261–265 of 265 posts
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LobreWolf is a good recommendation, though if you want something with more "usual" defaults --- I love WaterFox, myself.
... I can't believe I typo'd that as "LobreWolf". OH WELL.
LoneWolf and LobreWolf are still available ;)
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It sounds like you agreed with them from the other direction. “The internet of yesteryear felt more special.” - “Nah, there wasn’t as much slop back then and now it’s a crap pool that anyone can wade into and look for scraps.”
I'm saying the amount of crap is the same, but it used to be all our crap and not crap targeted at 12 year old Korean girls or 77 year old Uruguayan grandmas. It was more special, to us specifically. But I'm claiming that the amount of crap just for us is still there. It's just easy to be distracted by the billions of content producers that are easier to find. Note that I wasn't talking about slop, which does indeed…
The OP is talking about the “Web 1.5” era, and it seems like you have the requisite patina to remember it too. It really was an entirely different world. Server side technologies just became common, allowing for dynamic websites and user submitted content, which was the birth of forums and aggregators of user content. They tended to cater to special interests and had their own culture, inside jokes, and standards (if any). It was common to be a member of a half dozen or more forums or interest sites, and it was more rare to already know a friend that was part of them. Instead you interacted and became friends with strangers, rather than upload your contacts list and send out friend requests.
There was Digg, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Fark, Something Awful, Albino Blacksheep, eBaum’s World, Slashdot, Homestar Runner, YTMND, DeviantArt, Worth 1000, Maddox, Stile Project, Consumption Junction, Snopes, The Smoking Gun, Stick Death, The Perry Bible Fellowship, Penny Arcade, Threadless, Newgrounds, Zombo.com, Weebl's Stuff, Peanut Butter Jelly Time, Badger Badger Badger, Fenslerfilm, Break.com, Stupid.com, Ogrish, Hot or Not, RateMyProfessors, Rate My Face, Stupidvideos, Questionable Content, How Stuff Works, Something Positive, IGN, Daily Kos, DeadJournal, LiveJournal, IRC, MSN Messenger, ICQ, Trillian… even of those that still “exist”, they don’t still exist.
I’m not saying those sites were necessarily better, but the personality and environment that created them no longer exists. Websites were created just because of an inside joke on a forum somewhere, which then became cultural memes that were talked about at work and school. It was the era of “Have you seen this website?!” and “Joined: 2002” bragging, and that personality is gone.
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Well, everybody _did_ use Google+ but nobody _wanted to_. I remember constantly finding myself redirected to it and them doing shady things like automatically connecting you with everyone in your gmail contact list. Also, if memory serves, they chose an avatar for me using Picasa or photos in my gmail or something and it was a photo of me without a shirt on.
They shoved it hard into YouTube. The comment system there is still broken to this day.
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There are dozens of us. Maybe one day people will realize how much better Firefox is now and how nicer the web can be with no ads.
Firefox could be doing a great deal more if it had a more imaginative corporate leadership.
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There's more to ads than banners and unskippable videos. I bet if you open YouTube, even with Adblock and sponsorblock, you'll see ads. "Tech" channels are nothing but ads because all they do is present products for people to buy. Even channels that do legos are ad channels. YouTube itself has become a platform for serving videos that are advertisement at their core. These videos are popular, get good engagement, pay…
Watching Youtube through Brave browser and I can't remember the last time I saw ads (ads by youtube, not by the content creator within the video). Twitch is different story, platform ads certainly play there. Prior to Brave, ublock origin on Firefox provided a similar ad-free Youtube experience. I don't consider ad content like the tech channels you mention to be a negative. Informing people about new products is a u…
It's a different story if it's a person that's used a device that they bought for a year. But these tech youtubers, they are extremely dependent on a good relationship with the brands because what brings them money is doing the "reviews" on day 1 (if not before) and they can only do that if they have a good standing with the brands. Meaning they will can only talk the product in a way that they know the brand is going to be okay with, mentioning obvious flaws that are easy to disregard ("it's not the best value for the money" is a classic).
This is bad because this type of journalism is constantly moving the window of what's acceptable. Channels that are truly critical (for example gamersnexus) don't get any support from brands. Channels like that are rare, of course, they do exist.
So, to reiterate my point, these channels are not informing: they're selling. There's a really good documentary with Noam Chomsky called "manufacturing consent" that really gives a good overview of this topic. Well, it's about politics, but the same applies for marketing.