Those companies do not respect their users and yet most of their users enjoy their disrespect.

  • deegeese
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    8 months ago

    You have to understand that gamers are used to being abused by gaming companies, so Steam gets a lot of credit for being less awful than what came before.

    • King@lemy.lolOP
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      8 months ago

      Kagi users pay for repackaged search results from Yandex and other free search engines(with little amount of results coming from Teclis) Furthermore, kagi uses the results of Marginalia without contributing back to the code or even supporting the project financially.

      If you want to pay to a search engine, just donate to any of the opensource search engines( Alexandria.org, Wiby, Marginalia, Stract or even Metager) you would like.

      Finally I will end my comment with this : https://danluu.com/seo-spam/

  • Mojo@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I get where you’re coming from and agree with you, but is there a good alternative to Duolingo that’s comparable and respects their users?

    • King@lemy.lolOP
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      8 months ago

      Depending on the language and the platform, I can suggest a lot of services that is way better and free and user respecting.

        • Louisoix@lemm.ee
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          8 months ago

          Lingodeer (haven’t used it in awhile, but remember it being quite decent) and Satori reader are what I can recommend for Japanese. Also for practically any language AnkiDroid works wonders for vocabulary.

        • Louisoix@lemm.ee
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          8 months ago

          After living in the Czech Republic for almost 5 years and giving the language several tries, I can say that there are probably no really good apps for it. Considering that the language is relatively unpopular, difficult, and not really useful anywhere else, that’s expected.

          • fᵣₑfᵢ@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            8 months ago

            Yeah, I’ve scoured the internet for good (and free) apps myself. That’s why I’ve been using Duolingo even though it’s not even all that helpful because it doesn’t explain the grammar. I also use Anki too, but its help is also limited. I did buy a text book, but it was very dry and it’s not all that effective for my learning style. I do appreciate the response though.

    • King@lemy.lolOP
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      8 months ago

      Vivaldi claims to be a privacy browser, but it pushes ads to the users whenever possible. For example, the start page tab is filled with pages that have their affiliate links, without asking for the user’s consent. Vivaldi’s ad blocker also whitelists ads that generate revenue for Vivaldi, again without the user’s consent. Moreover, Vivaldi does not have a setting to disable JavaScript; users would have to access the default Chrome settings to do that.( also they keep saying that they don’t want to opensource their browser because then they would fail, while this is very wrong as proven by other opensource browsers)

      Overall, I think they are very scummy when it comes to privacy and ethics of consent of ads/affiliation.

      • soulfirethewolf@lemdro.id
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        8 months ago

        Their ads are still far less invasive than Edge or Firefox (and especially the latter). As far as I know the default links are all just typical paid defaults. And yeah, it’s irritating that the ad blocker has those defaults and that they won’t open source more of their stuff. But I still think it’s far better than what other browsers have going currently

        • King@lemy.lolOP
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          8 months ago

          Librewolf, Floorp, Mercury Browser, Mullvad Browser,Tor browser, Ungoogled chromium, Thorium, Falkon, Seamonkey, Ghostery Browser?

          • soulfirethewolf@lemdro.id
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            8 months ago

            Almost all of those are developed part time as hobby or side projects. They aren’t built on the same scale as other commercial browsers, and a few of them aren’t even trying to.

            Also, these are all browsers that are deliberately privacy focused, and are made towards a different audience than Vivaldi. Not to mention that advertising isn’t always inherently privacy invasive. It’s just intrusive.