#Technology and the Internet

[spongebobssquarepants]

[yodaprod]

Burger King Internet corner, New York (1998)

[jessiarts]

Hey, PSA:

On your phone, go to Settings> Security and Privacy> Privacy> Other Privacy Settings> Ads> Delete Advertising ID

Then go back to Other Privacy Settings> Google location history> Turn off Location History &/or Turn-on Auto-Delete (you can set a time period of how long to keep it)

Then, staying on Other Privacy Settings, go to '+ See all activity controls'> Web & App activity> Turn off (you can also turn-on Auto-Delete for here too)

Then Scroll down to Personalized ads> My Ad Center> Turn Off Personalized Ads.

Google has no business knowing/storing everything you do online, and knowing/storing where you go everyday. Turn it off.

These instructions are for an Android phone, IOS might be different. If you have IOS or another operating system feel free to add on with your own map to where they've buried these settings in your phone to help others.

[insandriumheart]

༺2007༻

[prokopetz]

People getting mad about Firefox switching to using hardware acceleration for video playback because they think "hardware acceleration" is a form of DRM is basically the browser equivalent of people freaking out because some random social media platform's terms of service says they own your posts, then when you read what the ToS in question actually says it's literally just "you grant us the right to show your posts to other people".

[natsumipocket]

[cybernetic-remain]

md collection

[techiecore]

[emptyhead57]

[53v3nfrn5]

SONY: 80min. Recordable MiniDisc (1992) Disc Art: Oliwa

[emojibankrepository]

Click here to download!

[warakami-vaporwave]

Visa84

[incognitopolls]

Most computers and phones can track this for you now, but if you can't find that data, answer with your best estimate.

–

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[yodaprod]

ICQ (1998)

RIP ICQ Nov 15, 1996 - June 26, 2024

[insandriumheart]

༺2006༻

[prokopetz]

A lot of folks are responding to the whole Reddit situation by calling for the return of decentralised forums, and I think it's important to remember that, contrary to certain popular narratives, the reason early 2000s forum culture has fallen by the wayside is not because people are Just Lazy. Certainly, ease of use is part of it, but a much larger part of it is how vulnerable self-hosted forums are.

Basically, the problem is that even the largest and most carefully managed self-hosted forums can be rendered unusable more or less indefinitely by a single sufficiently determined hostile actor. This can take the form of both attacks on the forum's social infrastructure (i.e., via sock-puppet accounts, botting, organised "raids", etc.) and attacks on its technical infrastructure (i.e., via hacking, DDoS, etc.). In either case, a self-hosted forum has no real defence, and the majority of decentralised forum communities survive only by virtue of their relative obscurity; once a self-hosted forum manages to attract the attention of That One Guy who's willing to devote his life to shitting the place up over some microscopic slight, it's effectively game over.

Right now, there are essentially only two mitigation strategies:

Gathering huge numbers of communities under a single, massively centralised technical infrastructure that's simply too large and robust for any one hostile actor to bring down; and

Hardening the community's social infrastructure either by going private and invite only (i.e., the Discord approach), or by making use of a vast centralised pool of volunteer labour to aggressively enforce community standards (i.e., the Reddit approach).

To be clear, these are not intractable problems; other solutions may well exist. However, any proposed plan for bringing decentralised public forums back needs to address them. If you're going in operating under the assumption that forums have become marginalised simply because corporations are evil and people are lazy, you're setting yourself up to learn the hard way why self-hosted forums no longer seem to be capable of growing beyond a certain point.