I live in Australia.

I agree. Micro-blogging was always bad, even in the early Twitter days. The people that used it back then and yearn for an equivalent now are the most opinionated, self-absorbed wankers online.

This poses an active danger. We are visual creatures. It will cause distraction.

We are way past that point. Cars have had massive, phone shaped touch screens in them for years. Every year, more and more of the cabin controls are moved from physical buttons and knobs, that you can operate and adjust without taking your eyes off the road, to settings hidden behind multiple layers of menus on the gigantic touch screen. In some cars you can’t even change the direction of the air conditioning without accessing the touch screen.

Yes, my longest running account was also banned after I used an offensive word directed at homophobic redditors abusing the first openly gay professional footballer in Australia. I was banned, but they were not. It’s a consistent theme on reddit; what matters is how you say things, now what you actually say.

Losing the account was not the problem for me, it was that only certain types of hateful/offensive language were punished. I’d rather have a free for all like exists in some Lemmy communities than a shit in between like that.

Hilarious, isn’t it?

Firefox for my parents would result in calls every 3 days for sites that aren’t working right.

Very difficult to believe. I have had issues with Firefox over the years but in every single instance it was a result of my custom setup. The browser has no major compatibility issues out of the box. I think it’s way more likely your parents are technologically illiterate and confuse other problems or gaps in their knowledge as issues with the “new” thing (in this case, the browser).

I agree. The connection between all of these things is that they involve relationships. Humans are social animals that can suffer from loneliness and AI companies are exploiting this in a similar way. Loneliness is a common thread throughout all of these AI psychosis suicide cases.

I don’t understand why so many people default to “wouldn’t happen to me, that person was just stupid” every time this happens. Did you guys not read the bit where he was being encouraged to commit violence in public by the chatbot? If it’s getting to that point then there is clearly a massive fucking problem that needs urgent addressing, regardless of the intelligence of the user.

Humans are very social animals and these companies prey on the lonely by making their chatbots as affirming, sycophantic and approachable as possible.

???

This isn’t true and dismissing the anti-cheat issues because you don’t play these games is quite ignorant when they are some of the most played in the world. Just off the top of my head, all Battlefield games, PUBG, Apex Legends, Valorant, Rainbow Six Siege, Escape from Tarkov, League of Legends, Fortnite, Destiny 2…

I think it’s easily good enough for general use. It’s only certain types of gamers (anti-cheat support is still pretty terrible), and people who are heavily attached to a specific Windows program that they spend a lot of time using, that will have trouble switching across full time. For everyone else, Linux is superior because it runs so much faster than the now incredibly bloated Windows. Depending on the distro, it’s also arguably simpler than Windows too.

I’m not sure I’d call those methods easy. They are all way more time consuming and annoying than Android is currently.

If you’re in the EU there is now at least one alternative app store. iOS hasn’t opened up anywhere else in the world AFAIK, so it’s still a pain for everyone else. You used to be able to use the AltStore without jailbreaking iOS (maybe you still can), but the process was annoying and didn’t feel particularly secure as you had to provide your Apple account details.

I don’t think people are doing it because the new phones have better specs. It’s more a social status flex or because tech consumerism (buying new toys) is a default hobby now for many.

Relative to what? Better for the planet than what? I’m not really sure what your point is here, you seem to be implying that a secondhand market for Android phones doesn’t exist (note: it does, and Android phones are still much better value secondhand because they lose value so quickly relative to iPhones).

I find it very strange how many people in the comments here think the solution is to buy an iPhone. Maybe you are all just rich and can afford to spend $1000+ based on vibes, but considering the Android market still has a massive value advantage I’m not really sure what the point of switching is. This all feels very similar to how some Westerners decided Chinese tech and even the Chinese government were suddenly problem-free just because Americans elected Trump for a second time.

In all fairness to smart watches, mine is what turned me on to regularly checking the UV index.

Can’t you just do that on your phone? Surely if the UV is high, you just plan accordingly for the day? Sunscreen, wide brim hat, stick to the shade where possible, etc. I can’t imagine what benefit constantly checking the UV on your watch gives you. Even if it did happen to fluctuate for some reason, you would be wasting so much time constantly ducking in and out depending on what your watch says at any given moment.

Sideloading being so easy on iphones

Is it easy? Apple has only made that change in the EU AFAIK, it’s still a closed system all around the world.

I’m just saying Apple doesn’t make anything close to a cheap stripped down $200 model.

Yes, I think that’s exactly the point people are trying to make to you.