I might try uBlock Origin Lite, then if it doesn’t work very well then maybe I’ll just use Firefox

I guess Google are betting that only a small segment of power users will switch to Firefox, while the mass of ordinary people won’t be bothered enough to switch.

Do you have any specific links that show this data? I’m just wondering really. I wonder what the trends with non-white college grads are.

You could always browse it with an ad blocker so they don’t make ad revenue from your attention.

Well I’m just saying there’s certainly a lot of statistics I haven’t seen.

Also in the Pew polling I linked to, it shows the Democrat lead among black college grads increasing between the 2018 mid-terms and 2020. It’s only a 1 point difference but at least it hasn’t gone backwards.

Maybe the Dems are doing better with more educated voters, but not necessarily white ones. I dunno. I guess for these matters a person would have to see lots of data points to really understand the trends going on.

Fair enough, I guess there’s more than what I know, which is not much.

Here’s just one source but it shows the Dems’ lead over the GOP declining among white college grads between 2016 and 2020. But the Dems’ lead over the GOP among all college grads, of any race, increased between those elections.

Sure that’s only one source. Maybe there are polls supporting what you say, I dunno. I could be totally wrong with what I’m saying.

the Democrats are slowly becoming the party of affluent, educated white voters

Except if your name is Elon Musk, or Peter Thiel, or David Sacks, or you’re an affluent educated white supporter of them…

Some of your points might well be supported by polling (I don’t know enough to say) but I’m sure there are plenty of affluent educated whites who support Trump.

Fair point, different people like different things. It’s interesting that forums are less popular now though. I signed up for Ars Technica’s forum the other day, maybe I should try it out more.

Fair point, but maybe you could restrict an account to only make one thread every 10 minutes or something. And require a CAPTCHA and email or phone verification for new accounts. I guess organising and moderating social media style sites is not a simple task though.

Niche subreddits can have good content, and also I find myself looking at Reddit threads that come up in web searches, like if I search for a tech problem I’m having. But yes, the behaviour of Reddit as a profit-hungry corporation makes me want to not use Reddit or see their ads.

Sure that is true. Thank you for looking at my post and replying to it by the way. But I was just thinking how some people might just look at the top comments and nothing else. Maybe the upvote system does have some benefits though, like making bad posts less visible.

I was thinking how, back in the day, the most popular web browser was IE, which wasn’t on Linux. Now the most popular browser is Chrome, which has been on Linux since 2009 or whenever it was.

And of course lots of other big software is on Linux, like VS Code, Zoom, Slack, Skype. And Linux is on the Steam Deck. So yes I agree, Linux has come a long way.

Lemmy seems to have quite a lot of people to be fair. Apparently Lemmy.world has nearly 7,000 users a day, which is quite a lot when you think about it.

One thing I think about is that maybe there are drawbacks to the Reddit-style format of Lemmy. A cool thing about old internet forums is that posts were show in chronological order with no upvotes, which is more similar to a real world conversation. You’d read the most recent posts, rather than the most upvoted posts. This means somebody new to the conversation can have their opinion seen.

The upvoting system means that a small number of posts get nearly all the upvotes and attention, and people who post later have their posts largely ignored.

Maybe I’m wrong but it’s just something I thought about.

True, I remember the government trying to sell off Channel 4. Anyway I guess my point was that ads don’t necessarily ruin a platform if the platform has a decent purpose other than just profit… although I definitely do hate seeing any ads, even on Channel 4 or anything else.

Interesting, maybe the content has changed, I probably don’t watch enough TV to have noticed. But I think Channel 4 news is pretty good, and I liked their Paralympics coverage.

But then you could look at Channel 4, which does show ads to UK people, but I think Channel 4 is still okay and I don’t think it has been ruined by ads. So maybe a profit motive is what causes enshittification, rather than just ads. I definitely hate ads but maybe ads alone don’t destroy platforms.

True, they don’t show commercial adverts in the UK, but they do to other countries. People outside the UK can access the BBC website but they’ll see adverts on there, and apparently BBC America (shown in the US) has commercial adverts

And Channel 4 of course does show commercial adverts in the UK, but I think they still make some decent content, and I don’t think they’re on the verge of self-destruction

Maybe the real problem is when an entity is chasing profits, because Channel 4 isn’t a normal for-profit business, since they’re owned by the government, and I think they have to abide by some rules

I don’t think that’s necessarily true - maybe it depends on (a) the owners of the platform and/or (b) whether there are sources of funding besides advertising

E.g. here in the UK, the BBC and Channel 4 are both broadcasters owned by the government, and both are funded at least in part by adverts. But I think both of them are relatively healthy and aren’t on the brink of destroying themselves.

I think most of the BBC’s funding comes from the licence fee (British people pay for a TV licence) but they make some money from ads shown to international audiences. Channel 4 is solely funded by adverts I think, but it’s owned by the government and I think they have to abide by certain rules and targets.

We all know that social media can encourage extremism in some people, but it’s surprising when it happens to the richest guy in the world