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> It's already been proven several times over that we cannot influence this situation. I have a few points against this. First is that it is not that importan

> It's already been proven several times over that we cannot influence this situation. I have a few points against this. First is that it is not that important if we can revert M$ (yes, sorry, I'll refer to them this way for this comment) behavior, the most important is that we should have alternatives. For that we must push hardware and software vendors to support other OS's, specially Linux. Second is that, by making a choice, we can influence statistics and this influence may be becoming strong enough to give us some bargain powers (a lot of recent open source drivers only became economically viable because of that). I don't know how much worse is the Android-land but most "normal" people are using their mobile devices more than their desktops, the same shift doesn't happened to power users. This made the share of power users on desktop to grow significantly recently, specially after the pandemic. Actually, I partly assign to this the current uptick of the Linux desktop (more than 3% with ChromeOS above 4% recently). We may be a minority, but we are no longer a minority that can be ignored. A share of 7% of under served proficient users is a huge market wanting to be pleased. Vendors can not ignore us any longer. We should not waste our efforts trying to convince M$ not to turn their OS into a ad-infested wastebasket; Let it be! We should concentrate our efforts so that we can comfortably live without depending on M$.

ryandrake 3y ago
Very true. Go shadow a "normal" user of a web browser without adblocking, and you'll see they spend so much time dismissing popup after popup after popup. It's totally normal to them and doesn't even irritate them. The act of finding and tapping the tiny "X" is practically automatic and second nature. Same for people who don't curate their phone notifications. I was standing in line at a fast food restaurant and had a good look at some guy's phone he left unlocked on one of the tables. It was just notification after notification. Ding, buzz, ding, ding, buzz, ding-ding, ding-ding, buzz-buzz, ding, ding. The top notification area had something displaying there 100% of the time. How can people even live like that? Another example. My elderly parents still watch cable TV. When I visit them, I can't even bear the loud and constant ads, but it doesn't even phase them--they don't even notice them. My brain is about to explode after watching an hour long show. Normal people don't even know of a world without being constantly bombarded with interruptions and messages.
- Aerbil313 3y ago
  Indeed. Just look around to 'normal' people.

ryandrake 3y ago

Very true. Go shadow a "normal" user of a web browser without adblocking, and you'll see they spend so much time dismissing popup after popup after popup. It's totally normal to them and doesn't even irritate them. The act of finding and tapping the tiny "X" is practically automatic and second nature. Same for people who don't curate their phone notifications. I was standing in line at a fast food restaurant and had a good look at some guy's phone he left unlocked on one of the tables. It was just notification after notification. Ding, buzz, ding, ding, buzz, ding-ding, ding-ding, buzz-buzz, ding, ding. The top notification area had something displaying there 100% of the time. How can people even live like that? Another example. My elderly parents still watch cable TV. When I visit them, I can't even bear the loud and constant ads, but it doesn't even phase them--they don't even notice them. My brain is about to explode after watching an hour long show. Normal people don't even know of a world without being constantly bombarded with interruptions and messages.

Aerbil313 3y ago
Indeed. Just look around to 'normal' people.