I don’t think that solves the problem of getting a website’s context.

But nonetheless it looks like a very useful tool for me because I sometimes get 1000+ free SMS msgs and at times have no Internet connection. I’ll have to study it more to see how SMS msgs get relayed and to where. Glad you mentioned it!

It also inspires another idea. I will not email a Gmail or MS user because they can use my email to reply and include info I would not want Google or MS to have. But if I could somehow use SMS to reach a gmail recipient in a way that they cannot reply via gmail, it would be interesting because I could then control what Google/MS are allowed to see.

If the tool were combined with this web audit tool, so I get back an attachment reflecting the website from an in-country residential IP, and diffs for the same site from other kinds of IPs from other regions, along with an audit report, I might pay ⅛ of a Big Mac per transaction.

Note that the OONI project might have an interest in this so perhaps they would fund some of it.

I did not say /how/ this tool would be used and relied on people to use their imagination. A website audit tool that declares “this page is not publicly accessible” is indeed useless if you don’t use it in clever ways for further action.

Imagine a scenario like this: the gov requires some kind of action from you (like declaring your tax) and they force you to use their shitty website. Then you miss a tax deadline, or whatever web action they demand of you. Maybe the website was unusable for you; maybe not. Regardless of your real reason for failing to comply, this audit tool can produce a certificate saying the website is down, dysfunctional, exclusive/access restricted, etc. It gives you evidence for a defense from which to push back with. You could then also incorporate human rights with your case:

Universal Declaration of Human Rights article 21 ¶2:
“Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.”

You can use a cert from the audit service/tool to say “not everyone gets public service… some demographics are excluded according to this independant audit report”

What happens now: You complain to an ombudsman that the website is broken. Some asshole in that office responds with “works for me; problem is you; erase your cookies or something”. Because they believe if it works for one person, it must work for everyone. This audit gives independant 3rd-party push back. They have to work harder to brush you off.

If it was a project that tried to route around things and auto sent emails with an overview might work, but I expect they would be thwarted by stupid network policies.

Circumvention techniques are overrated. People tend not to realise that if you surreptitiously circumvent their garbage and they don’t know it, it actually sends them a false thumbs up signal that their garbage is accepted and working.

This is the effect. That’s an example of a gov agency patting themselves on the back.

It’s laissez-faire everywhere in this regard AFAIK. At a street market you can of course haggle because there is no policy or contract. Outside of that narrow context, cash payers are upcharged because they lack the protection being given to card payers. The most important transactions are for things like public transport, mass transit and utilities. There is no haggle.

Utilities suppliers are increasingly quitting cash acceptance entirely. So then cash payers are forced to pay their bills using the post office, who charges a fee. Mass transit services are providing online and kiosk transactions for card payers without fees, then forcing cash payers to get manual service from a human. Then they charge a fee rationalising that they need to pay the worker a wage.

Playbook implies that the republicans benefit in some way in pursuit of some grander plan. The “law and order” party would most certainly want the word “terrorism” to retain a strong useable meaning. Using “narco terror” to extrajudicially execute some drug dealers outside US jurisdiction is entirely contrary to a strategy that supports republican iron-fist intolerance.

Trump has endorsed using the death penalty for drug offenses for decades, IIRC. So in his last term he is indulging in his fantasy and has non-strategically compromised the language that was helping with GOP propaganda.

When Piefed emerged, it was extremely sluggish in my browser and I got the impression that it was lightweight on the server side due to exporting a lot of the work onto the client side. That could be wrong or perhaps it evolved more. That comparison suggests I should have another look.

I could not login to the wiki using my lemmy acct. Response is: thpdo: Statement did not return 'name' attribute [auth.php:493]

First of all, you didn’t answer the questions.

But I will answer yours:

Why do people fear downvotes so much?

This is irrelevant and already addressed in Lemmy. Lemmy already has a disable downvotes config option. Beehaw is an example of where that is used. Anyone who outright opposes¹ downvotes can use beehaw.

Silent downvotes are a different matter entirely. There is good reason to oppose silent downvotes. They are a suppressive act that lacks justification, heavily manipulated, and adds negative value and toxicity.

Re: toxicity – silent downvotes are also an assault on dignity as they regard the OP as unworthy of explanation. Then there is the further side-effect of the OP being denied the viewpoint of a (cowardly) opposition and ultimately being denied understanding of the community they are in, which is not conducive to future positive content.

It’s ultimately shitty communication. Like when a bank’s way of communicating to you that your ID card expired on file is to freeze your account. Or when in Office Space they communicate to Marvin he is fired by fixing a payroll glitch. It’s that kind of communication that’s shitty. Bizarre how people actually think this is a sensible way to communicate in a civilised society.

If you don’t like the downvotes, you can use a sorting algorithm that ignores them.

There is no sorting algo that disregards silent downvotes while counting reasoned downvotes.

Also, the power of defaults is a thing. The suppression has effect because of default algos used by the unmeticulous masses. One’s own custom sorting algo could not make a dent in that even if it were magically feasible from the user’s view to associate upvotes to downvotes.

¹ I don’t outright oppose downvotes, but when our blunt options are the default shit-show we have by default or no downvotes, no downvotes is better which is why I use beehaw.

Downvote is the wrong tool for spam.

Also: spam is so rare in comparison to other downvoted content that in the off chance that the proper tool falls short, of course you can unsilently downvote the spam for the greater good. But as well, when you trigger “report spam” functionality, that is engagement. The server could of course cast a downvote in that circumstance while awaiting moderator action. That would be the most sensible of course.

This setting:

Clear cookies and site data when you close all windows

is true. I’m not sure what site data is involved there but I’ll try flipping that switch to false. I also reject 3rd party cookies but I don’t suppose that matters.

I don’t do change.org. Cloudflare is an exclusive walled garden which is contrary to the principles of democracy.

When a published “scientific study” that uses derogation like the “tankie”, I wonder why a publication would accept it or neglect to at least tag it with some kind of warning about bias.

Moreover, the second most active community, c/genzedong, further solidifies Lemmygrad.ml’s role as a Reddit alternative for tankies.

There is a bit of irony here because the research is about toxicity and insult.

I’m not going to read further despite being curious about how they make a backwards attribution of anti-Ukraine to left-wing. It’s the right-wing conservatives who tend to love Russia or at least convey the most tolerance. And Russians tend to align with US right-wing movements and politicians. Liberals support Ukraine.

Now it’s a 404 error. I think I would have mentioned that before, so I guess it vanished without a trace out the blue. All data is lost.

(update) It’s back up. I guess a 404 is not as alarming as I thought.

Corporations certainly would bend to consumer demand if consumers were wise enough to boycott and make demands. But the question is whether consumer wisdom would ever advance on a scale to make that happen. I think I have little hope of seeing it in my lifetime.

There are 35 million Mexican adults (38%) without a bank account. So living unbanked is at least an option, and more than ⅓ find it viable.

Nonetheless, it’s interesting to hear that all banks in Mexico are digital and that not a single one offers offline service. And that not a single digital bank offers logins w/out 2FA, or 2FA by SMS (which includes feature phones), or 2FA by using a card reader. If all that is true, consider posting about it in [email protected].

This is extremely reductive and oblivious to the actual realities of banking in various countries.

I think you will be hard-pressed to find a country that does not have a single bank that can serve those w/out smartphones. If you find such a country, plz post about it in [email protected] and send me the link. Then we may be able to make a case for ppl in that specific country not being boot-lickers, if at the same time being unbanked is illegal.

If you think it’s easy to be “unbanked” then I would suggest that you try it yourself first.

I have been simulating an unbanked life for years now. 5 creditors are threatening lawsuits for non-payment after refusing my cash. One took me to court and it was an easy win for me. I just appeared without a lawyer and pointed to the law.

It’s also worth noting that unbanked is more extreme that simply choosing a bank that does not require a smartphone.

It’s banking:

https://slrpnk.net/post/28294479

The army of corporate boot lickers in the mobile phone context is largely composed of people who think banking on a smartphone is wise, despite the attack surface and despite the bank being empowered to monitor their customers more closely. Banking apps are the most significant culprit for gluing people to Android.

We may never see the day when more than 5% of the population realises the importance of FOSS enough to shake free of their addiction to convenience.

Check out this EU bank: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/43348480

28.2 is too old. I forgot which version it called for.

It would be easier to understand if you had been around in the 90s. In the 90s we were accustomed to text UIs with little use of the mouse. The keyboard is faster and the mouse slows us down. Usenet was the universal forum platform of the time. We had a very rich set of apps which were very well developed because phones and GUI browsers were not competing for developer labor.

And because many people actually were offline, apps were designed for offline use. In Gnus you could fetch all headers for all the forums of interest. When offline, you could tag the topics that look interesting. The next sync would pull them down. Users automatically had their own local copy of everything.

A web browser is not half-assed, even less so compared with most apps.

A web browser is inherently shit software because it tries to be a jack of all trades which makes it a master of none. It has a huge attack service because it tries to suit many purposes. Browsers were meant to be document viewers. They were never meant to be an app execution platform. It’s rife with compatibility problems that plague them.

As I write this, I cannot see any of the comment interaction icons because the 3rd party app (Alexandria?) doesn’t play well with Ungoogled Chromium. The stock app is even worse which is why I started using Alexandria. Web browsers are a total shit show. It’s a duopoly between Google and Mozilla, and Mozilla has proven to not have the users interests in mind.

Browsers are bloated. Electron turns any app into a bloated garbage. It’s such a shit show. It’s much better to have a dedicated app for a sprecific purpose. Not a single thing trying to be many things.

Yep. Which is why I also use a personal website for the stuff I don’t want to see go away without me having any control over it.

How is your workflow setup? Do you run a piefed instance that syncs with piefed.social? Or is piefed.social your instance?