#indieweb 2023-12-05

2023-12-05 UTC
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[tantek] What does "find and connect to devices on your local network" even mean? iOS permission prompt I’m seeing a lot and makes me wonder what I would want from an IndieWeb perspective with my "local network" vs internet
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[snarfed] probably not much for indieweb specifically
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[tantek] [snarfed] I’m thinking of the indieweb client app implications / abilities of using multiple devices on your local network to edit the same post, fully locally, without having to access the internet
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[tantek] The blogging while camping example / use-case, using your phone + tablet
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[tantek] Similarly when on an airplane
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[snarfed] oof. yeah I mean that's possible, but personally I think taking offline first to that extreme, ie synching multiple devices on an offline LAN, or separate local client and server, is probably too far, and likely a distraction for us
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[snarfed] vs offline-first clients like PWAs, which makes sense
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[tantek] Or is that not what that "permission" means? Does "local network" mean access to your Wi-Fi? Like just to contact the web? Or to find other devices near you?
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[snarfed] I expect it's devices near you. smart home etc
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[snarfed] maybe on your wifi, maybe bluetooth, etc
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[snarfed] regardless though
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[tantek] Really weird that many apps are asking for it then when they don't have any features that connect with local devices
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[tantek] I’m going to start taking screenshots
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aaronpk IIRC there is some other feature that gets bundled under that permission too. it's definitely weird
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aaronpk more details on the specifics of the network access here, but this is very dev heavy https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/663874
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aaronpk this is one of the better documented APIs from apple tho! https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/663858
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aaronpk i wish they would have this level of detail for the location APIs
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Loqi hey aaronpk: we try to keep jargon (APIs) out of this channel to make it more inviting to newcomers, can you move this to #indieweb-dev?
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aaronpk yeah yeah
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c​apjamesg That is cool!
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[KevinMarks] I think that "which part of Zero Configuration didn't you understand?" applies there. So now there's a popup to enable ZeroConf?
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[KevinMarks] The irony here is that the original use of ZeroConf was pretty much what Tantek said about bootstrapping a network from scratch while camping, but the modern problem is more that devices are in the same room but attached to different networks.
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[KevinMarks] The discussion at http://zeroconf.org/ before it introduces the RFCs explains this
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[tantek] [KevinMarks] except I’m confused by non-Zeroconf apps asking for this permission
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[tantek] Makes me wonder if some ad-surveillance library that's bundled into apps is trying to do sketchy local network fingerprinting crap
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[James_Van_Dyne] Yes, it’s completely ad-surveillance. They use Bluetooth beacons in stores to track people. Basically so they can A/B test store layouts and such.
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[James_Van_Dyne] I chatted once with a company who built software that helped track this / build maps of customers stores. Like Google Analytics, but for meat space.
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lockywolf Please, criticise: https://lockywolf.net/2023-12-05_how-to-make-a-good-feed-reader.d/index.html
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aaronpk Bluetooth beacons are the Bluetooth or Location permission, not the local network permission
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aaronpk but also yes I wouldn't be surprised if some apps are also asking for local network permission to do fingerprinting of some sort
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[schmarty] local network fingerprinting a la skyhook sounds exactly correct. (and gross)
Fisher2445995, [tantek], ShockTohp, bleb, [aciccarello], eldritch2 and geoffo joined the channel
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eldritch2 howdy folks
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eldritch2 I wast just looking over the indie web wiki (for like, the 4th or so time I'd stumbled across it from various places)
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eldritch2 and it has neocities listed as a silo, which as far as I can tell doesn't seem accurate
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[tantek] I was wondering why there wasn't a big rant post about this (local network fingerprinting) and perhaps I hadn't searched far enough, e.g. https://www.howtogeek.com/692528/why-iphone-apps-ask-for-devices-on-your-local-network/
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[tantek] what is neocities
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Loqi NeoCities is a free website hosting silo in the spirit of defunct silo GeoCities (Yahoo shutdown in 2009) that looks like a stepping stone to getting started on the IndieWeb https://indieweb.org/NeoCities
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[tantek] what is a silo
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Loqi A silo or web content hosting silo (AKA walled garden), in the context of the IndieWeb, is a centralized web site (like most social media) typically owned by a for-profit corporation that stakes some claim to content contributed to it and restricts access in some way (has walls) https://indieweb.org/silo
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eldritch2 yeah, I was confused about the walls part
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eldritch2 as far as I can tell neocities doesn't have that aspect
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eldritch2 some limits in backend hosting resources, but that's the case for any non-homeserver, corresponding with price
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aaronpk they didn't always support custom domains, right? without custom domains it's clearly a silo. but as soon as they offer custom domains then it's a web host
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[aciccarello] Seems like it has custom domain support now so it's similar to a Tumblr IMO
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eldritch2 yeah, you get a free foo.neocities.org domain
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[tantek] oh that's new! glad to hear the custom domain support and yes that's worth an update.
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eldritch2 but if you go through and get a domain of your own you're free to set it up
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[tantek] that's an important change
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[tantek] what is Tumblr
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Loqi Tumblr is a popular content hosting silo, especially for found images & video, that explicitly supports multiple types of posts, and through free domain mapping, a content hosting service as well https://indieweb.org/Tumblr
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[tantek] yes aciccarello it does sound like the Neocities dfn could be updated to be more like the Tumblr dfn
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[snarfed] yeah there's a slice of products on the fuzzy boundary between silos and web hosts, not just Tumblr but http://micro.blog, http://WordPress.com, etc
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[tantek] eldritch2 can you link to the Neocities docs for setting up a domain of your own with your Neocities?
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[snarfed] when they allow custom domains, they move into full fledged hosts
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eldritch2 sure, lemme try and dig it up
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[snarfed] (and web sites on subdomains can be IndieWeb participants too!)
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[snarfed] (also Blogger, Medium, others)
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[tantek] snarfed, true, it is a fuzzy boundary or perhaps a spectrum, with different degrees of ease-of-migration / portability
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eldritch2 I do know that for migration/portability, neocities lets you just...upload your site files and download them
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[tantek] e.g. like when you setup a domain of your own, do they redirect from their past silo (path) or subdomain permalinks to the veresion on your own domain, or do all your silo (path) / subdomain permalinks break? or do they serve both (duplicate content)
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[schmarty] they serve it at both - <username>.http://neocities.org and your domain
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[tantek] so duplicate content then
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eldritch2 ah, https://neocities.org/supporter
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eldritch2 custom domains isn't in the free tier
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[tantek] eldritch2, similarly, do you have a link on Neocities for How to Export? (which usually includes things like permalinks beyond just files)
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[snarfed] still ok! paying for services is a good way to encourage their sustainability
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eldritch2 its in the $5/mo one
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[tantek] custom domains isn't free on http://WordPress.com either, still worth documenting
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[tantek] what is http://WordPress.com
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eldritch2 yeah, I'd be worried if it had no apparent way to make money
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[snarfed] yup. normalizepaidservices++
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Loqi normalizepaidservices has 1 karma over the last year
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[schmarty] re: duplicate content: rel=canonical baybey 😄
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[tantek] what is WordPresscom
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Loqi It looks like we don't have a page for "WordPresscom" yet. Would you like to create it? (Or just say "WordPresscom is ____", a sentence describing the term)
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[tantek] [schmarty] wait does Neocities support rel=canonical or was that a suggestion they should?
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[tantek] argh oops that's #indieweb-dev talk (rel canonical)
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[tantek] WordPressCom is /WordPress.com
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Loqi ok
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eldritch2 okay the uploading/downloading files is just part of the basic account screen
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[tantek] yup, if Neocities has a page on that with screenshots of how to using the basic account screen, we can link to it
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eldritch2 they don't seem to haave a wiki, which is a bit frustrating
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[tantek] that's ok, if they have any kind of docs for this in any format at all, we can cite it
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[schmarty] the docs are available in their user dashboard, though custom domain details might be limited to folks who are already paid supporters.
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[tantek] so no permalinks to docs?
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[tantek] what is WordPressCom
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Loqi Wordpress.com is a blog hosting service that runs the WordPress open source software https://indieweb.org/WordPressCom
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[schmarty] no permalinks that i'm aware of.
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[tantek] we should change Neocities dfn to be more like http://WordPress.com's page dfn, perhaps as a "content hosting service" rather than blog hosting
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[schmarty] i'm in a meeting but here's a screenshot of the custom domain config https://media.martymcgui.re/01/00/a2/dd/efff1d3253d86addcbbf18873f3e615ec08fcbf5071c26f72ad3c920.png
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[tantek] [schmarty] mind if we (or you?) upload that to the IndieWeb wiki?
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Loqi definitely
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[schmarty] please feel free! i'm stuck doing work stuff at the moment.
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[tantek] thank you!
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gRegor Haha, that was a joke. capjamesg said his post count wasn't deterministic. Didn't expect someone to create a page :)
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gRegor oops, that was for -> #meta
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s​tarrwulfe gRegor: Always count on me to write about whatever when I get bored. Just happened to light on the subject at work at some point and remembered the talk notes with some help from my OneNote.
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c​apjamesg 😄
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c​apjamesg My post count isn't deterministic.
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c​apjamesg It is a long-running problem.
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c​apjamesg I seem to have written -1 blog posts today.
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c​apjamesg But, it is +- 10 correct, I think.
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[tantek] oh dear, how do you get -1?!?
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[tantek] did you unpublish?
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c​apjamesg No. My counting logic isn't working somewhere.
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c​apjamesg I wonder if this has something to do with my concurrency logic...
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s​tarrwulfe I'm still trying to come up with a hacky way to turn Craft.do pages (and maybe even Notion) into an MF/Indieweb compatible blogging platform with some JS on-the-fly rewrite tricks
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s​tarrwulfe BTW anyone here have any knowledge/experience with using something like supabase in lieu of SQL?
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[KevinMarks] Is this eventual consistentcy?
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c​apjamesg Is it eventual consistency if it never converges?
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[tantek] eventual consistency on a single server seems like a bug
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s​tarrwulfe (or maybe I need to take that over to \#indieweb-dev 🤔)
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s​tarrwulfe Or maybe I'm already there... LOL
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c​apjamesg [snarfed] Tumblr allows custom domains.
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c​apjamesg Let's go to #dev.
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[KevinMarks] This was an appengine thing with the original datastore, which was designed with Google scale launches in mind, so you had to define which parts of the data you wanted to be write/read consistent, and maintain your own counters.
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[KevinMarks] Does this sound like a commonplace book? https://www.colophon.cards/
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rubenwardy what's a colophon card?
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c​apjamesg I'm curious too!
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[aciccarello] What is a colophon
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Loqi A colophon is a page or section, like a footer, of a site that describes how the site is made, with what tools, supporting what technologies https://indieweb.org/colophon
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[aciccarello] That sounds different than the cards thing
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rubenwardy > My goal with Colophon Cards is to create a web-based note-taking app for bookmarking and reading websites, ebooks, and documents. It needs to find a balance between ease-of-use and advanced features. It should have a user-subjective sharing model built in from the start where data is shared while the organisation is specific to each. Finally, it needs to provide straightforward tools for turning notes into documents for sharing with others.
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capjamesg https://mastodon.online/@latte/111529335543396299
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[tantek] lol indeed. I have been using the mute button A LOT on threads because of this
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[tantek] I've decided to mute anyone rage-posting especially about content that doesn't directly impact them (like rage-news-posting folks)
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capjamesg This is IG sending you a notification about something happening on Threads even if you don't have the app installed.
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[tantek] hopefully it's sending a signal back to The Algorithm to stop recommending those people to others who don't follow them
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[tantek] capjamesg indeed. I get those even with the app installed
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capjamesg Wow.
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capjamesg It is weird.
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capjamesg Pretty much none of them are relevant to me.
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[tantek] I keep on muting
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[tantek] I'm hoping that IG/Threads will deprioritize promoting muted accounts to new people
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g​reenzero well this is interesting
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[aciccarello] The facebook team was pretty creative about coming up with new notification categories to hide. I'm not surprised that's come to IG now.
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barnaby notifications turning to garbage was one of the final straws which pushed me away from using fb
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[tantek] barnaby: https://tantek.com/2016/230/t1/facebook-emails-99-notifications-but
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barnaby yikes. I turned off their email notifications years ago, but after a while the bell notifications menu in the top right would fill up with BS like ”you have a new recommended post” or “there have been posts in groups”
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barnaby it was amazing to experience in real time just how quickly the notification dopamine conditioning can be reversed
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barnaby I would looooove to see internal analytics surrounding those changes, but seeing as fb still spams this nonsense all the time I suppose it must have been broadly effective :/
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barnaby (haven’t used fb for years but had to log back on recently to manage an event there)
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barnaby they seem to be hard-pushing their version of vertical-video-shorts now
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[tantek] regarding email notifications spam, Twitter was way ahead of the curve on this one. 11y ago: http://tantek.com/2012/271/b1/why-twitter-spamming-new-updates-emails-every-week
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Loqi [preview] [Tantek Çelik] Why is Twitter spamming users with new "Updates from Twitter" emails nearly every week?
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[tantek] and https://tantek.com/2014/283/t3/twitter-email-notifications-22-checkboxes
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Loqi [preview] [Tantek Çelik] Twitter's email notifications now up to 22 checkboxes: https://twitter.com/settings/notifications Previously: tantek.com/2012/271/b1/why-twitter-spamming-new-updates-emails-every-week
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