Some forums are still reasonably active. I use Whirlpool fairly regularly. Mostly tech related, but has lots of other sections too.

https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/

If you search around you can find others.

This.

I use Adguard, if a site blocks me for it, then it goes on a black list of "never visit" sites.

In a few cases, if I use and like/support a specific site a lot and that site is ad supported with no other ad-free option, then I white list it.

But to read the odd crappy article? No I'm not disabling my ad blocker.

I have been with idrive since 2009. At the time they were the only ones that allowed backups of network attached storage on their cheaper personal plans. Everyone else saw that as an “enterprise” feature which required a business plan. Which was bullsh*t, because lots of home NAS devices were being sold.

Anyway, I haven’t done a recent comparison of services, but I remain happy with idrive.

Thesedays I no longer backup on a computer with a mapped drive, but directly from my NAS which runs the idrive software.

I had a catastrophic dual drive failure a few years ago, one failed and another failed during the raid rebuild! I was able to restore about 1tb of data and didn’t lose anything important.

They also offer backup and restore by shipping a drive to you if you want to avoid the huge initial backup or a total restore, but I haven’t used that feature.

They do also have a mobile app, but last time I tried it, it wasn’t great.

Yes, Connect For Lemmy had this.

Yeah, that’s not likely sadly.

It’s weird these numbers are so small, it should feel dead. But there are a lot of great discussions and a lot of good laughs to be had here.

The level of engagement for the very small numbers here must be quite impressive.

I guess it’s the old quality vs quantity.

I think it would then delete any account in both Instagram and Threads.

But there’s no need to do that. If you already have Instagram and your happy with it, there’s nothing extra you need to worry about just because there’s a shadow account pre set up for you in Threads.

It’s a shady way for them to push their new service, but it’s not like they suddenly have any more info on you than they already had.

Very clever!

5 billion downloads on the Play store. Apparently about 1-2 billion of those are not very active. Still huge numbers though.

Yes, but in this instance, they are allowing people to pre-follow that shadow account and then apparently you get a notification to say they have followed you promoting you to join and follow them back.

That’s a very cunning way to boost their new service quickly!

I’m relieved they’re not doing that with WhatsApp.

Does that person who has been pre-followed then get a notification to join and respond/follow back?

Because that would be a great way to boost the new service exponentially.

Hey, don’t give them any ideas!

I’ve never had a Facebook or Instagram account in my life. But I do use WhatsApp because it’s the main way most friends and family communicate (Australia).

I would not be happy if I found out I suddenly had a Threads account that my friends could follow without me even signing up, just because I use WhatsApp!

Yeah I’ve been taking a similar approach, to social media. I’ve avoided the algorithm.

I mean, I don’t really do social media in the usual sense, never had Facebook, nor Instagram. I did have a Twitter account but I used it to follow certain accounts and didn’t tweet, so it was basically an RSS feed. I used a 3rd party app and only saw my subs, no ads, no suggested/promoted posts.

Same for Reddit, used a 3rd party app, no ads, no suggested/promoted posts, I only ever read a feed of my subs.

My Reddit and Twitter subs/follows have been mostly hobbies, niche areas of interest, products I own, sports etc. no politics or news discussions. So I’ve really avoided being exposed to most of that toxicity I keep reading about.

This is why losing 3rd party apps was a big deal for me. I don’t want to read sponsored/promoted/suggested posts or ads. I’d rather not use the service at all if I have to.

That’s why I’ve fully moved to Lemmy and Mastodon.