111–120 of 197 posts
Is there any good alternative to google voice? It's the only google service I haven't been able to replace yet.
You can even pay anonymously with crypto and have multiple numbers using a single app and billing account.
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Flex the steelmaning and incentivize me to buy YouTube Premium when adblocking gives me the same functionality and I own the process to block. I'm happy to watch an occasional ad. Maybe 2 minutes for every day, curated and high quality advertisements relevant to everyone. No, I will not pay with my data. No, I will not accept interruption in flow, within or between videos. Interrupting during a video means adblocking…
The main reason (imo) would be if you wanted no ads on Mobile without a lot of hassle, and the ability to play audio from youtube with your phone screen off.
I “de-reddited” with HN.
HN is not a replacement for Reddit in general though. Reddit is a collection of forums/communities with wildly varying topics. HN is just one specific forum. Some of the worst behaviors that are common in many Reddit subs are discouraged here in HN, and for that I'm thankful. But the topics aren't the same, so one cannot replace the other in general .
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Flex the steelmaning and incentivize me to buy YouTube Premium when adblocking gives me the same functionality and I own the process to block. I'm happy to watch an occasional ad. Maybe 2 minutes for every day, curated and high quality advertisements relevant to everyone. No, I will not pay with my data. No, I will not accept interruption in flow, within or between videos. Interrupting during a video means adblocking…
I've never found defaulting to paying for services I consume in need of steelmaning but I suppose it ultimately comes down to how much you care about that sort of thing than the particular reasoning in the end. The biggest reason I won't pay for content is because it's harder to consume that way. E.g. actual Blu-Rays are often impossible to legally play the way you want on the devices you want, especially in comparis…
Got it. So you are fine with adblocking; your take comes down to practicality.
Debate aside, I appreciate your thoughtful response.
I would really love to run GrapheneOS (or some other Android OS that can prevent a lot of Google's built-in spying), but broken Android Auto, Google Pay, and a bunch of other things would be a complete showstopper for me. It makes me really sad that I've come to rely on a bunch of things that just aren't available at all through open software.
I guess I'm just a rube, but it never occurred to me to demand much 'something' (all the stuff Google provides me) for 'nothing' (refusal to allow use of my annonomized data). Since I bother setting my cookie settings on all new websites, I don't really get bombarded with personalized advertising anymore. That's my middle ground. (I also pay for YouTube Premium, so I don't see the ads there).
Although this author seems pretty reasonable with regards to actual privacy (preferring self-hosted software), I find the popular echo chamber of "avoid Google, they steal your data" quite misguided. Yes, Google accumulates data and does stuff with it. But Google also has rigorous processes to lock down data and access to it, unlike virtually any small-to-medium cloud software provider. I've heard crazy stories like…
Don't forget any large hoard of data is ripe for government abuse. It might not be a cold caller but a police department parallel constructing you into a crime conviction using faulty GPS data.
This would basically be the same as p-hacking.
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I don’t mind ads in the videos for creators I enjoy, it pays their bills. There’s a difference between those and YouTube’s ads which the creators don’t get a big percentage of. I can easily fast forward those ads if I want to, anyways. How do you expect all this content to be made without any sort of money? You’re basically leeching off the rest of us, in this case, IMO. I hate ads, but right now that’s the only tick…
I mind all ads. They rob you of your most precious and nonrenewable resource without consent. Ads are cancer and should be excised at every opportunity. Ad companies should be destroyed. Ad tech workers should be blackballed. Shilling is shameful.
The only thing irreplaceable for me is Youtube. Even if it's gotten worse as a platform over time, I still consume it more than any other type of video media and there are no good alternatives for much of the content that I enjoy watching.
That is so wild to me. I only consume media there if I am sent a link. Every time I have gone there I find content that is literally optimized to use up and waste as much of my time as possible under the incentive of maximizing viewer minutes. I wonder what it would be like to spend a day in your shoes.