FriendOfDeSoto

Is this a bad use of so-called AI? Yes. Is this illegal? I’m going to say no. One of the reasons why Google tried this is because in various markets they’ve been dragged to court or coerced to fund news initiatives because they used snippets from publishers in their search results word-for-word. A not insignificant number of publishers has been lobbying pretty hard against them for giving you their headline and a couple of phrases as a snippet. Those publishers are dumb if you ask me but they were able to bend laws to their will and limit the usefulness of the link, the cornerstone of the internet. So you can sort of understand their motivation why they would try this. And it was only a test from what I’ve heard. So bash Google for all the truly evil shit they’re up to. This issue is dumb but not really worth the outrage.

What confuses me about this scenario you’re painting is this: it doesn’t matter which app is better than WhatsApp for your mother to navigate if none of the contacts she texts with are willing to move with her. She’s not breaking off contact with folks over a GUI issue, is she? Or is she only using it with you?

Also, random messages not going through has not been an issue in the “war” between Android and iOS so far as I can see. Image quality of attached images, getting spammed with a new text for every reaction of a user in iMessage on the Android side, and some rare messages in group chat contexts that originated in iMessage were issues (and they’re not anymore IIRC). Now, if those are the ones you mean with “random messages” then okay. Did you or she convince all her contacts to move to WhatsApp as a result? If so, once again, moving her off it won’t do any good unless everybody follows along with her.

A move off of WhatsApp and to Signal is recommended from a privacy point of view. Meta is a terrible company. Signal is less bloated than WhatsApp. Beyond that I think they’re all roughly similar in functionality and user interface. By which I mean equally confusing for somebody over 60 today.

Apple was the first big aggregator with then iTunes. Spotify is the biggest streamer that also hosts podcasts. I suppose it helped highlighting the ease of subscribing through these services to get subscribers.

I absolutely hate this triad of “you can find us on [insert propriatory source like Spotify], Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.” The last third includes the two preceding ones. Both Spotify or Apple are places where one can find podcasts. It is illogical to say it like that and I find it annoying. I don’t think it is necessary to remind people any more how podcasts work in 2025. They will find you. Stop giving free ads to other services. Especially services that have proven to be hostile to the open RSS architecture, like Spotify.

That’s a matter of opinion. I suspect a big university like that quickly spends its budget and does way more than compile a dictionary. And if spelling is all you need, that still appears to be possible in front of the paywall.

For the longest time, it wasn’t free of charge. You had to buy expensive books. I fail to see a justification for the outrage. Also considering that this thread is rife with suggestions for alternatives and more dodgy solutions.

They aren’t under any obligation to provide the fruit of their labour free of charge.

As far as I can see their subscription prices have also only gone up over the years. Why? Do you think a Mr Burns like figure is sitting behind the scenes asking Smithers to relese the hounds? Or because running the linguistic operation, the database, and a website that people all over the world look at as the de facto authority of the language and gets queried thousands of times per day just cost shitloads of money? And they no longer get enough funding another way?

Did they ever put ads on their website? Do you run uBlock or similar plugins on your browser?

I mean, they have to pay the bills somehow. And this shows maybe how bad financially they’re off. Before the internet, you had to buy a copy of the book. I suspect those sales fell off a cliff in the last 25 years. So I may not like this decision but I can understand it.

And as others have suggested, there are other ways to get what you need online. This is a strong atmospheric disturbance in a serving vessel for hot infused beverages.

The comment was the first one I ever made with that account.

With that account. Can I read that as ‘but I have others that have been banned for understandable reasons’? If so, you give me no indication why I shouldn’t take my hunch to the grave.

Whether or not I agree with your take on decentralized social media is irrelevant. I believe that trolling on other platforms, or indeed this one, will not further the cause you have summarized.

If I had to hazard a guess, your comment managed to violate another guideline or contained unsuitable language. I would also not be surprised to learn that if we managed to get ahold of the person who deleted your comment we would find out that you had a history of questionable comments and that’s why the moderative leeway afforded to you may have been cut short. The fediverse will not benefit from a crusade into other platforms in the same way coca cola doesn’t advertize with the slogan “hey, you fucking loser, you would benefit from this cool beverage of ours.”

I’m basing my guess - and I could be wrong of course - on the fact that you think I was gatekeeping rather than describing the status quo.

You gotta be able to back up a claim like that with screenshots or something else other than hearsay. It’s my impression that no one really GAF about the fediverse, or only pays lip service to it like Meta, which explains why it’s so nice. It’s only us nerds here willing to be our own algorithm. So I have a hard time believing this. Also, who still cares about comments on YT?

We’ll never know until another NSA employee defects to Russia.

Just to add more context: these are good guy hackers who have responsibility shared their findings with the companies affected. It took them around 3 years to translate the signals they intercepted. And as far as anybody can tell, no one used this in the wild. It’s wild but it isn’t Snowden-wild.

If you were using Photos as a photo roll app you need to stay angry at yourself a while longer. That’s on you when you should know you cannot trust the G. Don’t grant an app permissions to photos and videos that could sync it to the cloud. And as another precaution, don’t keep sensitive pictures in the DCIM folder. If I have to take pictures of sensitive documents like that I disable WiFi (sync set up on WiFi only), take the picture, move it to a folder that’s never backed up elsewhere on my phone, and then turn WiFi back on.

You are not normal because you care about these things. The normal user doesn’t care and that’s who they are catering for. I’m not excusing their behavior (I don’t like it either) and at the same time you need to be more on your toes.

I’m planning to move to Ente this year when my Google cloud subscription runs out. Not looking forward to the work it entails but to the [paints face blue] FREEDOM!