Thank you for helping fill out this list. May I ask why you moved away from Blokada? Version 5 is bad ofc, and 6 is far, FAR worse, but 4 worked well for me.
It looks like AdAway has some nice features since I saw it last, like the ability to whitelist a particular app. If it does not require root permissions, it might be a clear winner even.
I use Blokada - but not the latest version since the company switched from the free open-source standalone app paradigm to a cloud-based continual paid subscription model. It seems like Blokada version 4 (obtained either from the company’s webpage or F-droid I forget which) blocks a heck of a lot more stuff than version 5 for some reason.
On the other hand, it also noticeably heats up my phone if a not-well-behaved app (examples include Freemium games) continually resubmits queries over & over again every (or even multiple times a) second. You can block every request that it makes… but it can also keep making them so… at some point you may question whether the cost is worth it.
This arguably relates more to “tracking” than actual advertisements, since there can only be a finite number of the latter but the former can happen all day every day even when the app is not running, if it decides to be aggressive about checking in with its home base. These days, even if you do pay for something, your data is STILL the actual “product” that is the reason the company is in business at all to obtain.:-(
Yes it is available. It in turn points to another site Censuswide, but does say:
The figures are representative of all US adults aged 16+
What I wonder is… how?! A quick search shows that half of people in the USA use Chrome, another 30% Safari, 8% use Edge, and only 5% Firefox. This study was done by Ghostery so perhaps they chose a biased subset of the population? It just seems weird to me to think that more than half of average users use ad-blocking, these days.
Love the recursion.:-)
Supposedly - and keep in mind I have no idea if this was ever true - there used to be “statesmen” who after living a long life of prosperity and success, would go and take their turn in Congress helping provide leadership for the nation as a whole.
These people were already retired, already rich, and just looking to see what they could give back to society. Or maybe they were bored and just wanted to get far away from their wives, who knows.:-D Probably they were doing it for the fame, who even cares.
Compare that nowadays though to the likes of MTG or Bohbert or Gaetz and such, whose sole goal in life seems to be to get theirs, and are willing and able to fuck over the entire country in the process.
No, they may do some things like us - eat and sleep and breathe - but it takes a special kind of dipshittery to be willing to turn a blind eye to people in need (like in Ukraine) and sell out your entire nation (inflation, Russian and Chinese aggression, etc.) in that manner. I can only hope that you wouldn’t allow people in your own country to starve to literal death bc of your actions.
They are playing power games, and they’d probably still play those even if their salaries were at stake too, more’s the pity:-(.
Some places are friendly. Some aren’t. Many that are, label themselves as such. Some don’t though.
I should probably read that - I figured that I get the gist having read Animal Farm but hey, if we are going to live out the irl version then it might be good to at least say that I read about it first!:-P
It is fascinating how some people see far (ahead), by virtue of seeing clear (to the soul/center of the human condition) - technology may change but we don’t seem to. Asimov, Jules Verne, George Orwell, they are like techno- or cultural prophets, not that we listened, sadly:-(.
C.S. Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia) in addition to being a christian apologist also wrote philosophy about how Hitler was able to influence Europe during WWII, and I found that just fascinating e.g. if you avoid ever saying a thing but instead just act as if it is true then it is a way to avoid it being questioned. Evil people have access to so many tricks that a free & just society would never condone using (another big one lately is misinformation), nor would it even so much work in the other direction b/c getting people to question things is a major bonus in such a society so it’s at best an anti-pattern there, and yet I wish we were much more aware of them b/c otherwise it is like facing a pathogen with no immune system.
Anyway thank you for reminding me of those quotes:-).
The definition of pretty much every word these days has been hijacked to mean the exact opposite - like Google lets you “search” for things you “want”, and Reddit would “connect” you to “humans people”, FaceBook will steal all of your data share “news”, again from “people”, and so on.
I pretty much think of “smart” as now meaning “tactically weaponized to maximize corpo profits” - you know, “for your convenience”!:-P 🤮
Don’t you post on Facebook or I’ll shut the government down!
Don’t you post on Twitter or I’ll shut the government down!
Don’t you post on Reddit or I’ll shut the government down!
Don’t you post on Lemmy or I’ll shut the government down!
At some point, I start to wonder if they are just searching for an excuse to shut it down?
Also, there are laws about “obstructing the workings of the government”, but good luck enforcing them in the current environment, when the enforcers are themselves the ones doing it.
I think I’m in love with you now.
What are you, happy on crack or something? Oh then, carry on my good man. :-P
I have decided: The Musk specifically asked us not to call it “Twitter”, therefore I shall call it “Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter”.
I dunno, maybe some days I could call it “Twitter” for short:-D.
The prerequisite for being a hermaphrodite is to be a human. The Musk is not that.:-P
Also, he it wants us to specifically not call the company “Twitter” anymore. So I’m thinking maybe I could call it “Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter”? :-D
I used to call it Twitter/X.
From now on I’ll just call it Twitter.
Too bad I can’t call it Shitter, but we’ll all know that’s what we mean so it’s okay:-P.
It took you 30 years to get to where you are today. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Be as kind to yourself as you possibly can?
Yeah I still use Blokada 5 on my daily driver - it generally works “well enough” for most things, so I never bothered to switch to 4 on it. But I did notice that if you try to play a game on it, it’s like the ad blocker isn’t even there, whereas version 4 worked a lot better straight away. I may just not have played around enough with the settings of 5 though:-).