Plume (She/Her)

You know, there is a lot that is to blame for why Firefox doesn’t get the market share that it needs, but I would blame a part on its community as well. I have never seen a community that is so reluctant to any change or basically any features being added to a product than the Firefox community.

Firefox developers:

Look! To try and make the browser easier to use for new users, we have added a pop-up remind you that hey, Firefox sync is an awesome feature of this browser. Because feature discoverability is hard.

The Firefox community five seconds later:

E N S H I T I F I C A T I O N

Mozilla isn’t perfect. Far from it. I have a lot of things to say about them and features that were never added or removed years ago that I’m still pissed off about and will continue to complain about until it is resolved, like fucking PWAs for example.

But damn, being a Firefox developer sounds really hard. Like, trying to please a bunch of people who are always complaining about the state of this browser, but also will, without fail, always complain every time you change or add features sounds fucking exhausting.

We say this every fucking year! Come on, this is getting ridiculous! Stop it! There will never be a year of the Linux desktop and if anything, this post shows why.

So much of the Linux community is utterly detached from what really matters to most users and focus on things that 80% of people won’t ever understand, care about or even use.

We focus on this and meanwhile, little quality of life features constantly get ignored when these are the real things that users will encounter and that will piss them off. They get treated as trivial. They get ignored in favor of other things.

Somebody mentioned it here. I saw it and I didn’t need them to mention it to want to say it. It’s already something that’s pissing me off. On Fedora for my Framework Laptop there is no way to adjust the scrolling speed on my trackpad which is moronically fast.

We are on the 40th release of Fedora, the 46th release of GNOME, and somehow this still isn’t baked in. I still have to go look around and use the fucking terminal to do something this basic. When some of them try Linux and will eventually push them to go back to Windows. And when users complain about this, what do we get? A bunch of elitists telling them to fuck off to go back to Windows, which I also saw as responses to this complaint about the trackpad.

Listen, Linux is an amazing project and I love it. I daily drive it. I don’t use Windows anywhere in my life. I haven’t touched OS in like two years at the very least. So many things that we are celebrating as brand new things that are finally working properly are things that already work by default on Windows and have been for years. We’re not going to convince people by mentioning that, “oh, we fixed this thing that’s been working forever on Windows.” It works on Linux now. People need more than this.

You want to know the sad truth? Here we go. We, collectively here, users of platform like Lemmy, are a vocal minority who are detached from the reality of most users. We care about ads, we care about privacy and so on, but the reality is most that people don’t. Most people won’t even notice that those things are there. For so many people, Windows is just the thing that stands between them and launching Chrome. It already works for them. There’s no reason for them to switch.

We are all way too invested in what runs on our computers and we forget that we are just us. Most people are not like us. Privacy scandals stop us from using stuff like social media and so on, but it clearly hasn’t stopped most of the world.

People heard about the shit that Meta was and is doing. Did people stop using Instagram? No, they didn’t. People know what Google is doing, how many of them switched to DuckDuckGo? A clinical moron turning the platform into a far-right haven didn’t stop most users from using Twitter.

The API bullshit didn’t stop most users from using Reddit. Sure there were protest, but I guarantee you that 99% who took part in the blackout just went back to it after. A lot of us didn’t. We left. We’re here now. But we’re still a tiny minority.

Ask a Firefox user did telling Chrome users that privacy was important ever worked? I’m sure you will get examples of it working but it’s a minority. Most people don’t give a shit and they use Chrome.

I don’t have a solution. I’m sorry, I made this long-ass comment but I don’t have much else to say. I don’t have a good solution to this problem.

Well, I’ve been on it for a while and it’s kind of nice. The last time I was there I could notice that some of Twitter’s toxicity was starting to take root because lots of people came from Twitter. But other than that, I am not comfortable using something that is not open source nowadays.

I’m done with this shit. I don’t want proprietary stuff in my life anymore. I still have some, but the less I do the better, and especially when it comes to things like this. I don’t want to sit around waiting for inevitable, greedy, shitty money-driven decision to run this thing into a fucking wall.

Blusky is decentralized-ish, but it’s not open. And eventually money is going to be an issue and it’s eventually going to be filled with ads or be an algorithmic nightmare or whatever, like everything else before it.

I am sticking with Masterdawn and I barely go there. I don’t post regularly there, I don’t have anyone or anything interesting to follow there. It’s mostly a tool for me to follow software and everything. But I won’t have it any other way. I’m done. I’m not moving anymore. I am done following and getting invested in the latest proprietary bullshit website or app that is cool right now, but is inevitably going to try and suck out as much money as it can from its users.

Look at BeReal. I love the idea. It’s great. It’s what social media should be. But now, there are allowing celebrities and companies on it. Sucking the life out of it. And I loved the idea but I never used the app. Why? Because they didn’t have a way to make money! Of course this was going to happen.

Anyway. Is it open-source? No? Then I’ll pass.

Do they get Elon’s dumbass tweets projected in their mind, now?

Skill issues. uBlock Origin.

So they are complacent with it very well. If you are complacent with Nazis, to me, you’re a Nazi. I don’t give a shit. What’s the saying that the Germans have? Like there are six guys at a table in a bar and one of them is a Nazis, therefore there are six Nazis at the table? Yeah, that.

Uhm… yes? That’s pretty much the point?

Too late, the death squads are already at my door.

But I’m saying that there is no harm caused by OP pirating in this situation.

…but I’m not pirating though! ;-;

The artists put their music on streaming platform as well. There is no such thing as ethical consumption under Capitalism. Everything is fucking exploitative as fuck, everything is awful. There is A LOT of things that I refuse to watch, play, listen to, pay for, consume, for ethical reasons.

Again: I AM NOT PIRATING! I’m using a legal way to access the music I listen to, Deezer. And buying albums that I really love when I can afford it on the side.

You’re acting like I’m pirating the music, here. I’m not. I said that I’m using Deezer right now, a legal and paid for way to listen to music.

I use Deezer and like I said, when I like an album, I still try to buy music from the artists that I love when I can. Which pays them much more then millions of stream.

I feel guilt free, honestly.

I don’t know what to do honestly. I’m fully aware of the situation. Artists deserve better then the shit they’re always getting, I’m not disagreeing. But here’s the thing, buying music is nice and all, but one: Bandcamp is going to shit. And two, I just can’t afford it.

I’m poor and I listen to a lot of things. Buying all that isn’t possible for me. Right now, I’m using Deezer, because they offered 3 months for free. And you know what? Just the 10 bucks a month that I’m saving is making a huge difference in my life.

Not to mention that discovering music without streaming services is quite hard. I left Spotify a long time ago, when the home page started recommending me more Podcasts then music. I tried a lot of things and I came to the conclusion that I hate all music streaming platform but they’re still, by far, the best way for me to listen to and discover music.

If I love an album, I’ll still buy if I can afford it (which I often can’t).

If you’re looking for a great open source note taking app with a good free plan, and well priced paid plans, I strongly suggest Notesnook. I’ve been using it for months exclusively, it’s fantastic.

I’m still shocked by the fact that people actually like or even trust Nothing when, personally, the company gives me nothing but bad vibes since the very beginning. This tech-bro-crypto-bullshit / Elon Musk-esque / Cybertruck-esque marketing and attitude is a massive red flag to me. Can’t say I’m surprised about this.

Yup. I moved to Mastodon because of it, I don’t trust BlueSky.

I don’t trust a platform that is funded by the guy who gladly sold the previous one to the moron who’s now in charge. And I don’t trust their claims because as of now decentralized it isn’t. It’s just not. And there is no real reason for them to do so. So eventually they may just walk back their claims and 99% of the user base won’t care about this.

Plus, this website is going to need to make money eventually. But as of yet, they have no concrete monetization plan, which is basically the norm in nowadays with these kinds of projects. We grow fast, we make money later. How is that going to happen? Is it going to be filled with ads? Is it going to basically make the same mistakes as before? We don’t know.

Plus again, this is originally made and funded by the guy who made Twitter. And let’s not pretend that Twitter wasn’t already a dumpster fire before the Muskrat came in. It was. Twitter sucked way before this and, personally, I left it waaaay before this guy came in.

I’m done, personally. I’m done with all of this. If a company is public, I don’t even care about their product anymore. Investors are going to ruin it. Doesn’t apply here, good. If a social media platform is not decentralized, not open source, I don’t want to have anything to do with it anymore. So, no Bluesky I’m done with all of that.

I am on Mastodon and I’m happy with my choice. And that’s it for me. I’m not trying anything else. I’m happy on there. It’s not filled with ads. I don’t have to worry about investors fucking ruining it eventually. And I don’t have to worry about it becoming a shithole filled algorithmically boosted Neo-Nazis because anger drives engagement and engagement makes money.

A while back, I was still hesitant. Then I read this article which basically sold me on it.

Blue bubbles? I’m sorry, I don’t speak American.

What’s not easy about Signal, though? :c

So, if WhatsApp eventually fails, can we accept for at least just this once, to move on to something that is not proprietary and owned by a large company, please? Please, for the love of everything can we please for once move on to something that is open source and for just this once not repeat the same fucking mistake over and over again?

If this ever comes out and you actually put your money in it, you deserve whatever fuckery happens to it. I’m sorry, but I’m completely out of empathy for Musk’s fans.

Intel is evidently not paying attention.