God, how do normal people even browse the internet anymore?
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@alice It always surprises me when people complain about ads, because I would have expected them to have tried solving their issue, or be asking about a way to solve it. Not judging, just odd.
I rarely see an ad to the point where I'm viscerally offended when I do. At the risk of sounding boomerish, I'm not sure exactly when, but some time between the 90s and now ads when from, "Let me show you how great my product is!" to "Let our marketing team jerk themselves off because fuck our customers"
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@alice I'm a teacher, I use adblockers, automatic cookie decliners and similar addons. Sometimes I assign my students online grammar exercises. When I see the same website I always get a shock and try to gently suggest that maybe they should look into getting an adblocker. Similarly, my heart drops everytime they just click "accept all" to get the cookie banner to disappear as quickly as possible.
You can hardly blame them for clicking “Accept All”, since attempting to reject cookies will often lead the user down a rabbit hole of dark patterns, instead of accessing whatever site you actually wanted to see.
Firefox + uBlock Origin (and custom filter lists) happily helps me reject and not see such things on the pages I visit
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God, how do normal people even browse the internet anymore?
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@alice@lgbtqia.space @aly@mastodon.nz I have both uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger, but I don't know if they are redundant.
I thought about PiHole but it seems a bit overkill for me. Other than ad-blocking across the whole LAN, does it do something that uBlock doesn't? I worry about my roommates having something internet-related break on them because I'm putting something between them and the internet, and I'm just a common network moron.
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God, how do normal people even browse the internet anymore?
@alice this could explain why so many people just talk to chatbots instead of actively browsing the internet
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@alice I don’t install an ad blocker on my work computer because…internal software reasons…and I *loathe* looking at web pages on it.
I guess it’s a good way to keep me from browsing the web on work hardware.
@drahardja Back in my days as a big-company software developer (30+ years ago), I turned off Javascript in my browser and caught flack from mgmt because they had a web page that had glitzy useless scripted stuff on it. There was also a group of us who used Linux, but had to reboot to Windows daily to log our hours. Nowadays I use pihole at home and am pretty happy with it.
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@alice In addition to the usual stuff on the desktop, I've been running Rethink DNS on my Android for a few years now. It's absolute stomach-churning to see how much tracking garbage is in every single app.
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@DavidNielsen someone asked "how do you even keep track of all your followers?" and I said I make tiny hair dolls for each one, so I can tell whenever one is out of place.
Then I spent over an hour searching for the perfect photo of a small, real human (or cat) hair effigy.
I was disappointed that I couldn't find just the right image, so I started searching for felting instructions so I could make my own.
Like a perfectly normal person.
I'm now the proud owner of this.
Like a perfectly normal person.
@alice @DavidNielsen Pet my effigy and tell it she's a good girl :3
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@DavidNielsen someone asked "how do you even keep track of all your followers?" and I said I make tiny hair dolls for each one, so I can tell whenever one is out of place.
Then I spent over an hour searching for the perfect photo of a small, real human (or cat) hair effigy.
I was disappointed that I couldn't find just the right image, so I started searching for felting instructions so I could make my own.
Like a perfectly normal person.
I'm now the proud owner of this.
Like a perfectly normal person.
@alice @DavidNielsen I try to get one shitpost per toot, at a time, with great effort, but you go and do this? There's material here for at least five.
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@DavidNielsen someone asked "how do you even keep track of all your followers?" and I said I make tiny hair dolls for each one, so I can tell whenever one is out of place.
Then I spent over an hour searching for the perfect photo of a small, real human (or cat) hair effigy.
I was disappointed that I couldn't find just the right image, so I started searching for felting instructions so I could make my own.
Like a perfectly normal person.
I'm now the proud owner of this.
Like a perfectly normal person.
@alice @DavidNielsen w what wha
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@starlily @alice I’m blocking around 7% of DNS queries with #pihole. My primary battle these days is with #IoT devices that want to call home every few seconds to minutes. I’m just now learning that there are IPv6 techniques for bypassing pi-hole. Other methods as well. It’s hand-to-hand combat with trackers! Worse, many of the devices simply fail if you block their WAN access.
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You ever read Nightfall by Isaac Asimov? Either the short-story or the novelization of it. Both are good.
But... That. We have to do what they did.
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@DavidNielsen someone asked "how do you even keep track of all your followers?" and I said I make tiny hair dolls for each one, so I can tell whenever one is out of place.
Then I spent over an hour searching for the perfect photo of a small, real human (or cat) hair effigy.
I was disappointed that I couldn't find just the right image, so I started searching for felting instructions so I could make my own.
Like a perfectly normal person.
I'm now the proud owner of this.
Like a perfectly normal person.
We had a little felt cat made out of our previous cat's hair.
This one isn't finished yet but it will probably be a hat. -
We had a little felt cat made out of our previous cat's hair.
This one isn't finished yet but it will probably be a hat.@alice @DavidNielsen
It didn't let me mix a video and pictures in one post
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God, how do normal people even browse the internet anymore?
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@DavidNielsen someone asked "how do you even keep track of all your followers?" and I said I make tiny hair dolls for each one, so I can tell whenever one is out of place.
Then I spent over an hour searching for the perfect photo of a small, real human (or cat) hair effigy.
I was disappointed that I couldn't find just the right image, so I started searching for felting instructions so I could make my own.
Like a perfectly normal person.
I'm now the proud owner of this.
Like a perfectly normal person.
@alice Let me know when you need ginger fur and I'll pester Marty B
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@alice Interesting approach. Although the website layout looks as if it was ad-riddled itself

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@DavidNielsen someone asked "how do you even keep track of all your followers?" and I said I make tiny hair dolls for each one, so I can tell whenever one is out of place.
Then I spent over an hour searching for the perfect photo of a small, real human (or cat) hair effigy.
I was disappointed that I couldn't find just the right image, so I started searching for felting instructions so I could make my own.
Like a perfectly normal person.
I'm now the proud owner of this.
Like a perfectly normal person.
@alice Didn't know that was a thing, but you know what? I would have bet you all the money in the world that there is a japanese subculture for it. Including textbooks. I'm looking forward to your cats' reaction to their felt effigies
Also praise to @DavidNielsen for asking the important questions
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@alice @DavidNielsen well you can shave the cat if you're in a hurry, but it's a bit cruel.