LinkedIn have been doing this shit for years. I'd load their site through Firefox for Android and see this stuff constantly. I raised an issue several years ago suggesting that they should at least use a cookie to suppress the nagging and a tech sympathized with me but clearly nothing was done.
Because the bottom line is they want people using the app. Not because the experience is better for me, but because it's better for them - they can scrape contacts, track activity, push notifications and generally just do abusive shit that a website can't. Everyone who checks into this site once a week or less often should just delete the BS app and load the site from time to time. The whole service is just a meat market anyway so there is no reason to make things even worse.
When an account is signed up, is there information such as client ip address that could also be used to spot more inauthentic activity? And more generally, sign up should probably be made resistant to automated bots by randomizing HTML layout & ids and using captchas so it's not so easy to drive sign up through scripts.
I do front and backend work. Biggest issue I see is people not thinking through interfaces properly (e.g. efficiencies & atomicity of operations), sanitizing inputs on both sides, error handling, and putting in the appropriate validation, authorization & testing.
Like I said, controversial but it's quite reasonable for the operators of these servers to want to raise money somehow. Even if the activity pub feed describes elements with a "this is an ad" tag and allows the recipient to choose whether to serve it or not.
Controversial idea but maybe federated servers should think of some way of delivering federated advertising. Some way to fund the model in a fair and equitable way while draw away funding that goes into Twitter or other social media platforms. Doesn't stop people blocking it of course.
I don't think any platform collapses overnight. What you have to do is do is make something "better" and engage in a campaign of attrition to get people to move over. Produce content that other visitors see and like. Submit links to that content to aggregators (e.g. Slashdot / Fark etc.). Even start submitting links on Reddit that lead over to Lemmy and so on.
Make Lemmy feel as normal as Reddit. People will get used to the interface, the quirks and perhaps stay. Every person who stays is one less for Reddit. Now "better" is doing some heavy lifting since Lemmy has some advantages (ad free, federated) and some disadvantages (inline media & limits, sign up confusion, app). The disadvantages need to be addressed and the advantages need to be made stronger.
When I was at school and we'd rent a couple of VHS tapes to watch once a week and this was one of them. It stuck in my mind even though it was a pretty terrible movie. I think the premise was great and I remember a couple of scenes from it.
Ironically the only way to use some old Macbooks these days is to put Chrome OS Flex on them. Apple is far more aggressive about killing off old hardware when it feels like it. You can still use them as-is of course but over time the browser and other web based apps degrade and refuse to work because of issues with TLS, CA certs (expired), discontinued backend APIs and unsupported web content APIs.
I think its more that Google supports them for only so long and then they go bitrotten. The final update for these devices should also unlock the firmware so people can wipe the device and install Linux or something on it.
As a kid I watched the Clonus Horror and watching The Island I realised it was a straight ripoff of that earlier movie. Can't say Clonus was much good but at least it had an original premise.
I saw Judge Dredd in the cinema and hated it. Not at all faithful to the books and you just know that some studio exec said "we're paying for Stallone to be in this picture so he's gotta take his helmet off!". And Rob Schneider was in it. Apparently it was a lot more violent but they cut it all to get a better rating. The Dredd movie from a few years back was awesome.
I liked Demolition Man though. Much better comic tone to it.
I find it hard to see how they could protect content from ad blockers without also crippling pages that self modify their own content. Perhaps they could put headers akin to content security policy that forbids external modification. Assuming a browser were to honour that header I could see bad publicity and a lot of people just moving to another browser which doesn't. Additionally, ad blockers aren't the only things that modify pages - breaking accessibility add ons could be more negative publicity (just like with Reddit).
I think browsers would be best off to let websites develop countermeasures if they're so sore about ad blockers. Perhaps they could use "self healing" Javascript libraries that put back content which is removed. Or they could just refuse to work if they detect an ad blocker, e.g. they stick some canaries in the DOM or along blocked paths to see if an ad blocker is present.
What boils my blood is infotainment systems with icons and functionality for premium services that you can't hide or remove. It wastes space and it's just evil. I rented a Toyota Rav4 in Florida and I swear 1/4 of the front screen was for some satellite radio service that wasn't enabled.
I'll give the game a go but I've played so many MMOs to know the warning signs of a game using grind (travel, upkeep, etc.). If that happens I'll be gone as fast as I signed up.
And I say that as a veteran of Asherons Call, Everquest, EQ 2, Lord of the Rings Online, Dark Age of Camelot, World of Warcraft, A Tale in the Desert, Company of Heroes, Company of Villains, Guild Wars and many more. I think I played EQ for 18 months on subscription but the amount of grind convinced me I'm not going to put up with that any more. When those other games resorted to the same BS I was gone.
Personally I thought first impressions of Mastodon (and Lemmy) were abysmal. Being told to pick a server without knowing what that means or the consequences of that choice just scares people away. Unless someone has a specific server in mind they should not even be asked to pick one. Instead a number of existing servers should volunteer as curated core servers and new users are automatically assigned to one of those. There can still be a "let me choose" link that goes to a full list of servers if they prefer to browse them all
LinkedIn have been doing this shit for years. I'd load their site through Firefox for Android and see this stuff constantly. I raised an issue several years ago suggesting that they should at least use a cookie to suppress the nagging and a tech sympathized with me but clearly nothing was done.
Because the bottom line is they want people using the app. Not because the experience is better for me, but because it's better for them - they can scrape contacts, track activity, push notifications and generally just do abusive shit that a website can't. Everyone who checks into this site once a week or less often should just delete the BS app and load the site from time to time. The whole service is just a meat market anyway so there is no reason to make things even worse.