Once again, a New York Times columnist is loudly baffled that the American public is mostly unaware of the Biden administration's solid -- even spectacular -- record of achievement.
Once again, a New York Times columnist totally fails to even consider a key reason -- that news media have done almost nothing to let the American public know about that record.
@dangillmor The #NYTimes#WAPO and others have become commodities. They #EnShitified themselves when they began putting profits before journalism by putting up #Paywalls and forcing #Subscriptions. Here is a letter I wrote to the times--On #SadieHawkinsDay --which sums up what they have become and the damage they have done.
#EU#Music#Streaming#Subscriptions#Apple#Spotify: "According to the EC, however, Apple was guilty of "unfair trading conditions" that banned developers from advertising cheaper subscriptions available outside the App Store, informing users about available price differences, providing links to cheaper subscription options, or even emailing app users about cheaper options.
"Apple bans music streaming app developers from fully informing iOS users about alternative and cheaper music subscription services available outside of the app and from providing any instructions about how to subscribe to such offers," the EC concluded.
The EC said that Apple's conduct may have led many users to pay more for music streaming subscriptions and could have caused non-monetary harms by degrading the user experience on music streaming apps.
An EC spokesperson told Ars that investigators "calculated that, in the European Economic Area, around 1.5 million subscribers to the main music streaming apps—other than Apple Music—on iPhones and iPads ended up paying 2–3 euros per month more as of July 2023 and throughout the entire duration of the subscription, compared to what they could have paid outside of the app. This was due to the in-app commissions imposed by Apple on developers, which were then passed on to consumers through higher subscription fees."
But the non-monetary harms were considered more significant. The EC said it imposed the approximately $1.95 billion fine after determining that a steep fine was the only way to deter Apple and other app stores from repeating these anti-competitive behaviors."
I've posted it before in the past but I'll post it again:
The single best thing I ever did with my #email account(s) was to set up a #filter for #MailingLists or #Subscriptions and have it skip the inbox and apply a label to it.
It catches 99% of things and makes me very happy to not have them in my inbox or notifications.
I forget exactly when I bought this HP laptop I'm currently using. It was at least 5 years ago, and I grabbed it for school. It has Windows 10 that came on it preinstalled. I used it for a bunch of school stuff over the last few years, never had any issues.
Today, I'm trying to mess around in Excel, I'm logged into my Microsoft account like usual, and it's trying to tell me I have to pay now to keep using Excel? It just gives an option to pay or shut it down. After 5+ years of using legitimate, paid-for Microsoft Office products on here. SUCH weird garbage.
Super thankful for LibreOffice and being able to reset all my defaults to that.
I'm now hearing via @rtw and other folks that Microsoft is going to be pushing for subscription-based models for all their stuff (including things like my version of Windows/Office 10 that I paid for and have been paid off for 5+ years).
Microsoft is gonna get pushback on this if they're rolling it out everywhere. Some people will pay, sure. But many will find open source options (easily) like I have before and now will even more.
If Substack is perfect for your needs then use that. Your problem with substack prolly isn't who else uses it, but rather, that you yourself are calling a proprietary, privacy disrespecting deprecated monolithic silo a "Perfect solution".
Instead of doing what's right, and for the right reasons, you eschew dogfooding on #FOSS when you should be championing it, and call a professional data mining haven perfect, when it is anything but.
Well, you're already on the Fediverse, so you should know better, but I'll dispense with the lecture now and point out a few good FOSS solutions that are Fediverse powered (and one that isn't, but still rocks as a publishing platform) for you:
Option #1, #WriteFreely, which you can find over at its git repo under https://gitHub.com/writefreely/writefreely.
Option #2, deploy yourself a #WordPress site, Then install the #ActivityPub plugin - the latest release publishes into the Fediverse and allows any Fediverse account to reply/comment threads natively - like I'm responding now. It also allows anyone on the Internet to join the discussions as well. WordPress has many options for subscriber lists, Etc., as well as #paywalled#digital_downloads, if you like.
Option #3, #Mitra is a Fediverse publishing platform that currently supports paid subscriptions for Authors: https://mitra.fediverse.observer/list - pick one that has open registrations or self-host yourself, like all of the other solutions here :)
If you're really talking about maintaining subscribers lists, but especially Having a subscriber list and building it up, then most ignorant folks would recommend HubSpot - but they would be wrong, because you can get the same powerful inbound marketing solution / #CRM, only better, for #FREE (That's a bare minimum savings of over $500/month)!!! So install #Mautic and let it do what it does, which you can get here: https://www.mautic.org/download/source-code and then after that, use it in conjunction with the following FOSS application that was tailor made for exactly what you're asking for...
#Ghost is FOSS, and in conjunction with an inbound marketing platform like Mautic is the perfect dynamic duo - like Batman and Robin. But even better, is that I'm going to point you towards a #HowTo that is an actual cookbook #tutorial written by someone expressing the same lamentations as yourself, and here's the exact solution they've provided for you:
By the way, your Mautic server also integrates directly with#MailGun (or Sendgrid, SendinBlue, SparkPost, etc.) to complete your transactional email system that will tell you when each and every recipient received, viewed (and or how long) your emails, as well as how many times they looked at those emails, with a bunch of other tools as well.
I hope that helps, and I'm very glad that you came to your senses about not using a privacy disrespecting, proprietary closed source solution like Substack - besides, registering your own domain name would have hidden the fact that you were using substack anyway, so it's about YOU doing the right thing the right way. Please choose your software in the future based upon the freedoms and ethics it offers in serving you and your customers. There's evil people everywhere, and the smart ones are using FOSS too - not substack.
#Videogames#Subscriptions#Streaming: "Twenty years ago you owned DVDs. Ten years ago you probably had a Netflix subscription with a seemingly endless library. Now, you probably have two to three subscription services, and regularly hear about shows and movies you can no longer access, either because they’ve moved to yet another subscription service, or because platforms are delisting them all together.
The video game industry is getting the same treatment. While it is still common for people to purchase physical or digital copies of games, albeit often from within walled gardens like Steam or Epic Games, game subscriptions are becoming more and more common. Like the early days of movie streaming, services like Microsoft Game Pass or PlayStation Plus seem to offer a good deal. For a flat monthly fee, you have access to seemingly unlimited game choices. That is, for now.
In a recent announcement from game developer Ubisoft, their director of subscriptions said plainly that a goal of their subscription service’s rebranding is to get players “comfortable” with not owning their games."
@Tutanota I am a "Revolutionary" subscriber. Last time I bought the "recharge code" on digitalgoods Bitcoin ask me a fee of 2/3€. Recently I paid more than 10€ in fees for small transactions for the same network: this is a dramatic scenario where the fees cost more than their transaction. My subscription style is "only crypto" and I would like to pay with different cryptocurrencies like XRP, XDC, XEC, ETH, etc. Currently my favorite wallet doesn't support XMR. So Tuta has to find a solution or different crypto partners.
#Saltwire isn't an ethical #news source.
I don't have old Twitter reach, but I think everyone should reconsider their #subscriptions, unless they get get a human side. They callously profit off family losses, charging $600 or more, for #Obituaries, then double-dip forcing TikTok advertising between Obituaries & now, the Public MUST #subscribe to see the Obituaries you paid huge sums to publish in their tainted rag. #NovaScotia#Halifax#CapeBreton ASK ME
We know subscription models work. But media sources that seek to punish viewers by denying them full access to a story without a subscription cut off their noses to spite their faces because unless it's an exclusive the viewer can find the story elsewhere for free and will share it, thereby driving traffic to that site, traffic that forced subscription prevents itself from getting because viewers aren't posting links to them. So subscriptions are self-defeating.