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Joined 7 months ago
Cake day: August 13th, 2025
  • alecsargent@lemmy.ziptoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•Is there any actual evidence that open source social media is less damaging to user mental health than commercial social media?
    17·
    4 days ago

    I don’t think there are studies showing direct comparisons(that I know of), but it is clear that commercial social media stands to profit from you the more you use the platform and open-source platforms usually stand to lose money from hosting the service. That incentive alone is big enough to demonstrate how more harmful they are.

    Replacing real social interactions with virtual ones is harmul regardless of the platform, so at least open source ones don’t profit from addictions and mental health issues(like casinos). Not to mention that commercial options make it hard for you to leave the platform, and not in a “lets make a maze so the user takes longer to get out” but in a “lets stand in the door for days blocking the users exit”.

    Also important to note that it is possible to make a commercial social media platform without such aggresive strategies (at cost of their profit), and a open social media platform with aggresive strategies. It just happens that proprietary software can lend its hand to abuse which is not posible in open source. So in practice none of these happen.

    So in general I would say that open source social media is completely free of intentional harm and commercial ones will not bother if their platform is harming people as long as it makes profits.

  • alecsargent@lemmy.ziptoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•What's the browser(s) you use?
    4·
    14 days ago

    I use Librewolf almost always I try others just for comparison an fun, here are they:

    • Librewolf: I use it for its privacy defaults and because it comes with no bloat and no nonsense.

    • Konform Browser: A fork of Librewolf but based on Firefox ESR rather than the regular release and focusing in smaller settings improvements. I’ve talked to the developer and they are very nice and seem to fix issues rather quickly. By the looks of it I will be moving to this browser permantly.

    • Ungoogled Chromium: For testing webpages, like styles and stuff for my blog.

    • Glide Browser: Its basically the Vimium extension + BetterFox. It’s stil in early developement and it looks promising. I prefer Librewolf settings better than Betterfox so this keeps me from using this one.