortunately. Obviously for the likes of google, amazon et al., we aren’t the customer. Our relative loyalty to their walled shitterspheres are unlikely even a metric to them other than as ad / clicks/ conversion, as they’ll just replace this week’s initiative with a shinier (to the masses) gadget next week. I really hope that whole industry’s days are numbered, but unfortunately all of it is a feature of consumer capitalism and not a bug. Competition, regulation , and DIY are our only defences. The fact that to varying degrees these big tech players are in control of information itself ( to anyone silly enough to consider using the yellowpages/google a fair and factual info source ) , helps them no end with whatever strategy they’re onto this week.

Regarding not getting what you pay for. Ive often thought that having to pay the nominal cost price for say the firestick is merely to obfiscate what it really is. ”They should pay me for embedding this spy stick in my house” is the natural feeling, so paying some arbitrary amount to ‘purchase’ immediately elicits some sort of entitlement ( which should totally be the case ! ) in the consumer. The psychology behind such corporate behaviour is fascinating but it’s probably as much to do with regulation, ironically.

For sure. When they had our livelihood by the balls because ‘industry staaaandaaaard’ then they stick it in a perpetually cranking vice called subscription model, we reach for any cope available. Its been decent cope and now we need a new cope.

Looks promising. Their website had me thinking I smashed my mobile glass. Nice troll

Yeh. And Adobe were trying to compete with ImageReady. What a cluster that workflow was. Fireworks was great.