GadgeteerZA

I blog about #technology #gadgets #opensource #FOSS #greentech #traditionalwetshaving #LCHF #health #alternativeto #hamradio (ZS1OSS) #southafrica - see https://gadgeteer.co.za/blog. I also blog to various other social networks which I list at https://gadgeteer.co.za/social-networks-i-post-to.

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Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: January 20th, 2021

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  • Good points. Yes, I do prefer to give an instance at least the benefit of the doubt. Difference tho really with Fediverse is you have to search and follow stuff to see it. It does not get inserted into your feed through ads or people playing the algorithms. So generally I’m only seeing what I follow. I suppose we do need to choose our instances wisely. Certainly, if an instance (not just a user on it) is really spamming or impacting on other instances, I suppose there can be grounds to block it. But we have not all been spammed yet by Threads. I don’t like Threads (cancelled all my accounts years ago) but I left a few good friends and family there that I would like to reconnect with, and follow them. I also like that my metadata stays on the Fediverse side, so I don’t need a Threads account or their app tracking me.

    I just would not like to be denied the option to even reconnect with my family and friends. Same goes for WhatsApp interoperating on Signal protocol - I have many friends and colleagues I left behind on WhatsApp, and would like to reconnect again with them.










  • GadgeteerZA@lemmy.mltoAsklemmy@lemmy.mlHow do you deal with being broke?
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    1 year ago

    Yep good advice, some services have no investment value loss e.g. short term insurance, life insurance, etc. You can switch elsewhere for a cheaper rate and lose nothing.

    Unless you have a family or dependants, I’d cut out life insurance and focus on the essentials for now to recover. I also learn long ago to pay my credit card off every month to not have to pay interest on it…





  • I certainly notice it as I post a lot across networks. I always have a title with my content explaining what’s what. There are so many times I have to reply to a commenter, saying “yes, that was what I mentioned in the post”. Clearly, way too many just dive in and comment on a title without even bothering to read the post content. It’s not that the content is pages long, it is usually maybe 3 or 4 paragraphs.

    It’s no wonder so much misinformation takes hold, as few take the time to critically comprehend what they’re reading.

    I think it is partly just fast scrolling and laziness to actually read the point being made. But then you may ask, why bother commenting at all then…




  • I do yes as I also have a channel that I do videos for (my only income as I fund my own website without ads or 3rd party trackers). I do make my videos’ ads skippable though. And yes my own browser blocks ads.

    But the pleasantness, or lack thereof, comes down to a site’s rules and moderation. The vast majority of people don’t want to be aggravated, and they also don’t really want to pay to use a website.

    But scammers and clickbait are everywhere. I think a lot depends on whether they can game the algorithm to force their way into your home feed or not. Many news media sites also use clickbait, and the same goes for politicians wanting to get attention through fear and anger. But I agree very often clickbait crosses the line - it is really irritating when you see a thumbnail of something, and that image literally appears nowhere inside the content.

    I mostly follow technology channels though.


  • That’s a wide open topic, but for self-hosted I use FreshRSS with Full Text RSS coupled to it to get the full text of feeds. For desktop, I like cross-platform open-source Fluent Reader (just did a video about it today in fact) - again because it pulls in full text and can still sync reading progress across devices through multiple services inc FreshRSS, Nextcloud, and others.