4 ms·

I cannot control how much data I consume. Especially now with more and more websites being so big. And no, not every device supports uBlock Origin. Pi-Hole / Ad

I cannot control how much data I consume. Especially now with more and more websites being so big. And no, not every device supports uBlock Origin. Pi-Hole / Adguard only does so much these days. iOS / Mac updates are humongous. 100+MB per webview-wrapper app. And they aren't sharable. iOS 18.1 today was 8GB. How many Apple devices do you have? Every website these days starts to automatically play videos, with no way of disabling that (looking at you Fandom, and until recently, Ars Technica). All video is consumed in a streaming manner. At least when you watched a movie over cable it didn't consume bandwidth. But when you watch the same movie on YouTube TV it is counting towards your 'limits'. And you cannot set proper limits, as they calculate your usage once per day. Go over, $10 per 50GB on Cox. And your limit is 1280GB, even on their 2Gbit connection. So unlike with your car where you have a pretty decent view on when it's empty, and you can fill up at almost the same price as the previous tank, here you're screwed twice, once because you can't measure, and second, because the price is outrageous. For a 2Gbit connection, you can actually go through your limit in ... 2Gbit = 250MB / sec. 1280GB = 1310720MB. 1310720 / 250 = 5242.88 seconds, or 1 hour, 27 minutes and 22.88 seconds. Insane. We need more competition.

pascalxus 2y ago
this means we need more visibility on what's sucking up so much data. and then we need to start boycotting and deleting any and all apps that insist on wasting so much data. i bet, those services and sites that are so huge will quickly clean up their act once we all stop using them. Or they'll just go out of business and we can choose some better ones.
- washadjeffmad 2y ago
  But why? Packets aren't finite. We only care about how much data because they're charging for it, not because it's relevant. If someone charged based on how long packets were in transit on their network or the time under load, wouldn't those provide similar but better outcomes?
sounds 2y ago
Can you move? I know many can't. Since the ISPs collude to gain a local monopoly over entire apartments, sometimes cities, sometimes states [1], ideally your response would be to de-occupy them, the same as if state police decided to disproportionately shoot at you because of your race. [1] https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks-2023 https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc...
- hedora 2y ago
  Yep, having all the minority and cosmopolitan voters move out of the state will certainly teach racist politicians a lesson on election day!
  - sounds 2y ago
    Have you tried intentionally griefing their gerrymandering?
    - NikkiA 2y ago
      This has 'just be rich' vibes.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
gruez 2y ago
>I cannot control how much data I consume. Especially now with more and more websites being so big. And no, not every device supports uBlock Origin. Pi-Hole / Adguard only does so much these days. This might be technically true but for all practical purposes it's irrelevant. When your data cap is 1TB, random websites' ads or autoplay videos don't make a dent. Most of the actual usage is stuff that you can control: youtube/netflix, games, even os updates are pretty consistently sized that you can't plausibly plead "I couldn't control how much data I was using!" as you blow past your 1TB quota.
- everforward 2y ago
  You are forgetting multi-user and multi-device homes. My grandma has 3 Apple devices by herself; that would be 24GB of updates, or ~2.4% of a 1TB cap just for her Apple updates. Stick 4 of her in a house and it’s nearly 10% of the cap just for that. A single Steam game can easily be 50GB, so there’s another 5%. It’s also an unreasonable burden for multi-user homes. Does anyone actually want to coordinate who gets to watch Netflix this month and who won’t be playing multiplayer games on Steam because they’re not allowed to download patches? Does that actually seem reasonable?
  - gruez 2y ago
    >You are forgetting multi-user and multi-device homes. My grandma has 3 Apple devices by herself; that would be 24GB of updates, or ~2.4% of a 1TB cap just for her Apple updates. Stick 4 of her in a house and it’s nearly 10% of the cap just for that. 3 computing devices per person in a family of four seems... questionable. Besides a phone and maybe a laptop/tablet, any other device are typically shared, so that extrapolation wouldn't hold. Moreover ios devices is probably the worst case scenario. Pixel device updates are around 3GB, and windows updates are around 1GB. >A single Steam game can easily be 50GB, so there’s another 5%. Great, there still 85% for netflix and tiktok. >It’s also an unreasonable burden for multi-user homes. Does anyone actually want to coordinate who gets to watch Netflix this month and who won’t be playing multiplayer games on Steam because they’re not allowed to download patches? Does that actually seem reasonable? I mean if you blow your share of the quota on 800GB worth of steam games, leaving little for everyone else, that seems entirely on you? Give everyone a budget and get them to stick to it. If they can do it for cellular data I don't see why they can't do it for wifi.
hedora 2y ago
uBlock origin runs everywhere a web browser will. I’m sending this from the Orion Browser on iOS, with the Firefox versions of ublock origin and privacy badger turned on. Every other platform that runs a modern browser (safari or chromium derivatives) runs firefox natively. That doesn’t invalidate your other points, of course!
matt_heimer 2y ago
> iOS / Mac updates are humongous. 100+MB per webview-wrapper app. And they aren't sharable. iOS 18.1 today was 8GB. How many Apple devices do you have? Are you sure they can't be shared? See https://support.apple.com/en-us/102860 https://support.apple.com/en-us/102860 and https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/intro-to-content-caching-depde72e125f/web https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/intro-to-content-... Disclaimer: I haven't tested this.
- mikestew 2y ago
  Disclaimer: I haven't tested this. I have. Seems to work as advertised. You do need to have a Mac around.
eviks 2y ago
> cannot control how much data I consume... > iOS / Mac updates are humongous That's definitely something you can control
tcfhgj 2y ago
Firefox has a setting to disable autoplay (on mobile data)
winternett 2y ago
The ads and background data alone takes extreme advantage of users that have low data caps. There is no way that users should be arbitrarilly metered in an age where content is forced down our throats with no choice over it all. They either need to ban auto play ads, or get rid of caps. Actually I'd even go a step further and say that no-login wifi should be a public right... It's already insecure to use wifi at all of these private company stores like Starbucks anyway, and the companies are literally using connections to spy on what everyone does... If we continue down the path of extreme ad proliferation, the least companies could do is distribute free wifi networks as a country-wide mesh of free internet ad spam connections. We're paying more now than ever for Internet Services, the least they could do is make sure it's unlimited fully.

pascalxus 2y ago

this means we need more visibility on what's sucking up so much data. and then we need to start boycotting and deleting any and all apps that insist on wasting so much data. i bet, those services and sites that are so huge will quickly clean up their act once we all stop using them. Or they'll just go out of business and we can choose some better ones.

washadjeffmad 2y ago
But why? Packets aren't finite. We only care about how much data because they're charging for it, not because it's relevant. If someone charged based on how long packets were in transit on their network or the time under load, wouldn't those provide similar but better outcomes?

sounds 2y ago

Can you move? I know many can't. Since the ISPs collude to gain a local monopoly over entire apartments, sometimes cities, sometimes states [1], ideally your response would be to de-occupy them, the same as if state police decided to disproportionately shoot at you because of your race. [1] https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks-2023 https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc...

hedora 2y ago
Yep, having all the minority and cosmopolitan voters move out of the state will certainly teach racist politicians a lesson on election day!
- sounds 2y ago
  Have you tried intentionally griefing their gerrymandering?
  - NikkiA 2y ago
    This has 'just be rich' vibes.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]

gruez 2y ago

>I cannot control how much data I consume. Especially now with more and more websites being so big. And no, not every device supports uBlock Origin. Pi-Hole / Adguard only does so much these days. This might be technically true but for all practical purposes it's irrelevant. When your data cap is 1TB, random websites' ads or autoplay videos don't make a dent. Most of the actual usage is stuff that you can control: youtube/netflix, games, even os updates are pretty consistently sized that you can't plausibly plead "I couldn't control how much data I was using!" as you blow past your 1TB quota.

everforward 2y ago
You are forgetting multi-user and multi-device homes. My grandma has 3 Apple devices by herself; that would be 24GB of updates, or ~2.4% of a 1TB cap just for her Apple updates. Stick 4 of her in a house and it’s nearly 10% of the cap just for that. A single Steam game can easily be 50GB, so there’s another 5%. It’s also an unreasonable burden for multi-user homes. Does anyone actually want to coordinate who gets to watch Netflix this month and who won’t be playing multiplayer games on Steam because they’re not allowed to download patches? Does that actually seem reasonable?
- gruez 2y ago
  >You are forgetting multi-user and multi-device homes. My grandma has 3 Apple devices by herself; that would be 24GB of updates, or ~2.4% of a 1TB cap just for her Apple updates. Stick 4 of her in a house and it’s nearly 10% of the cap just for that. 3 computing devices per person in a family of four seems... questionable. Besides a phone and maybe a laptop/tablet, any other device are typically shared, so that extrapolation wouldn't hold. Moreover ios devices is probably the worst case scenario. Pixel device updates are around 3GB, and windows updates are around 1GB. >A single Steam game can easily be 50GB, so there’s another 5%. Great, there still 85% for netflix and tiktok. >It’s also an unreasonable burden for multi-user homes. Does anyone actually want to coordinate who gets to watch Netflix this month and who won’t be playing multiplayer games on Steam because they’re not allowed to download patches? Does that actually seem reasonable? I mean if you blow your share of the quota on 800GB worth of steam games, leaving little for everyone else, that seems entirely on you? Give everyone a budget and get them to stick to it. If they can do it for cellular data I don't see why they can't do it for wifi.

hedora 2y ago

uBlock origin runs everywhere a web browser will. I’m sending this from the Orion Browser on iOS, with the Firefox versions of ublock origin and privacy badger turned on. Every other platform that runs a modern browser (safari or chromium derivatives) runs firefox natively. That doesn’t invalidate your other points, of course!

matt_heimer 2y ago

> iOS / Mac updates are humongous. 100+MB per webview-wrapper app. And they aren't sharable. iOS 18.1 today was 8GB. How many Apple devices do you have? Are you sure they can't be shared? See https://support.apple.com/en-us/102860 https://support.apple.com/en-us/102860 and https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/intro-to-content-caching-depde72e125f/web https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/intro-to-content-... Disclaimer: I haven't tested this.

mikestew 2y ago
Disclaimer: I haven't tested this. I have. Seems to work as advertised. You do need to have a Mac around.

eviks 2y ago

> cannot control how much data I consume... > iOS / Mac updates are humongous That's definitely something you can control

tcfhgj 2y ago

Firefox has a setting to disable autoplay (on mobile data)

winternett 2y ago

The ads and background data alone takes extreme advantage of users that have low data caps. There is no way that users should be arbitrarilly metered in an age where content is forced down our throats with no choice over it all. They either need to ban auto play ads, or get rid of caps. Actually I'd even go a step further and say that no-login wifi should be a public right... It's already insecure to use wifi at all of these private company stores like Starbucks anyway, and the companies are literally using connections to spy on what everyone does... If we continue down the path of extreme ad proliferation, the least companies could do is distribute free wifi networks as a country-wide mesh of free internet ad spam connections. We're paying more now than ever for Internet Services, the least they could do is make sure it's unlimited fully.