But I also think it’s important to think of the neighbors we disagree with very differently than how we view right wing politicians and corporate executives. Our neighbors may have some shitty opinions and ignorant positions, but they might be decent people at heart. No right wing politician or billionaire CEO is going to be decent at heart.
That will work for now. But the open web is under attack.
More and more content is being locked inside of apps, pay walls, etc. Google search sucks because they only show you paid promoted content. Thus WEI bullshit is just another step in the direction of taking away free and open access. If this shit is left unchecked, mainstream websites will stop working with open web browsers like Firefox.
Their goal is to charge fees and subscriptions for everything. And to take away freedom of choice and open access. They don’t want to compete with value or quality content. They want to remove our ability to even use the competition.
I’m sort of the opposite. I liked Joplin but found myself needing the features of Obsidian. I do know what you mean about Obsidian getting in the way. While it’s easy to start using it, there is a bit of a learning curve to using it well. And it can be a little quirky-annoying at times.
I think that’s one reason there are so many software offerings in this space. There’s a wide range of preferences when it comes to features vs simplicity.
For me, Obsidian is just about perfect without any extensions, but I’m also glad it is extensible if you need them. The configurability and customization, while using standard markup, and keeping the vault storage sizes small were the major pros for me.
Some other products I’ve tried in this space were just too much for me. Huge save files, overdone UXs, and proprietary formats. Joplin and Obsidian were both a breath of fresh air when I found them.
I hope you are right about this moving forward. My experience so far has been the same as yours (re: the arms race, uBlock working well). My understanding is Google is being super aggressive about this and they are not dumb, they know about uBlock, Pi Hole, and other ad blockers that people use. They want to make it impossible to use them by basically profiling your browser and its extensions. However, that could just kick off a variation on the arms race. A lot of things about their attitude makes me angry, but they are just ignoring the fact that advertisements are a vector for malware and don’t really care if they help spread malware as long as they are getting that sweet revenue.
Dumb question, will it be possible to create a browser that will trick the shitty new web into thinking you’re using an approved non-ad-blocking-browser while you still block the malware/ads?
Thanks for the history, I am not surprised it evolved like that. Reminds me of Agile. It was a great concept that morphed into ‘micromanagement with extra steps’ in many shops.