"Discord’s terms of service, particularly with respect to the rights they assert over participants’ data, are expansive and very grabby, effectively giving them unlimited rights to do anything they want with anything we put into their service. Coupling that with their active hostility towards interoperability and alternative clients has disqualified them as a community platform." - @mhoye http://exple.tive.org/blarg/2019/09/06/forward-motion/

Or I could just do like Robin Rendle and say fuck it to AMP: https://www.robinrendle.com/notes/taking-shortcuts.html

"Here’s my hot take on this: fuck the algorithm, fuck the impressions, and fuck the king. I would rather trade those benefits and burn my website to the ground than be under the boot and heel and of some giant, uncaring corporation."

"Google Is Tightening Its Grip on Your Website" by Owen Williams https://onezero.medium.com/google-is-tightening-its-iron-grip-on-your-website-27e06b3150e0

"AMP adoption is also the only way to gain access to Google’s Discover feed, which features articles on the page that appears when you open a new tab in the Chrome browser."

Welp, now I know why I get traffic to my blog from this thing. WordPress defaulted to enabling AMP by default, and I never bothered to turn it off.

When I was in middle school I had a Sonic the Hedgehog fan site on Angelfire. It mostly contained screenshots and MIDIs, but I also had some original fanfiction on there. All of it's gone now, like tears in the rain.

"Warning – do not click on Twitter ads" by Terence Eden https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2019/05/warning-do-not-click-on-twitter-ads/

Apparently if your Twitter account gets highjacked, the highjacker can post sponsored tweets in your name without you knowing it. Yikes. 😬

one group of internet users: I need to delete all my old tweets so they don't come back to haunt me

another group: we must preserve everything always for the benefit of future generations

"Do Not Disturb: How I Ditched My Phone and Unbroke My Brain" by Kevin Roose https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/23/business/cell-phone-addiction.html

I've always wondered what motivates those guys who can't even go to the urinal without whipping out their phone, and I think this is a good portrait. Maybe some people are more prone to tech addiction than others?

USER AGENT: Hey website, please don't track me

WEBSITE: Aha, you are one of the 0.5% of users who request not to be tracked. This is an excellent way to track you

WebKit release notes for Safari Technology Preview 75: https://webkit.org/blog/8594/release-notes-for-safari-technology-preview-75/

"Removed support for the expired Do Not Track standard to prevent potential use as a fingerprinting variable." Endlessly ironic that the thing that was supposed to prevent tracking has become just another vector for tracking 🤦♂️

The stuff on my mind today, though, is less about the interface and more about the culture. How do we make the fediverse a place people *want* to be? How do we increase the sum of human kindness and joy? Can we make social media less of a "slot machine that makes me feel anxious" and more of a "window into other people's lives that gives me connection and compassion"?

Pinafore doesn't have good answers for this. I still don't have good answers for this. It still troubles me.

"Your TV Is Now a Computer, but Not in a Good Way" by Alexis C. Madrigal https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/smart-tvs-are-dumb/581059/

Dumb TVs FTW. I'm never going to buy a "smart" TV if I can avoid it.