It’s Chromium underneath, so using it increases Google’s control over web standards

Well, only classically

I have 170 albums in my Bandcamp collection. I have a lot more on my mp3 collection which I have bought via other means. Each album is maybe $10 on average, so that is around $1700. I have used Bandcamp for around 8 years after 7digital closed their EU store and eMusic became trash. So that’s around $17 per month. Not a lot of money in my book, music means a lot to me!

I’ll just use this opportunity to mention kagi.com, a search engine that you pay for, but which doesn’t track you and gives you controls for customizing your search results yourself instead of letting an algorithm build a profile of your habits. I’ve used it for months now, and I’m not going back.

So much this! I don’t use Spotify, I buy all my music on Bandcamp. Sometimes I buy an album after just hearing the first song because I find it interesting, but then after a few more listens I realize that the album is not what I thought it was. However, I’m already committed because I paid for it, and it now sits at the top of my collection, so I continue to listen to it. Sometimes it turns out I find qualities in the music that I didn’t notice at the first listen, and I learn to like it. Sometimes not, and I ditch it.

This was also the way I discovered music before Spotify even existed, I just never changed my habits (I just used other services than Bandcamp back then). I think more people should try turning off the algorithmic entertainment faucet that is Spotify and try committing a bit more to the music that they listen to. Also, a lot more money goes to the artists this way, Spotify is basically stealing from the artists.

I think it was John Erlichman who served under Nixon who said that. Whether that’s true is actually disputed though: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs#20th_century

I agree that both Nixon’s and Reagan’s policies on drugs were pretty harmful though.

This. It costs money, but on the other hand it is FAST, looks good and ad-free. You also have the ability to block spammy domains so they just don’t show up in results.

I’m going to call it “eggs”. A tweet is now an “egg” and tweeting is “egging”.

I actually don’t have a problem paying for online services. I host my own email, I pay for Kagi search and I do monthly donations to Mozilla and Wikipedia. What I have an issue with is services that start out as advertisement based and then introduce paid plans, because now you still have all these shitty mechanics just for driving up engagement which results in unhealthy incentives for content creators and rabbit holes. I want a service that is for YouTube what Kagi is to Google Search. But perhaps that model is too difficult to monetize, I don’t know.