Buying albums is great because you can host them on your own Plex server and use Plexamp.

(or something like Jellyfin, but IMO Plexamp is still the best app available for streaming your own music collection)

It’s probably the most popular music streaming service at the moment.

That was just an example. There’s all sorts of automated traffic that shouldn’t count as a view. A human loading the page but not actually playing the video (like if they disable auto playing of videos) shouldn’t count as a view either.

Page loads don’t count as a view though, because otherwise things like search engine indexing would count as a view. It’s only considered a view if the video is watched for at least 30 seconds.

YouTube only counts a view if it’s longer than 30 seconds, but clients like Newpipe don’t send the tracking data to Google for them to track this.

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You could say the same about any social media site really.

The whole point of social media is to communicate with other people. Facebook is the largest one, so if you want to contact a business or person, they’re more likely to be on Facebook than any other site. Probably the main exception are younger people (and companies run by them), where they’re more active on TikTok and Instagram.

Even for companies that have sites, they often get more people contacting them through social media instead of their site. Social media sites tend to have better SEO.

That’s especially the case for younger people as they search Instagram and TikTok more than Google. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2024/03/11/genz-dumping-google-for-tiktok-instagram-as-social-search-wins/ ).

I’m just using regular Firefox at the moment. I briefly tried Floorp but it felt a bit slow.

Well, except at work where we’re forced to use Chrome for security reasons. They rely on Chrome Enterprise as part of their endpoint security solution, which has features like preventing copying from sensitive/confidential work webapps then pasting onto non-work sites, and other features that big companies use.

I completely forgot that Zen is Firefox-based. I’ve been avoiding some of these newer browsers because they’re based on Chromium. I’ll have to try it out!

Unfortunately that’s the goal of a lot of startups. A startup is considered “successful” if they get acquired by a large company and employees of the startup make a lot of money.

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You have to meet clients where they are. These days, clients are far less likely to find you if you only have a site with no social media presence.

So people in rural areas without good internet, or places where the network is airgapped, can’t use them at all? Seems like there’s be a way around it.

I totally get where you’re coming from. It’s hard to find devices like that. I think the issue is that regular customers are demanding the smart features, and using them without caring about privacy aspects.

If it wants a network then stick it on an isolated VLAN with no internet access.

You can have a smart TV but never set up any of the smart features. I have two LG OLED TVs but rarely touch anything on the TV itself. I’ve got Nvidia Shields for streaming and turning it on or off also turns the TV on or off. Same with my Xbox.

I just need to figure out if I can use CEC with my SFF gaming PC (so that turning it on also turns the TV on, and turning it off turns the TV off), then I won’t have to touch the TV’s remote again.

Ethernet port or wifi are good for controlling the TV using something like Home Assistant. I have my TVs on a separate isolated VLAN with no internet access. I have a automation that runs when the TV turns on, to also turn on some LED lights behind the TV.

The rate limit was only client-side, so you could patch it with Messenger Plus and spam the button to keep sending nudges over and over.

Practically everyone in Australia used MSN Messenger. Once it died, most people switched to Google Talk, then to Facebook Messenger. Messenger is still the most popular by far - last I checked, it had around 2x the number of users as the second most popular (which I think was WhatsApp).

ICQ was popular too, but just for one feature: free SMS. In an era where every SMS cost $0.25, being able to send them for free was incredibly useful. (it never cost money to receive phone calls or SMS in Australia, only to send them)

I was on Linux so I used an MSN Messenger clone called aMSN. It was a decent enough experience, although the UI looked pretty dated since it used Tk. I learnt basic Tcl (programming language) so I could implement new features myself.