WARNING: Language (I'm considering removing these warnings soon)

There is a war happening on the Web between users and corporations. A
real shocker to most Gopher users, I know. Big Tech companies are
trying to consolidate their hold on things. Big G is probably
principal among them, but MS, Assle, Meta/Facebook, and probably a
couple of others are up there as well.

Big G is trying to lock down the Web. They've introduced a measure to,
as I understand it, DRM the WWW. Essentially the user has to install
some program, maybe it comes bundled with a certain popular browser,
to verify that the user is real. The problem arises when a host can
decide that not using his/her favorite browser constitutes a
"not-real" user. The proposal/technology is called Web Environment
Integrity if you wish to research it yourself (I am no expert).

Big G is also waging a much-less-publicized war on Invidious. I've
been using Invidious for probably a year or two now. It's a WWW
package(?) that acts as an alternate front-end for Big G's video site.
It's hosted on various domains which often resort to creative TLDs
(usually cheaper and totally understandable) which also will leave
"old school" tech junkies like myself wary. Yewtu.be is the most
popular instance of Invidious, but the domain screams to cybersecurity
experts from the 2000s "fraud" and "phishing." It's not, but the
domain itself looks that way. Probably the most ironic thing about
Yewtu.be and other close domains is that they respect your privacy and
are far less invasive than G's YT itself. Instead of making YT better,
G just chooses to outright block and make things that much harder for
alternate software (including Invidious, NewPipe, probably Vanced if
it's still around). It's honestly a bit of a chore at times,
especially when I'm using Lynx and the download links (the only way I
can "view" the video without going to X server) just 403. But I still
use it because fuck YT and fuck G. The UI alone is garbage on YT, but
the censorship of any "non-approved" and "different" opinions is
untenable.

I recently touched on Rddit and how their API changes have fucked
things up. I used to use Libreddit to consume it. Gopherddit was
slower and feeds are a bit more tedious with non-image media. I'm
using Gopherddit more now, but Rddit has changed their image hotlinks,
to redirect to a page with that image. And if you get that page, Lynx
won't allow me to access the image properly; it just redirects to the
same page. Wget and edbrowse work, though. It's odd.  But it's just so
annoying. I realize TUIs aren't generally geared towards image and
video content, but with fim and mplayer, it works just fine. It's just
another way for Rddit to pad their bank accounts (if it's even
profitable to begin with).

I'm just going to put a paragraph here explaining how I know Zuck
doesn't care about user privacy. I personally haven't used Facebook
for years... well, technically I have. I often just have squatter
accounts on various social media that I don't use outside of a
glorified email client and/or a passport to view content. While I say
I don't use Twitter, I do (did, actually finally deleted it when it
relaunched as X) have an account for the previous reasons. But in over
11 years I probably have half as many tweets, so again, I did but I
really don't use Twitter. Good luck fingerprinting me with no images,
no posts, no friends, etc. Even in my former "real" account on FB, I
lied when FB asked me whether I went to my high school. Even as a
college kid, I was wary of privacy invasions. But back to the
beginning of this paragraph, I don't have any opinions on any recent
developments with FB/Meta because I don't use it and don't
particularly care to read/hear about it.

I guess there have always been wars on the Web: Netscape vs. Lynx,
Netscape vs. IE,  Amazon vs. Ebay, Walmart vs. Amazon, Hulu vs.
Netflix, Big G vs. keyword dumping, Big G vs. its users, privacy vs.
convenience. But before it was more of a free-for-all and trying to
entice the user/customer to choose their site and service. Now a lot
of dust has settled and corporations are trying to figure out how to
maximize profit off of serotonin and notification addicts, i.e. their
loyal users. And the PTBs don't give a damn about what's good for the
customer or the company. They just care about money, plain and simple.
And as more and more PTBs at companies do this, the less and less
competition and choice there is for consumers in a certain space. I'm
somewhat amazed and happy when I see stats for how much data is used
monthly on Invidious. I definitely don't want to see hosts go broke,
but love to see people taking charge of their digital rights.

Fight the good fight.