Once I had to use the internet without and ad blocker ( shiver ). It was horrible. I still have nightmares.

Joking aside. I couldn’t believe how crammed full and chaotic sites were without an ad blocker. I have no evidence to support this other than my experience but I think , for me , ad blockers are good for my mental health. Being constantly exposed to all those messages trying to exploit insecurities can’t be good for people.

Anyways ad blockers are the best.

This seems very obvious to me , not that it isn’t worth highlighting. Particularly in a world with open models and weights , which we should desperately want. The don’t worry water marks will be a thing just seems like an attempt have some response that dampers concerns. I don’t imagine most people working in the AI space actually think this would work. I could be wrong.

Yeah I 100% understand and to a large extent agree with this. I think money should be involved , creators should get paid. I don’t think peertube has become “the answer” yet and there is some combination of market level event and technology/feature set that needs to be in place to create enough moment for people to move off YouTube. It will happen eventually ( I think ) but what exist today isn’t enough of a pull to overcome the momentum YouTube has but that doesn’t mean that “we” should give up.

As much as I like the privacy frontends I think ‘we’ have to move to alternative platforms sooner than later and pull the bandaid vs. continuing to indirectly be dependent on google as the base platform.

Yeah it is great – their sales are pretty good but they kind of hide it but I often pick up a bunch of books from there and then host them on my home server so my family can read the books I bought. Also good to support your local book shop if you can , in my opinion.

https://libro.fm/ you can buy audiobooks through independent book store and they are drm free. It’s great. If you want more of an eye patch solution. You could rip audio from YouTube. There tends to be a lot of books uploaded there.

I really wanted this game to be amazing but I’ve heard very mixed things to not good things. Perhaps I will give it a go after the update.

I’ve used StandardNotes for years. They are great, very privacy friendly and lots of good features. I’ve also used Obsidian like others have mentioned but I didn’t use 95% of the features on either standard notes or Obsidian – now days I just use a general markdown files and store them in a git repo – low complexity and I like the simplicity of it. 100% recommend.

I use apple music. On linux I use Ciderwhich is amazing. Super clean interface and lots of nobs to turn in order to make everything sound and behave the way I like. If you like apple music or are looking for a streaming solution cider is awesome.

Same. I used graphene and calyx for a while but really needed the nav features so stoped using them. Very excited for this!!

I am on pop is for my home desktop. I like the built in tiling manager. Ubuntu for work. Might give nix or kde a go next.

I use kagi. I think it depends on your level of concern , as it does with most things. Kagi has a pretty nicely written privacy policy. They do require an account but I signed up with a masked email and cc. For my use I find their privacy policy enough given the other measures I take but the main reason I like kagi is zero ads or prioritized posting. Experiencing search with out ads is a pretty awesome exp in my opinion. There are other ways to get free search with ads stripped out but this “feel” fundamentally different from a service purpose built to be ad free and private. I am happy to pay for ad free platforms vs using platforms that are trying to do privacy preserving ads but this is more of a personal stance and preference. I know your question was more about privacy than ads but I find the two closely linked. I’ve attached a summary of their privacy policy below:

• Searches are anonymous and private to you. Kagi does not see what you are searching at all.
• We do not log or store your IP address. Your IP address is used only temporarily when enriching location/maps searches, and is not shared with any other party.
• We only store cookies needed for site functionality. We do not use any web browser analytics or other frontend telemetry.
• We do not display any ads, or have any first-party or third-party tracking in service of ads.
• We do not share customer data with third parties, except as needed to perform explicitly accessed services. In those cases, we will share the minimum amount of data needed to provide the service, and will do so in an anonymous way.
• We collect only the data needed to provide and protect the service.
• We proxy all images to prevent tracking from third parties.
• We use HTTPS encryption everywhere. All passwords are hashed and salted.

https://kagi.com/privacy