Legislation like that might happen in places like the EU, but in the US at least, unless lobbying rules are amended, consumers stand next to no chance against the commercial interests of advertisers.

If you’re the one paying for internet access, you should also have the right to determine the content that you’re paying to have access to. While something like pi hole could be used to metaphorically take down most of the billboards without impacting the ground below it, even everyday users should be informed about the data advertisers are getting from them, whether it is anonymized or not. Hiding an important setting about data sharing near the bottom of a page in settings doesn’t help anyone but the advertisers.

Perhaps more like what fridge companies do via incessant water filter replacement reminders: Enjoying your Super Deluxe CoolPlus™ Fridge? Don’t forget to check out the CoolPlus™ Fridge Magnetic Spice Rack and CoolPlus™ Fridge Juice Dispenser Add-on!

There isn’t a free alternative that works as well, unfortunately. Bing not only has many of the same issues, but has worse results. Since DuckDuckGo makes use of Bing’s API for its results, in addition to lacking features such as date range searches, it is still a step down in terms of the quality of one’s search results. Having switched to Firefox due to Google’s efforts to make unilateral, self-serving changes to Chromium, I’d be only too glad to switch search providers if an alternative provider had a similar number of accurate results.

Isn’t it only source available, and not open source, due to a restriction on reusing the code?

A success does not include leaving a victim of failed experimental medicine with a non-functional implant. In contrast to how animal subjects are used as test subjects (often conducted with less oversight than there should be), using experimental medicine on volunteering patients should be done not just to collect better data than the chimps before them supplied, but with the genuine expectation that the product in question will benefit the patient beyond their usefulness as a test subject for continued product development.

As with corporate mediators though, wouldn’t such investigation companies have a financial incentive to favor their clients, so as to improve the odds of being rehired?

It doesn’t seem like the suggestion would be to destroy cultural landmarks, or even the majority of commercial ones, just the key components of the island’s chipmaking industry that would incentivize an invasion by mainland China. It’s an outcome that no one wants, but remains sufficiently feasible so as to be effective in preventing such an invasion in the first place. If the current CCP is bad, one that directly controls the majority of the world’s chipmaking industry would be far worse.

The difference is that most of that content lasted for at least a few decades, if not centuries before being lost to time. As content on the internet is ‘destroyed’ if no one hosts it any more, a lot of valuable content is being lost in just a few years after being created. Archiving needs to be more widespread and better supported if the resources and culture of the internet as it has evolved over time are to be preserved for posterity.

“Genius! Who would’a thought? 10,000 extra shares in your bonus this year!”

I have mine configured as a background service with a Rainmeter desktop widget to play music at a moment’s notice. Works better than any official Windows option.

For my relatives Facebook’s not the problem, it’s all the far right wing propaganda on YouTube that makes claims without backing them up with any sort of evidence. The more they watch, the more they believe it, and the less they believe evidence to the contrary.

While statements like that are needless fear mongering, any jobs they do replace in the long term are at least making the economy more efficient, in the same sense as computers did. It’s unfortunate for anyone’s job to become redundant, but technology shouldn’t be delayed or avoided for that reason alone.

Unless the EU makes Apple get rid of the yearly cost per installation, any app store other than Apple’s is limited by the inability to have free or freemium apps, giving them a substantial disadvantage in comparison.

Clearly they meant “Don’t (do the right thing), be evil”

On iOS at the very least, being unable to download apps from a source other than Apple is monopolistic behavior, as it does not allow the free market to determine what the added fee for app hosting and payment processing should be (versus an artificial 30% fee that bolsters Apple’s profit margins), as well as limiting what apps are or aren’t available on the basis of Apple’s own app store policies. Apple can run their app store as they see fit, but as a consumer I should have to option to download apps from competing app stores.

There’s also the worldview that excludes Threads from instance federation for having financial incentives out of line from the rest of the Fediverse.

They’re certainly a much worse value for the money and intentionally constrained in ways that maximize the profits of Apple services by making it inconvenient or impossible to use alternatives, but the UI is substantially better than Android. Aside from that and Apple device interoperability benefits, nearly any Android phone is a better choice for most people.

Gotta try to drag a few good people back from Tartarus…

Entirely agreed, though I wish there were more of a joint effort between Lemmy and Kbin communities to find novel ways of getting more redditors to switch over to the Fediverse. Wishful thinking perhaps, though it’d be nice to have more active communities around here.