Gives me a nice flashback to this interaction, which caused me to be banned from !europe@feddit.org for the following (since deleted) comment, which I backed up with reliable sources in the part of the thread that remains online:

insufficient avenues for engagement beyond voting.

Funny what banning protests does to a country.

The reason given was that I “derailed the conversation”, though I’d argue the following discussion was extremely on-topic for a post about how young people in Germany “feel disillusioned with politics” and consider there to be “insufficient avenues for engagement”.

Funny what banning discussion does to an instance, I guess.

Oh well, /rant

It’s all about the marketing and nothing about the technology or company.

I opened google for the first time in months (years?) to check out the results for “best private browser”. Predictably, the AI overview confidently responds as follows:

The best private browsers in 2026 for enhancing online anonymity and blocking trackers are Tor Browser, Brave, and Mullvad Browser. For maximum privacy with high security, Tor is top, while Brave is best for daily, fast browsing. Mullvad is ideal for anti-fingerprinting, and LibreWolf offers excellent privacy for Firefox users.

I would be very surprised if Brave did not at least at some point sponsor content to position itself as privacy oriented. This hidden advertisement then bleeds into both AI and human armchair experts with no deeper understanding of the tech they’re commenting on. And so the myth that Brave has good privacy becomes self-enforcing.

Unrelated edit: Answering “why is firefox bad for privacy”, Google AI becomes oddly self-hating:

Firefox is often considered “bad” for privacy by privacy-conscious users because, despite its pro-privacy marketing,
it collects significant user data by default via telemetry, relies on Google as its default search engine, and has updated its privacy policy to allow broader use of user data. While superior to Chrome, its default settings are not “privacy-maximalist,” necessitating manual configuration.

Lügenpresse!

This American Life had a pretty good episode recently where they traced ICE terror through 911 calls. Worth a listen.

Oh no, they’re just genuinely concerned European companies won’t be able to be competitive and to put them out of business! Bless them.

Like, which idiot would even entertain the idea that google has our best interest in mind.

We pretty much all agree the US sucks here, you’re trying to argue the mass murdering mess of the USSR somehow didn’t also suck. Whataboutism won’t help you.

So you’re saying they should polish their text to make it more coherent? Huh.

I could really only see one thing when contemplating mr. Bunny’s fashion choices.

Needless to say I approve.

Not to mention the re-normalization of rape culture. And to get rid of the fucking foreigners stealing all those lucrative jobs picking fruit or whatever. And to protect the god-given right of schoolchildren to blast each other’s brains out.

There’s all kinds of reasons really! We shouldn’t be so quick to judge.

You’re not going to find any other phone with better parts availability than the Fairphone, that’s for sure. You can check their store for parts yourself, for the oldest models there’s second hand. So it seems like an absurd argument. Software support is also longer than for any other manufacturer, though that doesn’t seem relevant to you.

Running windows games on Linux has gotten pretty easy with Valve’s investments. Waydroid is good, but in order for a lot of apps to work (typically banking an similar apps) one needs Google Play Services, which you wouldn’t want to install. MicroG is an open source alternative that fills some of the gap and is good enough for me, but it’s not 100%.

Another thing is map apps. There’s sadly nothing yet that can quite compete with Google maps if you just want to see the best Chinese restaurants in your area and get some pictures and user reviews to make your mind up. It’s the only Google service I haven’t managed to let completely go of.

I think Linux phones are something for enthusiasts still. If you found Graphene to have rough edges it’s not going to be much better in the world of Linux phones.

Android apps can run through a compatibility layer called Waydroid. Allegedly it works pretty well, but it’s not super convenient.

Personally I put my bets on a Fairphone 5. It’s currently running /e/OS, which is a French open source degoogle Android. Open source development for the Fairphone 5 is very active. If I were to install something closer to proper Linux on it now I would go for Ubuntu Touch (which uses the kernel from Android rather than mainline), but it seems like it’s also moving quickly towards supporting mainline Linux and PostmarketOS in a good way.

The phone should last a while as it’s repairable, and if they’re not ready for Linux phones it makes it easy to install /e/OS to get back to degoogled Android. And it has a large community of users/developers. So I think it’s a good option.

Then again, if the goal is a fully FOSS phone for casual users it’s possible waiting a little longer is not the worst idea.

Here! -> !firesidefedi@tubefree.org

Love this album and song.

A “black mariah” refers either to a police wagon or a hearse. In the case of this poor fellow he’s got a wooden coat and he’s never coming home—the narrator is seeing the hearse coming, in the form of a big black Ford.

It gets a bit confusing when the Clash sings “no need for the black mariah” in Guns of Brixton—in that case they’re saying there’s no need for a police wagon, as the protagonist of the song has already been shot dead. Presumably they’ll need a hearse though.

Nick Cave uses the slang for a police car in the Curse of Milhaven, where the protagonist is “off to the asylum in an old black mariah”.

Skal nevnes at Europa allerede har lover under Digital Services Act, og at EU-kommisjonen allerede har en spennende prosedyre i gang mot TikTok.

Om TikTok blir felt her er det rimelig å anta at Meta er de neste.

You’re being distracted from actually doing something.

A constant stream of awful bullshit, right to your screen. The feeling of doing something by shouting into the abyss.

Trump doesn’t care if you see pictures of him raping children or learn about all his corruption unless it is transformed into actual political action. Taking to the street, organizing, running for office, supporting those who do.

Everything is a distraction from action.

I don’t want to use anything Google if I can help it, so I’m using the FOTO keyboard which has its own swipe engine.

It’s… Work in progress. But the keyboard overall is pretty good.

For real. Whenever I eat (Italian) pizza normally around a bunch of freaks using knife and fork I just silently rejoice about my superior cultural capital.

And if OP is American, chances are those people don’t even know how to use a knife and fork properly.

They’ve changed it in recent years, apparently changed it back for the half time show.

I suspect a lot of things would have been said had the artists been allowed to say what they wanted. I’m impressed and disappointed by their professionalism.

Then again, within the constraints of not saying anything political, it seems both Bad Bunny and Green Day did a decent job getting their points across.

Puppet jealousy.

(Worth noting that the title of the post has since been corrected, and it is no longer false/misleading, just a bit random)