Good for your friend! Only thing that you can really do is be there for him and encourage him - he's the boss of this but good luck to him.
Only thing that ever worked for me was vaping. Patches, gum and everything I'd use to wean off but I'd start smoking again very soon after. Going cold turkey never worked for longer than a week.
I think the first vape I had was 2012 and I've used one since. Genuinely changed my life. I don't really have plans to quit vaping.
I'm actually quite pleased with this because it seemed like Starmer was weakening on environmental issues, especially after the whole Ulez business. Hopefully if the PM is getting flak for diluting his policies on it Starmer will stick to his guns for once
I just started using it for Android the last month or so when Chrome dropped the flag feature that let you toggle dark mode for websites with system dark mode.
I have a VPN with an adblocker so that aspect of Chrome never bothered me so much. Chrome felt like it worked slightly smoother but at the end of the day a browser is a browser and Firefox does the job. (Samsung's browser is actually surpringly good for those with a Samsung device looking for a Chrome alternative)
Firefox does seem more trustworthy overall, although I've learned by now that trusting tech companies is not a sensible thing to do.
I've been using a VPN, blockers, all sorts in the UK to disguise some of my online activity from Google and other companies so if I'm just doing the same thing to avoid the government there's not much difference.
The fact that I still use Google products is a lapse and due to laziness on my part...
Of course it could be a vote winner for Starmer at the next election to say he'll repeal it on free speech grounds of he played it right. But then the opposition could spin it as him not wanting to protect children online so he probably won't have the guts to risk it.
WhatsApp certainly won't, they own the UK chat app market and it's not like they genuinely give a shit about privacy.
The others - remains to be seen.
VPN subscriptions in the UK will be a lucrative market then for people wanting access to, let's see, Wikipedia...
I'm interested to know what the Signal President meant when she said she's much more optimistic about working with the government than she originally was.
The thing is it obviously does come from good intentions, and it's very rare you'll find me saying that about something to do with the Tories. But it's so obviously the wrong approach and yet here we are. Thanks for nothing. Yet again.
Still use Google search, but switched out Chrome for Firefox recently and it's working out well. I do still use their calendar, docs apps but I've never been a big one for YouTube. I do have some Google speakers though and use Maps all the time - so I guess out of big tech Google is the one I'm suckered into the most...
Stopped using Facebook around 2016 and deleted my Twitter account a few years before that, basically when the novelty had long gone and it all seemed to be more toxic.
In the UK around that time it was just everyone going on about Brexit on Facebook but even before then people weren't sharing stuff about themselves (with good reason) so it was just low effort memes). Use Facebook once in a blue moon to get in touch with really old friends
Didn't miss either, although I recently signed up to Mastodon more just to see how the fediverse worked over there.
Then Reddit - probably the social media I was most invested in just because it was so granular in it's There's A Sub For That ability to cater for virtually all interests. But the utter disdain they held for their own volunteers and the contempt they seem to hold virtually everyone in was a bit of a wake up call. I do go back and check on it but I'm finding that I check on it less. Fedi has less content so I am reading all those eBooks I should have been reading instead!
My son is 7, I'm interested in how things are looking in 5 year's time when he's an early teen. He's already got bored of watching YouTube videos, tiktok isn't really a thing with us or anyone we know yet... time will tell I suppose. The main thing will be constant reminders that porn isn't real and cyber security lectures
Hey cool that's by Zoe Quinn!
Point taken though - didn't do the whole thing but more then a few I thought were Hitler turned out to be Lovecraft. Never actually read any of his books. (Lovecraft's that is. Well Hitler's either thinking about it...)
A lot of people can hold low key prejudices against the abstract notion of a group of people but make exceptions for people that they actually know, it's really weird but that's humans for you...
Another vote for Kbin here - the atmosphere seems so much more chilled from what I've heard and seen on Lemmy. The feddit instances also seem pretty cool.
Sorry this weird stuff is happening to you
The public mood was generally sympathetic to Tanzler, whom many viewed as an eccentric "romantic"
One way of putting it...
I mean this isn't miles away from what the writer's strike is about. Certainly I think the technology is great but after the last round of tech companies turning out to be fuckwits (Facebook, Google etc) it's only natural that people are going to want to make sure this stuff is properly regulated and run fairly (not at the expense of human creatives).