FriendBesto

I do not use Google products or use FB or most social media and family looks at me as if I am from Mars. Some do not even know what Linux even is. If I installed it on their machine and didn't tell them what it was, they would just think it is "another" Windows.

Once a non-tech guy asked how I find stuff if I did not use Google Search. Another thought that I used Terminal, not because I need it but because I wanted to look Retro.

To plenty computers or tech in general are not their thing.

Read about Operation Condor. Its actions, repercussions and number of deaths due to it, and continue to pretend the USA follows Democratic Values™. And this is just but one example.

They are just better at PR than most. You are walking proof of it.

Ha. Autocorrect strikes again! Fixed it and Thanks, for pointing it out.

At best, it was for a while a Representative Democracy. Where people gave their vote to other people to vote for them.

The fact that most Americans think the US is not an oligarchy, today, is a testament to the power of the State and their corporate media to propagandized their own citizens. It is very rich for them to point to other country's Oligarchies and somehow absolutely fail to see their own. Or worse, call it some weird type of conspiracy to call out or point out reality.

I mean, it is not like it is not obvious if one takes a step back or two and looks at it objectively.

All part of the current US/NATO approved Overton Window, friend.

Caring for your Privacy and the general privacy of society in the aggregate, given the increasing data mining, collecting, advertising and other trends is the normal mindset.

Getting propagandised and brainwashed into thinking that paying, with your own money for literal microphoned devices operated by for-profit-focused Corps that will listen in and record you so as to give you lazy weather updates or help you play a song, or purchase knick-knacks online in exchanhe is the crazy take.

Getting you to feel ackward is the point of peer-pressure and their Marketing. Just ignore it. You are not in the wrong.

Albeit Lemmy can too be a bit of an echo chamber at times, I find, in general, that the platform as a whole is way more open minded, and by extention, its users too, than or over Reddit.

Which their bias on most subs and janny overreach became, specially in the last few years suffocatingly annoying. Coming here was refreshing in comparison.

Gradually? By 10's launch, it was already adware/spyware. 11 is not even attempting to hide it, if you look at it objectively past the PR.

Not a fix but having Mozilla coded PWAs could help a bit. Rather than 3rd party.

Vertical Tabs are in the Nightly build, already. It is a very rudimentary implementation, still. Personally, I use Sideberry though.

Not a hot take. Most regular end users are lazy, not tech savvy, or do not care. Not meant as an insult, it is just reality. I used to be a SysAdmin and this was always the case. This is why IE got big, and why Chrome and Google Search got big and to a larger extend why Apple's offering got big in their ecosystem.

Google trying to kill adblockers Barbara Streisand Effect them into the spotlight, magnitudes more than their own existence had merited to most average users in the last 15+ years, at least in the USA.

And even now, I still know tons of end users who do not use adblockers.

Probably because over time it would be inundated with people trolling them and begging them to stop adding useless, bloated or uncooked features as to justify funding or PR optics ('Hey, lets add AI to everything!!1!1Eleven') and just focus on squashing the thousands of outstanding bugs or valid requests, which would maybe attract more funding. This has been the ongoing, running meme for as long as I have been running an instance.