At this point just get a rasbperry pi, or some similar device, and run it as a regular computer. Firefox, ublock origin, don't worry about ads, and turn it into a machine that is capable of soooooooo much more. Hell, any PC will work. Steam Deck, NUC, that old laptop you have laying around? Been running little NUCs on my TVs for years and so happy I don't have to put up with that nonsense.

Use tech and services outside the big tech. Just Fedi over standard social. Use Peertube instead of Youtube.

Run Firefox.

Set up your own servers for yourself or start a community. Matrix, Mastodon, Lemmy, etc.

Run SearXNG as your search or help others by hosting.

If you can work of free and open source code that helps decentralize and give the power back to the people or create something new. Even if you can code, learning a project and helping others with it or helping create docs, etc.

Spread the word, but don't be annoying. Help less technical folks get decentralized.

It's very difficult and can be disheartening, but you don't have to cold turkey all of it. Each drip in the bucket helps until we're all united and become a tidal wave.

When all the power is centralized that's when those central players think they can do whatever they want.

This is the part that caught my attention:

Privacy features like user-agent reduction, IP reduction, preventing cross-site storage, and fingerprint randomization make it more difficult to distinguish or reidentify individual clients, which is great for privacy, but makes fighting fraud more difficult.

And we do those things, not because we're fraudsters, but because we're trying to protect ourselves from the likez of YOU!

YOU did this, change your model and maybe it'll be better? Oh! But! Mooooooooney! I forgot. Stupid me.

This is the fucking bully telling the nerd that if he doesn't just HAND OVER his lunch money, that he'll get beat. It's YOUR fault! Not OURS!

Edit: Formatting and added about bully

Edit 2: fixing the formatting of the formatting edit. :-D lol

I've been around long enough to see many projects be extinguished.

To your first point, these companies essentially have infinite money compared to you, me, everyone combined on Mastodon. They can and will figure out a way to track you across servers and they will figure out how to exploit that. Cookies weren't supposed to be used for tracking they way they are, but the money hoarders figured out how to exploit them. Browser fingerprinting wasn't a thing, but it can now be used to track you. How you type and how you speak online can be used to ID you.

If you think that Facebook is willing to share anything, I just don't agree. Facebook will create Threads, they'll put it on the Fediverse, they'll align, then eventually they'll start building features that Mastodon, Lemmy, etc refuse to or literally can't or won't have the time to do, and then they'll start selling how they're so much better and you should come join them, or they'll say they're more secure, or they'll just smear the others. People will flock to the new and better, because hey it's still on the Fediverse and open, eventually they'll close it off and strangle the life out of the Fediverse. I'll still be on the Fediverse, but these platforms are all about content. If people stop showing up, they can still exist, but they're basically useless. It's happened before, it'll happen again.

I stopped using Signal after they said no alternate clients, then got into crypto, then introduce a proprietary shim to their stack.

I plan on someday actually running my own Matrix server for myself and family, right now I'm on Matrix.org though. At this point I don't know how folks recommend Signal over Matrix. There are a lot of clients, so maybe the choice of clients is too confusing? IDK.

But anyone saying Matrix isn't easy enough for non-tech folks to understand, my sister, niece, even wife set up Element themselves on their phones without issue. My father and step-mother both use Element with us. I configured it but they know how to message and do video chat and things.

Found a PCMag article indicating this:

https://www.pcmag.com/news/fbi-document-shows-how-popular-secure-messaging-apps-stack-up

So OP did indicate it's from 2021. That's a long time though in tech. So while interesting to see, who knows if this has changed in 2+ years.

Wife is a nurse that works at a hospital and when she'd come home from her shift, when Covid was raging, she'd derobe in the garage and run to the shower to wash. We had a 3 year old and 6 month old at the time. And she risked all our lives to help people that didn't take the issue seriously and some that even yelled at her that she faked their bloodwork because Covid wasn't real.

Thank you for trying to help others, even when they don't believe it's real.

My 6 year old and I play Minetest all the time. The basic Minetest is more of an engine, you really need to mod it, but they build the mod loader and search into the game. It's great imo.

If you like that, also check out Veloren.

There are also other free and open source games that are quite good as wel.

He'll spin it like it was sone master grand plan and his zealots will eat that shit sandwich up and ask for poop nuggets for a side.

Beatings will continue until morale improves!

The king is replacing his minions with more acceptable minions. So most likely inept as well. Can't sew how poorly this'll go.

LONG LIVE THE FEDIVERSE!

Good for him, if they can actually pay. And I thank Kick for letting me know that I have 0 interest in that platform. xQc's content isn't for as I'm an adult that isn't a complete asshat. Only partial, but xQc is far too toxic for me.

Hang on ... I set a picture on MY phone and then anyone I call sees MY picture? Oh yeah, can't see how this'll go wrong. How long before dick picks are sent, or advertisements, or someone finds a way to use it to hack someones phone.

I can see this could be useful, especially folks with eye sight issues (but how would this affect blind folks?), but it's just another way to tell someone who is calling. I don't answer my phone unless they're in my contact book already.

This seems eh to me, but I'm not an Apple person anyway.