This has been tried and tried again, and it never catches on. Computer interfaces that are completely detached from physical 3D space are just much more flexible and easy to use.

They also seem to think that continually spending money to do mundane things in a virtual world is not a problem for regular people who actually have to watch their spending.

If computer interaction benefited from being more ‘like reality’, then Microsoft Bob or any of the countless other attempts to create a reality- and/or 3D-based computer interface, would have caught on long ago.

Sums it up nicely 👍

So it’ll end up being a platform of trolls and bigots just screaming into the void and paying for the privilege. What a fabulous idea.

Self hosted matomo works well for me. Small site, I just want to have a bit of an idea about what is popular and where visitors come from. I’ve had it installed for ages and incremental updates work fine.

I hear that matomo can get resource heavy if your site draws large amounts of visitors. Which makes sense, but it might be something to take into account, and maybe install it on a separate (virtual) machine.

Typora also supports it, it’s a great low-overhead tool overall.

There are degrees of monitoring. This is basically my approach:

• no smartphone before 12yrs old
• no computer, tablet, smartphone or similar in their bedroom before 16yrs old, specifically at night.
• family link (android) installed, with tighter controls the younger they are. This is discussed and also explained as a measure to protect them
• if they are under 16, we create social media accounts together and discuss what is appropriate, what can/should be public/private etc.

That is basically it. A lot of it is being around, available and approachable. It’s not perfect, but it has several layers of protection, and is built around creating trust and teaching valuable media skills.

If I had to pick one, I’d say the ‘no internet devices in bedrooms’ would be the most valuable one. Because of that, I know what games my kids play, they can deconnect at night, and it’s fairly easy to enforce.

Yeah, but not models that are trained on data that raises copyright concerns, which is currently the case.

‘People’ in this respect are also the owners of media sites.

The larger danger is the erosion of kids’ privacy. People are so panicked about all the dangers out there, and there are so many monitoring tools available to parents and educators, that it’s no wonder that kids develop trust issues and/or are afraid to take up responsability.

I say this as a dad of two teenagers: the kids are allright. Love them, hug them, talk to them, show interest in their lives. Don’t use surveillance as a substitute.

Taking the logic too far, I think. There is also a business interest in selling you storage and storage devices, it’s not just Hollywood calling the shots.

Of course, in a totalitarian system (North Korea style) the ownership of storage media will probably be tightly regulated and controlled, but that’s a wholly different scenario.

I was a premium subscriber, simply because I used Reddit a lot, I could financially bear it, and I generally liked how the place was run so I wanted to support them. Now I feel betrayed and my trust is violated, like when your friend borrows money off you and then never pays it back and just laughs in your face for being so naive. So I went from ‘I love Reddit’ to ‘fuck Reddit’ in about a month. Impressive achievement.

According to that logic, I’m doxxing myself every time I go to the supermarket.

In the case of Reddit, apparently yes. By which they also spit in the face of their most loyal (paying) customers.

The problem is that selling your data + targeted advertising is always going to be more lucrative than a subscription model. So even if you are willing to pay a subscription, it’s usually only a matter of time before the social media company in question changes tack. Especially if they have shareholders and/or venture capital investors breathing down their necks. If you run it like Wikipedia is run, I’m pretty sure you can operate a social media company on subscriptions/donations, but as a business model that doesn’t make sense as it is not the least effort way to make the most money.

I used to be a Reddit premium subscriber, because I used Reddit a lot and I wanted to support them. Silly me.

I run my own Mastodon instance, but for Lemmy it seemed more logical to join an existing instance that aligned with my interests. I wouldn’t be adverse to abandoning my self-hosted Mastodon for a shared instance, but I would prefer a small instance run by and for people I know, rather than one of the huge ones.