Is this mainly a US-centric take though? In the UK, yes we had AOL here and a fair number of people I knew had it, but it was never dominant as far as I could tell (I’d be happy to be corrected, I only came in around 1997). It was MSN messenger that became established as the dominant instant messenger here by about 2000, I don’t really remember too many people using AIM.

I’m surprised at that, from my experience I think it’s still more normal than not to have analogue clocks at home, and I would always prefer an analogue watch.

I was mildly interested until I saw “designed for creators”. Seems like a meaningless marketing term that gets added to everything these days.

Can’t even vote without a Google account.

Or could it be that it might bother them but they just keep quiet and put up with it, assume that it’s part of owning a computer and feel powerless to change anything?

Admittedly I do have the bias of experience which could blind me to the difficulties, when I phrased my first two sentences as questions they were genuine questions. Between work and personal life I must’ve installed Linux in some form at least 200 times over the last 20 years, so I’m not most users.

I’ve also not used Windows in many years, the last I think was when I had to use Windows 7 for work about 10 years ago and I found it extremely difficult to get it to do what I want. If it’s improved then it’s improved.

On the other hand a novice user can ask somebody to install Linux for them, what about that? That’s what my non-techy parents have done, and it’s easier for them to use Linux (they say so) and easier for me to provide technical support for them.

Also yes, avoid Nvidia.

How many times have you setup Fedora or any other Linux distribution and have every single thing working from the get go?

I’m talking drivers, audio, networking, libraries, DNF, repositories, plugins, runtime dependencies, …

Is proprietary software any easier than that though? Don’t you have to put in much more time removing all the spyware and bloat they put in and then spend all your time perpetually fighting against forced updates and applications being installed without your permission?

Whereas with Fedora my experience is more or less install it and forget it.

The “it’s easier” argument for proprietary software I think died at least 15 years ago.

Choice of applications is a different argument.

I had one of those printers in the 90s.

Missed out OpenTTD, that’s my go-to game these days.

They’re not making an argument for the filter bubble though.

Very anecdotal but I’ve asked my normie friends about Threads and they think it was hardly ever a thing. It may be 100 million active users but that’s still a small percentage of the population it’s available to, and given it’s for profit that might not even be enough to sustain it. With Mastodon and Lemmy it’s quality over quantity, I’m happy to be smaller, just hope we can keep Threads out if they last long enough to get around to federating.

They’ve always been pretty transparent about that kind of thing though haven’t they?

I don’t think they’re denying the filter bubble exists, just giving a different theory on why things have turned bad.

It’s probably the same kind of culture clash that the original video talks about. I’ve got to admit it is something that can rile me up probably more than it rationally deserves to, if I let it (and I’m sure others too).

I remember being told off by a moderator in the 90s for not writing full-sentence replies. You can’t even imagine that today. Of course back then, as the video touches on, if you didn’t like the culture or policies of a forum you just moved to another one, there were no cries of “censorship” because you choose where you want to be.

But I think that makes a good point, in the past people could choose whether they wanted to go on a forum for serious discussion, or a different forum for more casual low-effort posting. These days all these different “posting cultures” are forced to be together and end up annoying each other.

I get that, I live in the south of my country too, but only the US feels entitled enough to say “the south” and expect the whole world to know where they are.

Interesting video, makes a lot of sense. Just a couple of things to add:

In the old days of forums it’s worth remembering that people on the internet had more in common with each other than they do today - i.e. generally they were people who were in to computers.

What really gets me down these days is the extremely low-effort of posting everywhere you go. I think that partly comes from the impersonal nature of online communication. Nobody knows who anyone is any more.

I agree it would be better to go back to independent message boards but it’s a shame there’s no “call to action” - it would be nice but how do we get people to do it? This is a popular YouTube channel, it would be great if it started some kind of ball rolling.

I’m only going by what the website says, if I click “how to install”: https://wavemaker.co.uk/blog/how-to-install-a-pwa/ there’s no mention here of it working with Firefox or relevant instructions (same as in the FAQ), and if I go to https://wavemaker.cards/ there’s no obvious way of installing it and it’s heavily promoting Google Drive.

I’m also not sure it’s FOSS, this page makes reference to “Open sourcing the code for the older versions” which seems half-hearted at best and I’ve not found any code yet.

Even if I’m wrong about all of the above I’m still put-off by the Google-centric focus of it all.

I can’t imagine wanting to write a book on my phone though.

Requires Google Chrome, Google Drive? No thanks…

Even if there’s no good remote out there (I’ve not looked into it either) I would argue that the drawbacks of not having a remote are vastly less serious than the drawbacks of using one of these “smart” devices.