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A comment on Twitter is at its best when verified accounts can’t tweet. Parent comment

Re:Twitter is at its best when verified accounts can’t tweet by mnky9800n on Thursday July 16, 2020 @11:28AM (#23859962)
I was reading a book this morning about mushroom foraging and suddenly realized that I hadn't seen an advert in quite some time because it was a book and not my phone. Then I thought about getting rid of my phone and only reading books from now on. Now I'm posting this on my phone. It's quite annoying how terrible the internet is now. I used to feel comfortable having a conversation in a forum without thinking it was all generated from some AstroTurfing nonsense or would be used to send me highly personalized ads.
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Re:Twitter is at its best when verified accounts can’t tweet by matheusmoreira on Thursday July 16, 2020 @12:33PM (#23860642)
Install uBlock Origin and enable all filters. Enjoy the web and don't feel guilty about it. Nobody is entitled to views, ad clicks or even our attention.
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Re:Twitter is at its best when verified accounts can’t tweet by mnky9800n on Saturday July 18, 2020 @03:33AM (#23879737)
Yes I did this on my laptop and it's always shocking when I look at my phone.
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Re:Twitter is at its best when verified accounts can’t tweet by UnFleshedOne on Thursday July 16, 2020 @12:32PM (#23860635)
I highly recommend setting up a pi-hole on AWS somewhere, with custom DNS ports and using a vpn client that can redirect all DNS requests from the device there. On android NetGuard works well.

I hardly ever see an ad on the phone now. Astroturfing is a whole other question though.

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Re:Twitter is at its best when verified accounts can’t tweet by Avicebron on Thursday July 16, 2020 @01:08PM (#23861086)
I actually have been thinking very hard about the problem of astroturfing and how to combat it. Not really sure how I would go about it currently but one idea I tossed around is IP address physical location, it might work on HN...at least during working hours. Mixed with a bit of submission and comment history processing, it's almost viable as a concept.
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Re:Twitter is at its best when verified accounts can’t tweet by indigochill on Thursday July 16, 2020 @11:37AM (#23860060)
Some eReaders (avoiding naming names to avoid advertising at you :P) also enable easy book-like reading (i.e. e-ink, no backlight/glare) without ads. I like them because I can have a whole library in the size of one book. And also I admit to a certain degree of anxiety about bending book binding, particularly in paperbacks.
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Re:Twitter is at its best when verified accounts can’t tweet by CrazyStat on Thursday July 16, 2020 @12:20PM (#23860502)
I bought an e-reader when I went off to do an internship one summer and wouldn't have access to the university library.

Internship ended up being a dud (they paid me for 40 hours a week but only had work for me to do about 5-10 hours a week). I read over 50 books that summer, mostly classics that I got free from Project Gutenberg. Definitely got my money's worth.

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Re:Twitter is at its best when verified accounts can’t tweet by mnky9800n on Saturday July 18, 2020 @03:38AM (#23879753)
I used to have an ereader but I guess I missed turning pages. I never felt like I completed a book or had some physical sense of where I was in a book.
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