otter

This was the closest for me, but the project has been slow for some time as the devs are busy with other things

https://github.com/LawnchairLauncher/lawnchair

The potential issues:

• this was enabled for everyone by default instead of being opt-in
• It's hard to tell what will be blocked by this. "Activism" is political. Calling out tech oligopolies is "political", and by extension advertising the fediverse could be "political". This could be an easy way to hide content that harms Meta or its partners.
• It encourages users and content creators to avoid controversial topics. It's hard to fix issues in our communities if we don't talk about them

The fact that Meta is doing this makes me suspicious. Here in Canada, they booted off news organizations and now instead of reputable organizations sharing what's happening, that niche is filled by other... content.

I personally try to avoid any suggested content and only use my subscriptions. For those who want to change it back:

change the setting, users can navigate to Instagram's menu for "settings and activity" in their profiles, where they can update their "content preferences." On this menu, "political content" is the last item under a list of "suggested content" controls that allow users to set preferences for what content is recommended in their feeds.

There is one good side. While we can't see the algorithms used to classify content as "political", creators can check their own status and publicize issues:

Meta's blog noted that "professional accounts on Instagram will be able to use Account Status to check their eligibility to be recommended based on whether they recently posted political content. From Account Status, they can edit or remove recent posts, request a review if they disagree with our decision, or stop posting this type of content for a period of time, in order to be eligible to be recommended again."

Personally I wouldn't be affected by this since it only affects recommendations, but the issue is that Meta gets to decide what is "political".

Nearly everything has a political component to it, and this can be an excuse for hiding content that the company doesn't want as many people to see. Activism for example is "political".

Having the option to set the flag would be nice for those who want a filtered feed. I'm just suspicious I guess ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

Once you are using a service, it shouldn't be difficult to transfer away.

It's like if Walmart required customers to add money to a Walmart card before they could shop. Customers would find it difficult to start shopping elsewhere

I'd have to review exactly how long each brand releases updates for, especially because they've all been one upping each other recently. However there's nothing specific to Apple's anticompetitive behavior that relates to how long they release updates for.

Ideally they'd all provide support for longer

How would that actually help security?

Not really, pretty much every brand has had security issues and they all patch them fairly quickly

The quality isn't really the issue, it's when the company

• prevents competing apps from being installed
• prevents devices from other manufacturers from using your apps (or intentionally degrading services on other devices)
• making it hard to use files/media outside the proprietary apps (ex. iTunes in the past, and maybe still now)

This issue isn't limited to Apple, but Apple is the well known example for locking people into an ecosystem whether they like it or not

Yea the specific issue is

The department joined 16 states and the District of Columbia to file a significant challenge to the reach and influence of Apple, arguing in an 88-page lawsuit that the company had violated antitrust laws with practices that were intended to keep customers reliant on their iPhones and less likely to switch to a competing device. The tech giant prevented other companies from offering applications that compete with Apple products like its digital wallet, which could diminish the value of the iPhone, and hurts consumers and smaller companies that compete with it, the government said.

so that's a good thing :)

Link: https://android.thin.computer/

In your defense, the first paragraph of the article was confusing

Despite initial opposition from Apple and Google, the Epic Games Store plans to broaden its digital marketplace to iOS and Android platforms later this year. The company has started discussions about the upcoming launch of it's new third-party store for mobile devices, although the platform will only be available in the EU thanks to the DMA, until Apple enables third party app stores in other areas.

It says Google opposed it, but the third party store thing is specific to Apple

I get very annoyed when I'm looking for something that should be listed, but instead it tries to search for it in Edge (or now copilot).

I have never wanted to use the device search as a way to search the web.

edit: There's a recent question about it, and the solution was to edit the registry with a new value. That is not something I would feel comfortable walking someone through:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/how-to-disable-search-the-web-completley-in/ea22410a-3031-487f-b5de-5a0113d656c5