Category: Generic

Maybe it’s just the winter but…

…I’m removing text based social media from my phone. This at the moment means Mastodon. (Twitter and Facebook were banished before.)

I’m not saying I won’t ever use it again, I’m not that fatalistic. (And because I will.) But, let me still add some rationale:

  • I removed my Twitter client a while ago (around 6 months, I think), and I don’t miss it. I sometimes look at it on a laptop, browse a bit mainly for news and not for discussion. I figure I’d be able to do this with Mastodon. (I removed Facebook a long time ago from my life. Had it not been for Messenger, which I still have to use unfortunately, I would have deleted my account proper.)
  • These days I find that I prefer proper sources over social media. I have a vast RSS feedlist in my Inoreader account; and if I just want some random thing to read, I prefer reading news… or a book. The less time I have, I guess, the more I feel I’m wasting it with social media. (RSS itself is another deepdive topic…)
  • Most of all (and yet another topic for later), I listen to podcasts.
  • Instagram will stay, for now. Unfortunately the horrible camera of the iPhone has essentially killed my photographic creativity, but still nice to see what friends are up to, I guess. Also, whenever I do end up posting, I also cross post to my Pixelfed feed. At one point that might become my main feed. Or I import the whole content into another WordPress site. Or something else… we’ll see.

On Google’s $5b EU fine.

I know I’m a weirdo: I run my own NextCloud, I use Mastodon and Pixelfed but not Facebook, I run Linux (Mint flavoured) on my notebook, and I have UK English as my default spellcheck language (see? “flavoured”). But maybe you’ll still agree with me when I say the EU antitrust decision against Google (which they just appealed while also complying) is an important milestone.

Because yes, now Samsung can start developing their own search, or Amazon can put Play store and Google Maps on their Fire devices… but there’s more, and again, I know I’m a weirdo, but bear with me. Continue reading On Google’s $5b EU fine.