I digitally sterilised by great aunt’s tablet. Removed YouTube. Removed Google’s slop news feed. Switched her browser to brave (no ads) and search engine to duckduckgo. Put on more sensible news outlets like the BBC and ITV.
Now she’s complaining that it’s “just not as good as it used to be”.
My great aunt is going into slop withdrawal.
I had a similar experience when elderly people insisted on having YouTube’s recommendation algorithm, without understanding how it actually works. I tried to explain the concept to them, but they didn’t really get it. I switched them to NewPipe, and while it worked, they immediately wanted the algorithmic recommendations back.
She was getting hundreds of notifications per day from Youtube of AI generated videos of Pope Leo doing bad stuff or something…
I know another gentleman who is “stubborn” and just said he doesn’t use the internet. No smart devices, just a flip phone with SMS and calls to keep in touch with family. He told me about how he had some guy around trying to sell him the internet and about how “he couldn’t understand that I refuse to use the internet”.
To some people that gentleman may seem like a hermit. But I told him he is absolutely right- he doesn’t need the internet. And public services should stop trying to require people to use the internet. He seems like a very happy man, a clean and tidy house that he’s proud of, and well rounded. Just listens to the radio and watches TV.
He is absolutely right. He doesn’t need the internet.
What the fuck.
Unfortunately I can’t remember what it was exactly. It was something like “Pope Leo breaks into Protestant Church”