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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 2nd, 2023

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  • I agree with you. However, in part this is often done because giving or receiving medical advice online is generally ill advised. There can, in theory, even be legal concerns (potentially). Say someone gives bad advice and the person is harmed from it. I also think that all the misinformation that got disseminated during the pandemic left people gun-shy on these topics.

    But I still agree with you in spirit. The “talk to your doctor” thing can be a too cold and reflexive with some folks. And there are a few home remedies that do work. And maybe the person asking just wants some emotional support and not the usual soulless canned advice.

    This topic reminds me of people who automatically throw an 800 number out there whenever certain key words get mentioned. There’s almost always good intentions behind that. But in the USA at least, calling such a number can make a person’s life much worse. Loss of agency followed by a huge medical bill. Because it’s not really about helping the person. It’s about optics and collecting money.









  • I am not a cybersecurity expert. And these are good questions. The problem is certainly not unique to Lemmy.

    However, my (limited) understanding of it the opposing opinion is. 1. This is bad for privacy (marketers and other bad actors use these to track down your IP and other metadata) and 2. It should have been thought of before now and already had some protections put into place.





  • I’ve blocked their ads for years. I support content creators by buying merchandise and with Patreon.

    After hearing about this, I’ve decided to give YouTube Premium a try. It seems like an easier and more consistent way for me to support creators. I watch YT almost daily, and get a lot of value from it. I hate ads and refuse to watch them, but Premium users don’t see them.

    I wouldn’t blame anyone for walking away from YouTube over this. But for me at least, this was kind of a no-brainer.

    I know Google tracks users and targets us with ads. I’m deep in their ecosystem anyway, and rely on their services for work, hobbies, and managing my data. I am stuck with them, unfortunately.

    I do block what I can (Meta, Microsoft, Amazon) with Pi Hole and browser extensions. But there’s no total escape from an internet footprint, short of dropping off the grid. I’m dependent on Alphabet to live my lifestyle, for better or worse.