In case anyone is unaware of the point of this: it’s about the UK’s (for now) new age verification law, where you have to be 18 to have a credit card.
This really is the least-worst implementation of this I’ve seen so far, providing you have (or can get) a CC.
And at least it lets you continue buying games/content until this awful law gets repealed or rewritten by competent adults.
Doubling down on the batshit. Everyone knew VPNs were going to be the low effort workaround to this authoritarian batshittery.
I get what the (well meaning, I think) people lobbying for this are trying to achieve, but everything from the lobbying to legislation to enforcement seems to be happening in the worst way imaginable. Almost like it’s an intentional “You want to see how badly can we do this? Hold my drink! YOLO!!”
For me, the tell was UK PLC leaving it up to the sites themselves to decide who/how the verification would be done. Classic bad management “I don’t understand the slightest thing about any of this, but HOW HARD COULD IT BE?!” response. It’s like the “series of tubes” stupidity all over again.
Are you linking “everything is an Xbox” with growing their platform? Are you new at internet arguments?
I mean, it sounds like they’re copying Microsoft’s “everything is an Xbox” lunacy, but its unclear if that’s reality based on what I read there.
But I’d not be surprised if the “Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man” meme applies to this, given how focussed the VP of each company’s console division is on their main competitor.
But who knows… Perhaps not even them? 🤷♂️
Not sure it is the same kind of thing, but I’ve been using Homebank ever since the various personal financial management applications pulled out of the UK market.
I swear “How to disable AI in x…” is all our lives now. 😬
Prompted by this, TIL that !chargeyourphone@piefed.social exists. 😄
By “that shit”, do you mean every website/app that may contain age-restricted (not just sexual) content? Because that’s what comes into force in the UK next week.
I’ve been dreading this for decades. 🤬
It’s not just Reddit, nor are they the first to roll it out early.
Doesn’t every Instagram user automatically have a Threads account now? (Even if they’re unaware of it.)
Meta faking Threads user count that way on top of what’s happened with X user count would explain this “milestone” quite easily.
If it eventually gets outed as being Ponzi scheme, I’ll not be remotely surprised.
Found this to be an interesting read, and well written. Thanks for sharing it.
Pocket won’t be missed. Self-hosted alternatives like Wallabag are better and private, so switched to it many years ago. Integration (and enabled by default, requiring about:config to disable) ensured I’d never use it out of principle.
Fakespot (the website) was genuinely useful to help ID scams on Am*z*n Marketplace, though I never used the extension. But I think that enshittified in recent years, so (in the style of Stephen King’s Misery) it’s probably for the best.
Related, the Keepa extension is useful as a price rigging detector, but I expect that will “number must go up!” soon enough, too…
It certainly removed my ability to say “Companies are shoehorning AI into everything! I wouldn’t be surprised if they do it with Notepad…” as a form of mockery. It was one of the first damned victims.
Edit: I’m genuinely surprised technical people (with appropriate rights on their PCs) still use it, though. I switched to Notepad++ nearly 20 years ago.