I mean, it's unavoidable. Everyone draws their own line in the sand based on what they think is "right" and "wrong", using whatever best tools and ideas are available to them, picked from the avalanche of options.

The line will not stay put from generation to generation, that's not a reasonable thing to ask for. If we go back 50 years when tv was king, it's not like all the tv shows were equally good, or stayed good.

So, it's kinda just on us to seek out and pick the right things to support, and be prepared in case those change too. It's kinda the whole reason I'm personally here on the Fediverse. I mean, back in the stone age our ancestors had to do the same things, its not like their environments always just stayed perfect. If something changes and you don't want to starve to death, you gotta just do something. Can't just wish it away.

I've come to the same terms.
other day I decided to open reddit.com and noticed that almost every other (re)post was from a bot. even the top comments were from bots.
since then I've added reddit to my growing blocklist.

I now spend more time on feeder, an RSS reader app.

The ad stuff is just an adblock+ error apparently, the throttling is non-existent on ublock origin.

And whenever you want to search for information about something the result page gets flooded with AI generated garbage pages with misleading titles and that provide bullshit information.

I definitely think there's room to invent some other social websites like Lemmy; things that can A) Monetize themselves in some way other than ads, B) Formulate the way users use them so that they're resistant to bots, C) Promote well-thought discussion points instead of just regurgitation.

I'm seriously considering something like say, a site that requires users to record a short webcam video introducing themselves before they can post. Obviously, that wouldn't be a good venue for anyone very privacy-focused, but perhaps you get the idea.

I've heard something to the effect that approximately 80% of all internet traffic passes through Facebook and Google. Unfortunately I can't find anything to substantiate that claim but it's sounds plausible.

I remember the early internet. It was a wild place but at least it was fair and balanced. Now every click on every page is designed to serve the for profit attention economy. Kinda sucks in comparison.

What I don't get is how most places, people get mad at us for not being able to read an article due to the paywall. I mean, I'm not going to subscribe to 50 shitty news sites just so I can read someone's damn random shit.

Do not cave. Be strong bratan. Either they cut the shit, or you leave that part of the internet.

Every time I feel this way, I take one more step to getting rid of one of the offending parties.

I’m like 50% off gmail (proton mail rules), 100% off gdrive/google maps, all in on libre office, proton VPN, little snitch, and about to boot linux onto one of my old MBPro‘s so I can start transitioning over to using Linux as a daily driver. I’m new to it but I’m decently tech savvy so I think I can find a distro that is a decent balance of privacy, control, but still user-friendly.

The list goes on, and a lot needs to be done, but my experience at my computer and online in general has been slowly improving over the last year or two since I’ve gotten more aggressive about it. Also leaving Reddit helped lol

Ha ha ha! This is a problem for you? I WAS BORN IN IT MOLDED BY IT