Notices by tio (tio@social.trom.tf)

The Internet is a shithole

What drained me of power over the past years is this constant fight of debullshitting the Internet experience for me and others.

You always have to use an AdBlocker, VPNs to circumvent all sort of censorship - and for that matter change the location often else you still get blocked; find proper news sources then find their RSS, add to an RSS reader, try to read locally if these websites allow you to....else go visit their bullshit websites.

Youtube is still by far the biggest, or the only in most cases, video platform. Now even with an adblocker the youtube experience sucks - they autoplay videos, insert shorts into your face, make you click things you don't want, and now insert AI generated video description for videos.. So you have to use an app for youtube that removes these piles of poop. But these apps are constantly blocked and won't work all of the time...

I don't even want to think about search which has become a pile of nonsense. Full of fake AI websites and now when pretty much all search engines introduced AI summaries...makes searching a painful experience.

Even Reddit, which can still feel like a "community" of people posting stuff from time to time, is a garbage. Full of fake posts and bots, and no way you can use RSS to follow subreddits. Login to see some content....endless scroll....all a bazaar.

I have to fight with "free" Wordpress plugins that insert ads into your dashboard, I have to block AI Summaries in searches, I have to keep Freetube up to date and often when videos do not work there, open in Youtube. I have to read my news in a semi-broken RSS reader since some cannot fetch all of the news, I have to install a custom OS on my phone then block ads there too, but now some banking apps do not work....a constant loop of poop, to protect yourself and your sanity, because everyone is there to fucking slice you open for a view, a click, a like...

Always always a fight against this destruction of the internet even tho all I fucking want is to read some reliable science news, watch some educational videos from time to time, and post some content or search for content. What the actual fuck....

I know why this is: TRADE. Same reason why the offline world is a shithole full of destruction, garbage, less nature, all about consuming and shops. This is what happens when humans have a primary goal of trading. Same online, these platforms are about trading, your attention, data, currency in return for a service. So it is a normal "enshitification" of the online too.

At least I have Friendica, Peertube, Nextcloud, Linux (TROMjaro) and the like, that allow me to still use the Internet in a sane way.

But man...such a shithole the Internet has become. I can't even imagine how "normal" people use it without adblockers, with relying on youtube, facebook, tiktok and such platforms....must be hell in the brain for these people.

I used to LOVE the Internet back in the days. It was like a park where you met interesting things and people. Now is like a metrostation full of ads and merchants, where everyone is in a rush to go somewhere else.

#enshitification #enshitiffication #internet #fedi #youtube #facebook #tiktok #reddit #alternatives #friendica #peertube

What are some good Peertube channels to follow?

#peertube #fedi #videostream

I rarely see such articles:

"Enough with unicorns and dinosaurs – show children the magic of real, living animals instead" - theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Congrats. We need more of these! And TROMnews is meant to bring such articles to light.

The real world is many times more mindblowing than any movie, book, or story humans have invented. Not to mention it is real. If we want people to care about it, then they have to know about it. Expose children to real wonders, real stories, real life.

#nature #education

Sure "democracy"....a way for the "majority" to decide ha?!

Yet we live in a world where the ones with a lot of financial power always decide. They own the messengers, social platforms, streaming platforms, newspapers, TV stations, they give money to politicians, bribe, abuse, and so forth....

It may be hard to accept, but there is no democracy. And never was. No one voted to go to war in Ukraine, in Gaza, in Afghanistan. No one voted for the use of fossil fuels instead of renewable energies. No one votes for the prices of medicine, if we should do space missions, build a park, or basically anything else.

People vote to elect a handful of tribe leaders, after a fierce battle of influence over these voters, to then have these leaders do as they please once they are elected. And some of these leaders can't even do shit since the rich control the world anyway.

And now that we talk about democracy, in principle it is a bad idea for most decisions that need to be taken by the experts in the field. Of course we should not have a vote about how to deal with cancer screenings, surgeries, building bridges, or most of these things.

Instead of floating these fantasy ideas around we should keep it simple and reasonable: all people need access to a basic life without any strings attached. Then they can have some autonomy and get involved into all sorts of things. Become engineers, doctors, write for Wikipedia, do open source software, volunteer and so forth. Free people from this primitive trade society, and let them grow. Like creating a fertile soil to be able to grow flowers.

That's what we need. Therefore basic and good services, regardless of the party or leaders. Good healthcare, housing for all, access to education and food, access to free transport, and our basic needs. The rest will emerge out of this good environment.

#democracy #usa #elections #trump #society #communism #capitalism #socialism #voting

Hey @peertube this year I will try to push our Peertube instance to get more eyeballs and people interested to join. But we need to also help each other. We have a few original Peertube channels that prioritize Peertube and are not simply "second hand youtube channels".

Maybe you can recommend them and more on your joinpeertube.org/en_US#find-pe… page.

For one you may be aware but we published a 5 hours documentary exclusively on Peertube - videos.trom.tf/w/p/fVpfZ9VfWrW… Subtitled in several languages. We even talk about The Fediverse and Peertube in the documentary.

We have our entire TROM channel there - videos.trom.tf/c/trom/videos - Hundreds of videos. And this year I will start a new video series. Some videos will also be about the fediverse, peertube, and FOSS.

We recently started our motorhome adventures (very family friendly channel) - videos.trom.tf/c/tromhome and we are posting there twice a week or so.

Be Brave To Act made by @sober_pirate has really great and original content about volunteering. We will try to help him keep the channel updated - he mainly posts on youtube.

Or VideoNeat - videos.trom.tf/c/videoneat - documentary trailers.

We need more original Peertube creators and not simply those who "mirror" their Youtube channels there. If people know that the channel X posts only on Peertube and not on Youtube, it may make these people follow on Peertube. But if people know that channel X posts on Youtube and Peertube is just like a mirror....is different.

You and others need to help us and people like us, if possible, to get the Peertube content out. So that people get to use Peertube more often.

I choose to post on Peertube first, or only, despite not reaching as many people as I would on Youtube, but I do it because I think it is worth the effort to promote this sane alternative to the giant ad-platform that Youtube is.

And thank you for what you've created. By "helping" us, I mean perhaps promote good and original Peertube content on your homepage and also share it if possible. So the newcomers get to see that Peertube is not just the awesome software you've built, but people use it to create original/good content.

Thanks!

#peertube #youtube #videos #foss #trom #tromsite #fediverse

You know how some people complain about the stability of Linux for desktops and how, you know, it may not be reliable, especially Arch. What about Manjaro + Arch. How about a system based on Arch but with Manjaro's repos + the Chaotic AUR repo?

Well stable as a mountain! Using TROMjaro for many years now and despite doing a lot of updates, all works perfectly fine. Long gone are the days of being afraid to do the updates. This is my experience.

I 100% rely on my laptop for a lot of daily use uses. I need it to work! And it does!

So happy about that.

#opensource #foss #tromjaro #arch #manjaro #chaoticaur #tromjaro

Welcome to planet Earth. A random rock in the Universe where the most "intelligent" species only cares about trade. Trade this for that. So that the members of its species spend all of their life trading. That's all it is.

It is not about creating smarter and relaxed humans, and a nice environment for everyone. Not about exploring and learning, or enjoying. It is about trading.

Primitive species.

#TradeRuinsEverything #capitalism #work #jobs #slaves

Very good conversation about AI. Here's the ALJazeera link www.aljazeera.com/program/stud…

I like the focus on "the system" rather than the "AI". The "AI" is not really the problem here, the system is, where it incentivizes the use of AI for bad purposes. From big companies who want to harvest people's data and show ads to them, or sell their "AI" as a service, and thus be incentivized to make this tool for profit motives, to individuals who are using these tools to create more shitty content online in order to get more clicks, more views, more money.

In the end it is what we talked about for years now: the problem with trade. We live in a trade-based society where everyone is forced and incentivized to trade. So instead of making a tool like AI for detecting skin cancer, or creating videos more easily, and overall to help the society, people, and be useful, humans make these tools in order to trade them: for data, attention, or currency.

We need to talk about that! We need to talk about our society more than we need to talk about AI.

#TradeRuinsEverything
♲ mastodon.ar.al/@aral/111982930…

USA, the land of free. So glad you are not ruled by the communists that tell you what to do and control your life. That'd be awful...

Oh wait, the freedom government of USA can take your kid away from you for no good reason??? Noooo....that's communism! That's China!

Oh wait, watch this documentary www.videoneat.com/documentarie…

So ridiculous how people think that they are "free", when in fact we are all imprisoned by rules and laws, many of which are entirely harmful and primitive.

#tromstuff #abuse #usa #free #freedom #capitalism #TradeRuinsEverything