The more that media becomes a product, the harder it is to feel like you're conning an artist by getting a refund on a purchase.
It's gotten incredibly easy to put media out there, and it's great that people are able to tell the stories they want through the medium they want. At the risk of sounding like I'm just bootlicking, traditional outlets used to be able to filter out some of the more low-effort content and it was easier to expect that you were at least getting mediocre stuff. At this point, a lot of really low effort and low quality junk is in the ecosystem and it's harder to just buy something that looks cool.
In all reality, I've eaten larger purchases as losses than some dumb $20 steam game or ebook or whatever. I just don't think that people are terribly unreasonable if they feel burnt badly enough to press for a refund. It's never been easier to do the old "if I can get x number of people to give me $5 each..." bit
It's entertainment; what's lost if someone decides to only consume stuff from before a cutoff point? As long as they're finding stuff they enjoy, they've already "won."
There's a level of involvement that most people have when it comes to entertainment. The more difficult that finding something you'll enjoy gets, the less interested people will be. Discovery is not a fun part of consuming media for most, I'd imagine
Unfortunately it is an "Eff you, I got mine" thing. If someone's already resigned to sticking with things 20+ years old, they're not affected by media being bad. It's on culture to get people to buy in, not on individuals to contribute to voting on what new media is good or bad.
Rossmann is the first to admit that Clippy pfps do nothing if the person stops their activism after that one gesture. A 5 second pfp change to spark a conversation (the one we're having, for example) is pretty decent ROI.
Profile picture are literally a meme for performative activism, not something that achieves anything at all. All it does is signal to those that already think alike that you are part of the pack and everyone else will just roll their eyes.
Guys, this isn't Twitter, we don't have to be obtuse just to ramp up engagement.
Right or wrong (evidently wrong), the common assumption has historically been that the Internet giants like Google assumed the mantle of facilitating, and to a lesser degree, preserving, the digital commons. Having your own backups and general data practices is still going to be the best strategy, but I don't think it's fair or good faith to act like everyone who got bit by this and similar instances is just an idiot.
> Guys, this isn't Twitter, we don't have to be obtuse just to ramp up engagement.
I agree, but by the same notion jumping to the conclusion that this was a bad faith move from Google is overlooking the fact that the ad transparency site is still up and working for other countries.
This only impacts EU countries, even though most of the comments have assumed the entire ad archive is gone (meaning they didn’t even skim the article). A true good faith curiousity perspective would be to wonder why it’s the EU specifically.
Agree totally. I don’t agree with the requirement that we naively treat all corporations of all sizes from 5 people to 500,000 by the same rules. When your profits are socialized across the entire world you have special obligations. Sorry not sorry. How to correctly specify those obligations to avoid unintended consequences is a separate matter, maybe not even possible but it’s an orthogonal question.
I’m willing to bet the reaction here would be different (not from everyone, but in aggregate) if the headline was “Sourceforge just erased years of free software history” or “Google Scholar just erased years of scientific history” because they’d just taken down all old repos or search results for old papers without any notice.
> “Google Scholar just erased years of scientific history”
Sure the tone would be different, but anyone who was totally shocked by Google pulling a service is definitely an idiot. How much worse could Google's reputation be at this point. It's Google. They pull stuff.
That it happened on any particular day? Yeah, that is surprising. What are the odds. Could have been any day of any year.
That it happened? Not a surprise. If it matters to you, you should have done something.
I think it's not about individual, but rather collective idiocy. It's much more convenient to believe false impressions that big tech is trying to instill rather than listening to nerds reminding you that cloud is just other people's computer.
> the common assumption has historically been that the Internet giants like Google assumed the mantle of facilitating, and to a lesser degree, preserving, the digital commons
A role Google was happy to fill for so long. We shouldn't forget that, and we shouldn't let them simply throw away the responsibilities they endeavoured to undertake, just because it's no longer beneficial for them.
Platforms like Google, Meta, Xitter, and so on, have an incentive to save data, because mining that data is how they make money. So they save as much as they can for as long as they can. But if a mine is tapped out, it gets closed.
2br 1bath is a fine entry point up until you're looking at a family of 4+ or when you're talking about teenage kids who would want their own rooms. Or retirees who want to downsize, no difference
The idea is that you live there cheaply while building equity for 5 years or so and then trade up to a family house once you are married and looking to settle down.
It's gotten incredibly easy to put media out there, and it's great that people are able to tell the stories they want through the medium they want. At the risk of sounding like I'm just bootlicking, traditional outlets used to be able to filter out some of the more low-effort content and it was easier to expect that you were at least getting mediocre stuff. At this point, a lot of really low effort and low quality junk is in the ecosystem and it's harder to just buy something that looks cool.