You are assuming that A. Google isn’t scraping data for their own AI, B. that these companies will create their own instances (which opens them up to a certain amount of liability and requires them to retain moderation/admin and maintenance staff (which costs money)). C. That the enshittification of corporate owned versions of Lemmy and the fediverse won’t push people to Lemmy sooner or later.

A fourth assumption you made is that the Threads federation push was made in order to do anything other than create hype around a feature that might draw people away from places like the fediverse. I kind of assumed (maybe I’m wrong) that they were offering it as a way to have all the benefits of federation - namely the assumption of FOSS adjacent services, but with all the “benefits” of corporate social media.

The truth is that it’s likely that Meta absolutely has had a detrimental effect on the fediverse because it has things that pull users away from the fediverse. Instagram has content. For days. And because the fediverse is small (shrinking as you say), and because it doesn’t have an algorithm that pushes certain content to certain users, Meta and the other services that have analogs in the fediverse continue to be popular.

A lot of this is because the fediverse still hasn’t figured out a way to be profitable to content creators and we no longer live in the early 2000’s of YouTube etc where content creation for free was popular.

I’d argue that a lot of the appeal of the fediverse is organic conversation and communication. The popularity of that as a whole is declining because of algorithms that tickle just the right feel good chemicals in our brains.

As for your comment about these corps investing in the fediverse? The only reason for them to do that is if they can make money off it. The major money making scheme the internet is relying on is ad service. So there’s a catch 22 here. I would rather donate money to fedi services than have the fediverse infested with ads.

I don’t want that. Part of the fediverse’s appeal for me is that people aren’t constant trying to sell me things on it.

While I can understand certain communities having "suggest a (game, service, product), for the most part I really don’t want to basically invite corps to think this is free real estate. And that’s exactly what I think this would do.

It’s seems like it would invite corps to basically astroturf Lemmy and the fediverse the way they’re doing with bot armies over on reddit.

I have run into it once that I remember. There’s the line with “17 38” in it from the Fetty Wop song "trap queen. A restaurant in a neighborhood I used to live in had a menu item that came out to $17.38 after tax. People would shout it back at the cashier. Mostly teens but grown adults too.

I think eventually they added a few cents to the menu cost to make it go away.

Yeah I saw. There were a lot of complaints from consumers about the features that existed in the 3DS/other DS’s that didn’t exist in the switch including this one. Pretty sure they started rethinking the idea that they were only marketing to kids after that. And even then I think those people have to be your actual friends on the switch 2 rather than just random people.

I believe it was their attempt to protect children from unknown people online. I have the app and one of the features is that you can talk to people online in certain games (Animal Crossing, Splatoon, SSB’s, Mario Kart, and I think Mario Party).

Edit: I’d also like to point out that those accessory mics didn’t work with first party games to my knowledge.

There was some public outcry about it specifically from parents who had to download said app and let their kids use it for games. You could later use accessories that would add a mic but it was limited.

https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Support/Troubleshooting/How-to-Use-Voice-Chat-Using-the-Nintendo-Switch-App-1442573.html?srsltid=AfmBOor7pvIPB7U5tAiGPZalHfrOmwWvHmZgM4CCYId0-773YzAv81Y0

https://www.kentfaith.ca/blog/article_how-to-use-microphone-on-nintendo-switch_2740?srsltid=AfmBOopExBS39Dzz0C-Uuhv8x2QNd3yUnGlLgxaiV1WLLTkqEVeAdg5d

Switch OG doesn’t have a mic and that’s the reason they included the phone app. There were a fair number of aftermarket accessories that had mics though but I can’t say any of them were implemented to use first party games.

Then they should have to explain under what law or suspected crime he was detained and his phone was taken as evidence.

Because otherwise they can’t prove he deleted evidence of a suspected crime. So what is the suspected crime?

Same. My pro 9 is fine. My pixel 8 had the vertical line and they replaced the whole device for free.

The worst of it hasn’t happened yet. The point where consumers can no longer afford to consume is coming. The system isn’t self sustainable if they continue to chase profits in the short term regardless of what happens in the long term. They’re creating a system where only they will be consumers and that leads to a devaluation of all the currency they’re hoarding.

Prices can’t continue to go up if people can’t afford things. This price hike is going to have far reaching consequences and increase prices of everything.

The people of Germany were burning German marks in the street. They traded goods for goods when they were available, and burned the money for warmth.

The rich of our current generation seem to think they can golden parachute out of this. They haven’t thought about the long term repercussions of a world power of the US’s magnitude descending to third world country status, but that’s what is coming.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_Republic

Yeah. I had a glitch happened today where it started playing a song (I think I inadvertently tapped play while looking at a playlist. I couldn’t shut it off in the app, I pressed pause and the screen said it was paused but it clearly was not), and had to turn it off in the media tool. I don’t know what’s going on with it but this isn’t the first time one or the other has glitched out.

To create an effective burner account you need an effective burner device and a burner network to use it on. Otherwise it is trivial for companies that collect your data to figure out who that data belongs to.

This is more technologically difficult than the average person is willing to deal with. It’s too high of a bar to clear when your browser is being fingerprinted, your devices are being fingerprinted, every new device you buy has some app or subscription, and algorithms collect and anonymize your data with such recklessness that it’s basically trivial to unanonymize it.

Use the same network as your parents and you’ll get ads for the toothpaste they use, and maybe what they plan to buy you for Christmas.

Try to remove or block trackers? That just makes it easy to single you out as a specific individual. Try to firehouse those trackers with garbage data? Same problem.

If you think using a dummy Facebook account on the same device you use for regular accounts means Facebook doesn’t track you or know who you are? That’s a pipe dream.

It’s the same with other apps too.

Especially Google and their app network.

Understand that it’s not that I don’t think this is a good idea (to remove certain services from your electronic life, and to curtail the use of others). But I think your strategy will give people a false sense of security.

Tape worms. They’re just performing their natural function. Musk is… Well. Musk.

My understanding is they already made it more annoying. Your devices have to connect to the home accounts “home” wifi within a certain amount of time or that device gets locked out.

I quit Netflix when they announced the pilot program for removing account sharing in South America, and I stand by that decision to this day.

The reason why is greed. That’s the only reason for capitalism.

So a car wash?

I’ll mess with it one day. Just gotta remember to poke around with it.

I use Voyager (and boost, and sync before that). I like Voyager (now that I’m used to it), but I wish the medium sized thumbnails in compact mode were slightly larger.

I have never not been able to call them and threaten to cancel if they didn’t lower my rate though. That’s the crazy thing. I don’t have them anymore (thank God) but I had Comcast for close to 15 years and did this repeatedly.

Even Comcast will allow you to sign up as a new customer with whatever deal they are running if your previous account is closed. That’s saying a lot because they’re an absolute dogshit company.

They definitely updated it because I could see the link for login and my page doesn’t look the same now as it did the first time I went to look.