This is literally just the r/nyt subreddit about The New York Times.
Given he apparently takes inspiration from Elon Musk, it’s only a matter of time until u/spez starts adding post view limits unless you pay extra.
If you install the duckduckgo browser and turn on app tracking protection, you’ll see just how much data is harvested from mobile apps, which is genuinely scary.
This is why these sites are pushing the mobile app. It’s much harder to prevent trackers through an app than it is through a web browser.
I just installed this and am trying the app tracking protection (it’s in beta, for those reading who haven’t used it). Shockingly, Candy Crush Soda doesn’t come up with a list of junk being tracked. whew or something
Here’s a screenshot from Discord:
Some of that seems unnecessary (device boot time). But it’s not all scary spooky tracking. Some permissions/information is required for certain features.
For example, you can’t rotate your app UI if you’re not allowed to know screen orientation. Or maybe they do a low power mode if device battery is low, or a warning that the app might not function well if the OS or device is old.
Not saying you’re wrong or that Discord is right. Just pointing out that a long list of permissions isn’t on its own a bad thing, if those permissions are required for specific features, and not just for the sake of data harvesting.
This is why though I appreciate what DDG is doing, it’s not informing users about the context of what these permissions are used for, leading to a lot of fear over the wrong things. The data may not even be leaving the device but the implication DDG makes is that it is.
As a side note, I prefer to use DNS66 to filter data and ads by domain, then manually set my Android app permissions as needed.
This is one hundred percent sensationalism. Just because the app pulls it doesn’t mean that it’s being used to track you down. It’s probably just for crash reporting etc.
A lot of these are just standard things that things like crash reporters pull. In other words, Discord probably included a crash reporter in their app, and it pulls things like memory usage, device state, os version, what orientation the device is in, etc so that when a crash happen, it can tag those to the developers. Those are all useful variables to the developers to understand what is causing the crash.
Tons of apps use crash reporters to keep their app stable. I’m sure most apps will pull the vast majority of this information. That doesn’t mean that they’re using it to track you.
Do you happen to have a screenshot of the data that is harvested? I am genuinely curious.
I don’t have specific info on what’s harvested, but I have had mine active for a while and I’m at 300k tracking attempts blocked in the last 7 days. It’s absolutely wild.
Edited to add - they don’t specify what is being attempted, just what each company is known to track generally.
Yeah, don’t be shocked. Without the blocker every app makes one successful attempt and just tracks, with the blocker they attempt again and again like a hamster running against a wall.
Some apps won’t work with the blocker. I tried to block Chrome and after a while none of the apps I have installed would work, until I unblocked it.
Just search TrackerControl on the Fdroid store.
This is why the weekend DDoS attacks and frontpage vandalism don’t really concern me. With spez and Musk burning their services to the ground, we’re (along with other competitors, we’re not the only one) going to get a steady influx pressure for the coming months or even years. Shutting us partly down for a few hours every weekend does nothing in the face of this much stronger phenomenon. Whoever is doing it is basically pissing into the wind.
Kinda good since devs getting their systems stress tests while service is still young and alpha testers don’t bitch about minor inconvience unlike Normie’s stream…
This FrEe SerVIcE MusT JUst WurK, Rheee
The spice must flow
He who controls the memes controls the universe
Agreed. This is very uncomfortable for us, but we’re going to come out much stronger for it.
Imagine the alternative–the devs just skipping through imaginary meadows, adding pleasant little features and taking their time, while the userbase grew and grew, and then we experienced a very major breach of trust and security.
That could’ve theoretically killed us. Now it won’t happen. Everyone is staring at their code and thinking “yep, security is important, that’s true…”
Future incidents probably will still happen, but when you develop in the open it’s much easier for people to trust you when you talk about incident response and mitigation, because they can see what’s happening out in the open. In contrast, nobody trusts Reddit to do what they say.
Future incidents probably will still happen
It’s not a question of if, but when. The only secure computer is one that’s a mile underground, encased in concrete, and with no network connection.
And even then, it’s still not a 100% safe bet.
The most secure computer is one that’s turned off.
It wasn’t that uncomfortable anyway, just go into another instance.
I literally only noticed because people made posts on other instances about it lmao
I generally just browse by Top Day for All instances, unlike on reddit where i only looked at my subscriptions.
This right here is a big deal. Even if an instance goes down or gets attacked, the easy choice is to just browse from another instance till it is back up.
We’re kinda get vaccinated for the future with all this stress testing
There were weekend ddos attacks?
lemmy.world I think? depends on your instance
Lemmy.ml also apparently went down for some amount of time.
Also blahaj or something
I think that was due to an update, not an attack.
reddit and twitter are literally competing to see who can destroy their platform first and unfortunately they’re both winning
He’s just trying to protect people from inappropriate content. We all know how harmful inappropriate content can be for children unless it’s paired with targeted advertisements, which mitigate the danger.
Had me in the first half
My operating assumption here is that Reddit can collect more data to sell if people are logged in and use their app.
Does not matter if you destroy 75% of the usefulness of the system if the remaining 25% can be more effectively monetized.
exactly. People keep saying Spez is an idiot. Him and the board ran the numbers, knew there’d be attrition and still think they’ll come out ahead so they went with it. They expected people to get pissed off but for enough suckers to stick around to make things profitable under the new paradigm
Reddit desindexed by Google in 3…2…1…
That’s such a great point. That’d be hilarious.
The enshittification proceeds apace. Fuck u/spez.
Centralized control and ad based model ensures this always happens… Cable teevee, now web2.0…
About time the pleb base start thinking bigger picture and voting with their feet and wallets.
What is the alternative to web 2.0?
fediverse… you are here
I always hated that crypto shit stole the name web3/web3.0. I think for a short period it seemed decentralized apps were calling themselves web3.0 but now it’s just the fediverse I think. I like calling it the true web because the fediverse is very much like the old days where we had niche sites with their own communities, it’s just that the content isn’t locked into each site and we don’t need a million different forum accounts to participate everywhere. Like the old days but supercharged with new tech.
What is web 2.0?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0
Web 2.0 (also known as participative (or participatory)[1] web and social web)[2] refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, and devices) for end users.
Someone misspelled “predatory” at the start of that paragraph.
Someone should answer the phone because we all fucking called it.
What’s next in the Reddit bingo?
The removal of old reddit?
Limiting the number of posts we can see per day as a normal user?
Buy upvotes?
The slippery slope logical fallacy doesn’t count when there is actual factual evidence.
The slippery slope is only a fallacy when you’re making leaps. To go from enacting exorbitant API fees to removal of old Reddit is a logical step so doesn’t make for a fallacy. Intent also plays a part for the same reason. If you can prove that enacting exorbitant API fees was for the purpose of restricting user access then limiting number of posts for users not logged in is a logical step. Slippery slope gets a bad rap but it can be a valid point and not a fallacy when done properly.
The removal of old reddit?
Yep, they will absolutely do that. Only a matter of time.
I’m 100% out once that happens. Well technically I pretty much am currently. I may look at r/all for a couple minutes then head over here for a good portion of time.
The comments on Reddit have declined since the purge, it’s unbelievably shitty now.
Buy upvotes?
The sad part is, I can absolutely see this happening. Not as an outright “gib money get updoot” but something more roudabout but effectively the same thing.
“Be heard louder with Reddit Premium! Your comments on posts will be displayed closer to the top for others to see!”
To reiterate, the above is just something I mocked up. May not be upvotes, but still rigging threads by paying Reddit money. I just wouldn’t be surprised at this point.
A new tier: reddit ultimate
With reddit ultimate you get all the benefits of reddit premium plus you get the ability to link your online and offline personas as well as a weekly free loot box.
Loot boxes (8USD each or 10 for 50USD) may contain one of the following perks:
- a week of free Reddit ultimate.
- “3 nuclear downvotes”, like a normal downvote but counts as 50.
- “karma MSG”, for 12 hours all karma you get or lose is counted twice.
- “look into the shadows”, get a complete list of all your shadow bans.
- “STFU”, mute all chats for a week.
- “sacrificial lamb”, remove any or all non-ultimate users from your followers.
- “heeeere’s Johnny!”, banned from a sub? Guess again, and this time you can’t get banned by non-ultimate mods for a week.
- 5 gold awards, appears in 17 out of 24 loot boxes
A as a new democracy oriented initiative, for 50USD you get to dethrone one mod for a month.
The loot boxes would actually be able to get me back, not to buy them of course, but to see the havoc it would bring to r/Conservative.
Reddit will go away for non logged in users.
Old reddit and New reddit will probably cease to exist when sh.reddit is ready.
What’s the difference between new.reddit and sh.reddit? They look nearly identical, but with different margins and padding.
I don’t really know because I haven’t spent much time with it. I do remember either in one of the mod summits or somewhere that Spez admitted that new reddit was bad and that they were already working on the next version of reddit, which is what sh.reddit is supposed to be. New reddit is an abomination and I’ve only ever used it for settings old reddit does not have.
But to be honest with you, I haven’t really spent any time on sh.reddit because you used to not be able to log in to it.
Honestly, I’m surprised Old Reddit has lasted this long at all, even before all this.
What’s next in the Reddit bingo?
See what stupid shit Musk pulled with Twitter a month ago, and that’ll be what Reddit does in a few days.
Well have a look at this and reflect on what beautiful behaviours it will bring forward:
Crypto is #4 in trending topics.
Reddit is Twitter now.
Remember, corporations are never your friend. I remember when redditors thought spez was “one of them”.
One of them… who was a mod on r/jailbait.
This is something that really needs to be brought up regularly.
There are plenty of valid criticisms beyond character assassination. It is my understanding that any mod could add any user as a mod of their subreddit.
I’m now only on lemmy and YouTube. Never got into tictok or Facebook, left and deleted reddit and Twitter. I’m in a happy place.
Still go to reddit sometimes. It’s night and day compared to here. Everything on reddit is rage bait in one form or another.
I go to reddit for porn and that is it.
Make an account on lemmynsfw.com
It’s just as good as reddits porn
I’m gunning hard for Lenny, but let’s be honest with ourselves, ok?
It absolutely isn’t. Not yet. In both quality and quantity, we’re still lagging way behind, especially for niche or non-straight content.
Old thread, but as best I can tell, old.reddit.com is still going strong. No forcing you to sign in, no padding out the ass.
Libreddit and Teddit may be dead, but Kddit still works. Eddrit also does the trick, but occasionally gets overloaded.
This isn’t new, tell your phone to show desktop site to bypass all their mobile bullshit.
death rattles of a dying app
This is gonna work SO WELL, as per Twitter teachings
