FinalBoy1975

That’s funny! Imagine being called “you data whore” hahaha! In all seriousness, though, if such a law existed and depending on the payment requirements, there might not be many data whoring opportunities. Depending on the legislation, it could discourage entities from tracking, storing, mining, and selling people’s data. It would require entities to keep track. With people using online services in the millions, that’s some serious accounting and legal representation. It might even cost more money to prove compliance to governments than the payments to the “data whores” would. Then, of course, there would be the fines to pay for non-compliance, and the lawsuits. That’s why this law I dream of will never happen. Depending on the law and its implementation it could cripple online industry and make companies like Meta totally non-existent.

I really wish there could be a law that says that if they want people to use their platform so they can use their data they have to pay people for their data. Data is money, but only to the companies that suck up my data and use it to make money. If my data is worth money I want money for my data. If companies had to pay me for my data I would consider using Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, et. al. if the price were right. This is no doubt a very impossible wish. They also say time is money and there is no law requiring people to pay me when they waste my time. But, I can dream. Imagine getting a nice check in exchange for signing up for Instagram.

There are lots of benefits to lurking. Nobody jumps on you with pedantic bull crap. Nobody tells you to just Google it. Nobody picks at every god damn little picky thing you say. Nobody bothers you. It’s a wonder anybody bothers to post or comment at all. Life is more peaceful for lurkers.

lemmy.world was an instance I tried and call me an impatient spoiled brat, but it’s not usable for me because it’s so darn slow. It’s much better to join a smaller instance. It doesn’t even have to be in the country you’re connecting from. sh.itjust.works is in Canada, I am in Western Europe, it’s snappy AF. And less toxic btw. kbin.social is pretty awesome, though. Loads up for me nice and fast with more content I want to see. I’ve settled on kbin as my place to go, but there are other instances that are just as fantastic. The lesson I learned: lemmy.world might be the big general instance and it might wish to claim to be “the front page of the internet” but it’s bogged down and too slow. It also wasn’t fun for me when I could actually use it. You know, because of the usual. Too much bickering and too much meta stuff. It’s much better to join the communities hosted on lemmy.world from another faster instance. You get snappier loading up of content and you avoid their whole home page which, at the moment, is just a meta victim.

You aren’t alone. I’m still trying to figure it out, too. First step was to settle on my go-to instance, which just today I’ve decided will be kbin.