Kelson Reviews Stuff - Page 23

These days, Instagram is like checking out your friends’ vacation photos, but every other photo is an advertisement, and half of your friends’ pics are full of product placement.

It used to be a good place for sharing photos with friends and family, then for keeping up with photos by photographers who do work you like, then keeping up with photos by people who became famous for being on Instagram (I never really got the appeal of “influencer” culture), and now for keeping up with advertisements. Every once in a while I check in and it feels like I see more ads than photos from people I’m following. And it desperately wants to keep my attention - all of it.

Even without worrying about Meta vacuuming up as much personal data as it can, it’s just not enjoyable anymore.

As for alternatives: I’m still happy with Flickr (which is all about the photos!). Pixelfed is similar to Instagram but without the surveillance advertising, plus it’s part of the Fediverse. (I use PixelDroid for it on my phone.) And sometimes I just post on my blog or on Mastodon.

A nice, lightweight feed reader for Linux that does the basics: lets you subscribe to RSS and Atom feeds and read the new posts when you feel like it. Does its job, doesn’t hog resources, and stays out of the way.

Downsides: Doesn’t sync your subscriptions and read/unread status with anything. If you need that, I recommend NewsFlash.

I used to really like Feedly. It’s web-based, so you can jump around to any desktop or laptop. I used an IFTTT app to save bookmarked posts to Pocket. And it’s got a good Android app that’s easy to use and works well. But lately they seem to have been focusing more and more on the business use cases of “keep an eye on your competitors/market/employees/latest trends/whatever” and getting pushy over their paid tiers. And they still haven’t done anything about the basic use case of downloading the RSS/Atom when there’s a connection so you can read them offline. There are plenty of places where cell service is sparse, slow or flaky, and plenty of situations (say, you’re riding a train to work) where cell data isn’t even possible, and they don’t all have wi-fi.

I’ve since switched to self-hosting NextCloud News, and syncing my subscriptions and read/unread status across mobile and desktop apps like NewsFlash.

I’ve been cross-posting my book reviews to online bookstores I’ve bought from, and I recently picked up some used books from Better World Books (which I’ve heard good things about). They do show reader reviews, but I couldn’t see an option to actually submit a review.

Just as well, because when I went looking, I found that, unlike most sites that accept user-submitted content, they actually do claim copyright over it, not just the usual “perpetual non-exclusive royalty-free license” that every site uses and occasionally someone notices and misinterprets as claiming ownership.

All communications, comments, feedback, bug reports, suggestions, ideas, content, and other submissions submitted to Better World Books through the Sites (collectively, “Submissions”) shall be and remain Better World Books’ property with all worldwide rights, titles and interests in all copyrights and other intellectual property in such Submissions hereby being assigned to Better World Books by you.

– Better World Books: Terms of Use

OUCH!

So…not going to cross-post there. (FWIW, Amazon, B&N, Kobo and Books A Million all agree that you retain your copyrights, and they only claim the usual non-exclusive license that their lawyers require in order to actually show your post.)

Hilarious and heartwarming tale of a girl and the monster who lives under her bed. Mostly one-off gags and short stories, arranged loosely into an arc where they meet, become friends, and learn about the “real” and monster worlds from each other.