Yes - by most definitions. It’s powered by user-generated content and is based on interaction between users through engagement with that content, which is voted and scored.
There is a difference which I personally feel makes reddit less harmful than other social media, however, which is the algorithm - or lack of it.
In most social media, the algorithm exists to continually serve people the exact content they engage with in a constant feed, which is IMO the most socially damaging part of social media because it creates endless doomscrolling, toxic echo chambers, promotion of sponsored content, and a whole raft of psychological problems in users.
The Lemmy homefeed is more organic, and scrolling through ‘all’ you see content genuinely from everywhere, in a less curated way based on upvotes, not individual algorithmic tailoring. And that’s maybe not as “engaging” but it’s far less damaging.
Separate apps for various retail stores. I don’t want a home depot app. I don’t want a kroger app. We have a generic app for this category called a web browser. If you want me to download a specialized app for your store, I assume that means that my browser does not sufficiently breach my privacy for your “business purposes.”
The only one I use is Safeway, to scan the in-store coupons. I’m not sure how much info they can get, because the app fails to load until I pause my VPN.
I also second social media, but I need to make another suggestion it’d be Keurigs k-cups. So much plastic waste for the barest level of convenience.
Even the creator of the K-cup said he regretted creating it because of the environmental impact.
Actually, the inventor of the Keurig coffee pod system, John Sylvan, sold his ownership of the product for $50,000 in 1997. 7 years after founding the company and before single-serve coffee really took off.
Thank you for beating me to mention this.
K-cups are really amazinlgy bad. And it’s not like there aren’t much better solutions available. Philips has those fully bio-degradable pads, a local store now sells a type of coffee maker that uses just the coffee powder in balls where the outer shell is compressed grounds that is cracked open to get to the powder inside.
But no, Keurig and their fucking oceans of plastic waste.
It’s a small plastic cup full of ground coffee, Kuerig machines use them. They generated a ton of plastic waste, since each k-cup was a single use.
There was great progress in compostable K-Cups from other vendors. And then Keurig did the DRM thing with the UV ink. So they literally made everything worse trying to keep their market reach.
I threw mine out and went back to a french press. Straight into compost, and the coffee tastes better.
And so is every Coke bottle with 5 times the plastic. And so is every store-bought coffee. Yet… silence. 🦗🦗🦗
What about bottles? Far more energy requires to melt and pour glass. No one says a word about single use.
Never found a K-cup on the beach or trail, but I pack plastic bags to haul trash and sometimes load 2 or 3.
Yes, it’s a waste, but the whole thing was blown way the hell out of proportion.
I hike, kayak, canoe, whatever, all over the place. Every plastic bottle I pick up contains, what, 5 times the plastic? I pick up a LOT. And nobody thinks twice or raises a fuss.
We use a Keurig, but either with plastic refill cups or paper bags my wife brings home from the hotel.
K-cups are recyclable. Why are you people not putting them in the recycling.
A lot of stuff marked as recyclable is technically recyclable but cost prohibitive to do so. I don’t know what type of plastic these cups are, but when they claim recyclable, it should specify percent actually being recycled.
I’m liking aldi at the moment. They list all the separate parts of packaging for me and how it can be disposed. I hope its just a step to moving more to biodegradable rather than recyclable.
To be used in most recycling programs you would need to fully remove the foil lid, and rinse out every k-cup before depositing them in recycling.
Strong dissagree. I am barely functional pre-caffeine in the early morning. A Keurig is about as much mental energy as I can muster to operate. It is a godsend to me on day I work early.
I think the problem is not in pod-based single-serving coffee machines. Those are common, and well-loved for a reason.
But there are easily available alternatives that do the exact same thing without requiring so much plastic, namely Senseo coffee pads (they’re grounds in coffee filter paper) or CoffeeB and its compressed coffee grounds balls (so it’s all just coffee ground, both the coffee and the pod). Probably a fair few more I don’t know about personally.
Possibly even Nestle with their Nescafe pods. They’re aluminium but some countries achieve effectively 100% recycling on that, then the only issue is the filter membrane they place inside and I don’t know whether that is easily separated during recycling or not.
corporate personhood.
Is that really a 21st century idea? I would have thought that was a reaganomics reform tbh
It’s a 19th century idea that appeared in the published decision of the Supreme Court in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co.
Only—get this—it wasn’t even what the Court decided. Instead, it was the guy in charge of recording the decision for publication who declared “corporate personhood” in the headnote (summary) of the case. And would it surprise you to learn that the guy was the former president of a railroad company? We just sort of went along with this not-precedent until the Citizens United case.
proof-of-work blockchains. instead of a utopian decentralized currency we have a utopia for scammers and day traders, and uses a ton of energy at a time when we need to conserve to combat global warming.
All while aiming to be cash you can e-mail, and failing at that because its high volatility and low speed make it a completely artificial commodities market with nearly zero real-world applications. It’s a technology that took off because Paypal is the devil and it is arguably worse.
