Forgive me for the pessimism, but I sincerely doubt that they honour any opt-outs. Meta has shown time and time again that they’d rather just pay fines as business expenses instead of abiding by law(s).

This. Numerous industries in the US make use of forced prison labour.

Goddamn, I wish we could act like our own independent country for once instead of just puppeting whatever the US does.

Appeasing shareholders and investors.

Which is exactly why they want people wearing smartwatches to sleep.

I don’t know if this is hilarious or pathetically sad. AI has become the current “must have” craze in the tech world and it’s baffling watching every company try and find a way to shoehorn some form of it into their products and then try and justify its existence.

Cerence Chat Pro from technology partner Cerence Inc. is the foundation of the new function, which offers a uniquely intelligent, *automotive-grade *ChatGPT integration.

Why the hell would I want this?

Cool. I’ll just piss along the exterior wall of your building then or on the fence at the back of your parking lot.

This gets asked every time Tumblr is mentioned online. It’s still around and has a large, thriving userbase. It’s one of the last slices of old-school internet that exists today and, because of that, is very resistant to modern monetisation tactics and enshittification which makes shareholders cry in their sleep.

They’re cheap. That’s as far as some people think about it.

I feel like

I feel for those who have had Twitter be such a part of their income but the writing is on the wall for the platform and it’s time to start looking for alternatives. Xitter is going to be circling the drain soon if it isn’t already and there is nothing Muskrat will do to correct that.

This is a taste of what you can achieve when regulatory bodies actually have the guts to stand up to megacorps.

I have absolutely zero confidence that Apple will allow this to exist once they get enough wind of it.

This. Twitter is now under ownership and control of a spoiled fascist richboy and this is absolutely 100% transparently clear. This is how the platform is now and it is not going to change. Twitter as we knew it is gone. It’s dead and not coming back. Move the hell on, people, please. Stop supporting this absolutely wretched waste of oxygen.

Technically not free if you have to have a paid sub in order to access them. In that case it’s a paid trial with the opportunity to pay even more. Which sounds even worse for Spotify.

15 hours/month is… pretty awful. An avid reader (or listener, in this case) will chew through that in no time at all. Another thing that concerns me is payouts. Spotify is notorious for having atrocious payouts to creators. I wonder how this carries over to their audiobook offerings.

I think we’re starting to see the beginning of YouTube’s end. The algorithm is actively choking the life out of the platform, they’re forcing viewers to pay fees that seem to keep getting bigger and bigger, and they’re making life miserable for creators while also paying them less and less.

Once another platform comes along that ticks enough boxes to satisfy people then YouTube will be absolutely screwed. The only reason we all use that wretched site is because there is no viable alternative. More and more creators are moving to premium platforms like Nebula that offer better deals for viewers and creators alike. I’m likely to jump ship myself once more people I watch also join up.

Enshittification marches ever onward

I find it works great for navigation and the map quality is so much better than Google Maps. My only complaints are that it lacks extra features such as business information, reviews, etc. It’s better than it used to be but they still use things like Yelp (ugh) at least in my area.

court staffed entirely by old people

Isn’t that most courts?