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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • MrFunnyMoustache@lemmy.mltoPrivacy@lemmy.mlPapers please
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    5 months ago

    Noticed that. It used to be easy to bypass, because old.reddit.com allowed me to go there with a VPN, but they recently patched it. I found that changing the user agent to make it look like you’re on Chrome and Windows, alongside with US/Canada VPNs tend to get around this, but it isn’t very reliable.

    Stealth used to work for a while, but not anymore either.

    They are doing it to stop scrappers scrapers and punishing people who use a VPN is just a bonus to them.




  • Probably because iOS is extremely dominant in North America, and iMessage is preinstalled on every iPhone. To talk to someone on WhatsApp or any other chat app, installing the app isn’t enough, but you also need the other person to have it. Since in North America’s most popular mobile OS is iOS, people don’t feel the need to install another app.

    On Android on the other hand, Google didn’t enable RCS by default until 2023. RCS has existed before iMessage and even before WhatsApp, but it was poorly marketed. I, as a fairly tech savvy person, only heard about RCS in 2022 when headlines about it were flooding my feed.

    Google is also partly to blame, since they had so many chat services that were available simultaneously and almost all of them were short-lived. Google Talk, Google+ Hangout, Google Hangout, Google Chat, Google Meet, Google Duo, and Google Allo. Not to mention the other chat apps that flooded the app store, like WhatsApp, Line (which is very dominant in Japan), Facebook messenger, Telegram…


  • Yeah, not surprised at all. I know many people for whom Facebook is 90% of their internet usage, and some people I know use the words ‘Facebook’ and ‘internet’ interchangeably. Personally, I deleted my account well over a decade ago.

    I wonder if we could see how many new users each year (without bots), I’d wager their growth is pretty stagnant because they already have so many users that nearly every person has an account.






  • I understand that, but from my personal experience, this is not more stable because companies like these will fire a chunk of their workforce without batting an eye for the slightest shift in the market, whereas a self-employed person will just see a slight decline in demand. Also, the difference in income more than makes up for the perceived stability. Sure it isn’t for everyone, but as a consumer, I’d rather most of the money I pay won’t go to corporate executive’s multi-million dollar salary, but to the people actually providing the service.