Those articles have been proven wrong numerous times, but even if they weren’t, that has nothing to do with OP who is claiming that Google controls those companies prices.

Dude, I have a pi-hole, I block ads on every device in addition to the pi-hole. When I’m not at home I route by traffic through my home pi-hole. I know how ads work. I’ve even added ads to websites and used Google AdSense myself.

What they said in the OP is categorically false. Google does not control other companies shop prices. They simply sell a spot to companies to match a profile. They do not control pricing. They do not sell your data. They sell a spot that matches a companies targeting profile. If Google sold your data they would lose their biggest cash cow because other ad companies would buy it and decrease Google’s market share. What you are seeing is Google’s Adsense script running on people’s websites. Google controls that data, not the website.

What an insane take.

The other day it was crowded by football protestors. Was pretty fun to see. I was the tourist.

They don’t handle exercise very well. They slip right out of your ear and aren’t waterproof.

I saw a Quiznos yesterday. I too thought it had gone out of business

I honestly think it’s just because their lawyers work through other stuff first. They’ll get to it eventually

I know it’s being overly recommended in here, but kagi pretty much gives you exactly what you want. I’ve had very few times it’s been unable to give me my search in the first few results. Others swear by SearXNG

Apple Maps is fantastic for navigation, but it doesn’t have enough locations on it. I use Gmaps for searching locations and apple for navigating.

Lemmy isn’t social media. If you’re defining forums as social media then literally and comment section on any website, including blogs and news sites somehow become social media. I don’t know how people started thinking forums are social media but it’s just plain incorrect.

the problem with the person you’re arguing with is that they clearly value property more than the human. Who cares if a business gets destroyed? Well in america you don’t have the support structures to help that business recover from that, since insurance will try their damn hardest to not cover it, and the government isn’t going to help. So the person you’re arguing with is arguing from a completely different position than you. You’re arguing “why are you using to force to stop protests” and they’re arguing “property might be destroyed, so you have to stop that”.

It’s not even a Wild West town, it’s conifer. It’s a rich person Mecca. Anyone that has a gun up there is most likely just using it to scare off wolves or bears, but not actually hunting (source, my in-laws live there).

That’s not how selling ads works…

Hmm I got Starlink earlier this year and I don’t remember it having a default. I think it asked me to set the ssid immediately.

The simplehuman line of trash cans has a step that keeps the internal trash can liner out of the trash can so you can easily see that you didn’t replace the bag. It’s very helpful for this.

What a weird thing to call pride and narcissism the same. Being prideful is nothing to do with being narcissistic. One is an external thing, the other an internal. The prideful person cares about things other than themselves and shows that. The narcissistic person cares about no one but themselves, and their actions reflect that.

https://easysociology.com/sociology-of-power/the-iron-law-of-oligarchy-an-outline-and-explanation/

Or alternatively https://themindcollection.com/pournelles-iron-law-of-bureaucracy/

Why in the world would you think that someone paying to use a service is a problem? Sure direct donations are more helpful, but that doesn’t run servers to actually distribute the content you’re viewing. Your problem is completely different than what we are discussing about ad blockers.

By your definition every single news comment section is social media, which is clearly a ridiculous suggestion. Webchat, irc, literally anywhere there’s a comment section. That’s just clearly incorrect and so broad as to be a completely useless definition.

Lemmy has the ability to lock down forum creation, like on programming.dev which is the 8th largest lemmy site.

Social media has always been defined as being about people, not topics. People just don’t even try to use the right words though so you get ridiculous things like people calling something coincidental or unfortunate “ironic”.