DABDA

I'm not the one complaining about being bored and requesting that everyone else amuse me. All those things I listed are things that are regularly posted so what's the issue?

Yeah, where's the fun? There's no posts about owls/bats/invertebrates/cats/dogs, no cooking or food posts, no pictures of people knitting socks, nobody asking general questions, no articles and pictures about space, no discussion around movies/tv/books, nobody ever posts about gaming of any kind, there's no memes to be found anywhere, no poems or short stories, no digital/traditional/AI art.

For some reason browsing news/politics/technology always seems to revolve around depressing and infuriating topics which is different from every other platform.

"Look, me and the McDonald's people, got this little misunderstanding. They have a clown named Ronald McDonald..."

In this particular case it's likely because it was a double-post so this duplicate is getting pushed down while https://lemm.ee/comment/10561771 currently shows 0 downvotes.

https://join-lemmy.org/news/2023-12-15_-_Lemmy_Release_v0.19.0_-_Instance_blocking,_Scaled_sort,_and_Federation_Queue

Instance Blocks for Users

Users can now block instances. Similar to community blocks, it means that any posts from communities which are hosted on that instance are hidden. However the block doesn’t affect users from the blocked instance, their posts and comments can still be seen normally in other communities.

So due to sunk cost the better choice is to continue supporting bad behavior?

Those are some huge water bears!

the more you need click bait pages to drive ad views on those exchanges

"They" (the local newspapers) don't have to make that Faustian bargain but choose to because it's easier or more lucrative to. They could take meaningful steps to address and communicate to their readers that they care about the accuracy and informative aspects of their reporting as well as the safety and respect of their electronic systems used to access it.

Wikipedia doesn't have flashing boner pill pop-ups and their pages aren't filled with intentionally misleading information -- I strongly suspect their donations would fall off a cliff if that started to change. It's not a great comparison since the scale and business structures are different from local newspapers but other entities like PBS also show that people will donate for good/honest content.

Ad blockers just wrongly get painted with this brush as being horribly destructive to the poor companies that have no choice but to be evil when they were a logical consequence to the boundaries of acceptability being constantly pushed. We had and text, static banners -> animated banners, auto-playing sound/video, iFrames -> pop-ups -> recursive pop-ups -> mouse click & window resize disable scripts -> overlays -> unskippable full-page video -> multiple unskippable videos -> LLM/AI generated bogus content. And tons of other variations I'm not remembering at the moment. Ad blockers also (mostly) don't work properly when the ads are being served from the same source as the content; the newspapers could host the ads themselves and vouch for their safety and propriety.

The primary use of ad blockers isn't to ensure the websites don't make money but to protect the end user from unwanted effects of intrusive advertising. If we're expected to be concerned with their loss of revenue they should be as concerned about ads masquerading as OS prompts, scams feigning legitimacy, false medical or financial claims, malware and miners being injected etc. If they won't accept responsibility or accountability for the material they are serving and effectively endorsing then it's only prudent for the users to protect themselves.

And if they want to attract subscribers instead of relying on advertising income then they should also avoid racing to the bottom by (solely) relying on LLM generated "articles" and misleading clickbait tactics. If they have to rely on tricking their prospective customers then they aren't peddling something actually worthwhile and aren't owed a reward for doing so.

Heinz Automato > Relax

That's colloquially referred to as retail therapy. I don't think occasionally indulging in it is bad as long as you're cognizant of its purpose as a coping mechanism and understand the relief/pleasure it provides probably isn't going to be long-lasting.

In my family, all impulse purchases had to be "justified" with whatever flimsy reasoning was necessary. I don't think that's any better and if it's not coming at the expense of things you actually need, it's good to be able to decide you want something just because you do. Otherwise you can start going down the path of, "Do I really need cheese on this burger? Do I really need variety in my food? Do I really need to be eating three times a day?"

Life should be lived, just don't lose sight of the big picture of course. Also, I'm sure other people around you approve of your buying deodorant :)

And where exactly does the word "private" appear in their comment?