Techie Ramblings

Category: Internet

  • How can we escape the negative news cycle?

    This week the algorithms have been working overtime, and not in a good way.

    Seemingly all from across the pond in the US we’ve been bombarded by snippets of disgusting revelations from Jeffry Epstein’s birthday cards. We’ve been forced to endure the ghastly video of Iryna Zarutska, which highlights the failings of the US judicial system but then hijacked into a racial argument. Finally we’ve bore witness to the ruthless assassination of Charles Kirk in front of a huge audience containing his own wife and Children.

    This boils down to Peadophiles being exposed, and two murders. I’m not trying to downplay this news but I am trying to put it in perspective, for you and myself. According to multiple sources online the average amount of deaths across the world each day is around 150,000. I imagine some of these are peaceful but I also don’t think it would be a stretch to assume that some of these demises are much more brutal than the two we’ve just witnessed. Again, I’m not trying to downplay anybodies death here, certainly not the total figure either. The point I am trying to make is that even on our happiest days, where we receive no bad news and everything feels great, unimaginable atrocities are being committed across the world.

    We are only affected by the news we hear about. The news we hear about is generally the news that someone decides is relevant. I don’t think it is long shot to say that those minds deciding what is, and isn’t valid news for us also have a vested interest in trying to influence our general mood and political feelings. I doubt we’ll ever understand the true motives, but this does happen and has been proven time and time again.

    Social media is not healthy for the human mind. Our brains have not evolved to be able to cope with such large communities and a bombardment of information. In an evolutionary timescale it’s only been the blink of an eye since we were tribal primal beings, living in small communities where one could probably count the total people they knew on their hands and toes combined. Their issues would be local, maybe a lack of resources or a dangerous predator in the area. But these problems were tangible, and generally something that the members of that community had control over dealing with.

    The internet has only served to speed up the news cycle, and in an attention economy it’s a well known fact that negative news sells. No-one clicks an article on a couple celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary when below it there is an article that demands our shock, horror or outrage.

    Even the tech space has been negative recently, and I’ve been sucked in. Just because one company is doing something we don’t like, doesn’t mean there’s not still enjoyment to be had elsewhere.

    Do not feel guilty for wanting to detach from it all, even if only temporarily. I don’t want to belittle any of my readers by saying this, but we are all relatively significant to matters outside of our local villages or towns. Myself in the UK knowing of the crimes committed in the US has no bearing on their outcome, their due process will continue with or without me knowing about them. The levels of knife crime or mobile phone theft occurring in London will not increase or decrease just because I’m aware of it. The immigration levels in Sweden will not decrease on the basis of me reading about the crimes committed against the natives. Palestine and Israel, Russia and Ukraine will not both magically reach resolutions if I spend days depressing myself watching footage of war zones and trying to pick the side that I feel is most righteous. I think I’ve made my point.

    It may not feel like it with attention grabbing articles littered everywhere but we do have a choice. If, like me you’re currently feeling overwhelmed by negative news, remove it from your life. If you want to maintain the feeling of being well informed you still can be, just limit the locale of the news you access. For example, stick to your local news site or newspaper. If you want more, maybe stretch to your County or State, or at the very most your own country. The rest of the world will continue with its own business while you can get on with yours, hopefully in a much happier way.

    I don’t know who said this, not can I find the quote, but it has stuck with me: “The sins of the world are not ours to bear”.

    Make your world smaller again, find beauty in the small things and enjoyment in the normal.

    For me that entails a self imposed ban of the Reddit homepage. If I want to look at something I’ll go to that subreddit directly. Staying away from other negative news sources too. I’m going to make my world smaller, focusing on my family, my career and the tech that I enjoy.

  • Is it time to ditch Google?

    In light of Google’s recent announcement (banning unsigned app installations from September 2026) I deleted my Google account today.

    I have always been creeped out by Google’s data collection, and only tolerated them anywhere near my personal data because of the flexibility the Android operating system paired with their services offered. Take away that flexibility and they have nothing of value to offer me.

    I don’t use many of the Google software products. The only ones I can think of are Google Maps, Youtube, Wallet and Find my phone. I don’t use Gmail, I don’t sync my calendar, tasks, notes or contacts to their servers as I manage all that myself. I use open source apps or anything I need from the Play Store I download with Aurora.

    I realised that when pushed, I don’t need a Google account at all. For the sake of my privacy I can do without Find my phone, I can watch and save all of my favourite channels on Youtube using Newpipe, I can use an alternative for Navigation or if using Android Auto I can just use Google maps without being logged in. Wallet will be an inconvenience but I’ll just use my physical cards again.

    Aside from this I feel a sentiment that I’ve seen echoed quite a bit in light of this recent news. If Google remove what made their product uniquely attractive, then we may as well just get iPhones. It may sound strange to say, but I trust Apple with my data more than I do Google, and if there is no freedom on either devices then I’d rather use an iPhone.

    Apple aren’t saints by any means. They’ve locked their devices down to a ridiculous degree from the very start. However, they are a hardware company where Google are an advertising company. They recently stood up to the UK government when asked to provide a back door into user data. They offered long support of their devices before it was cool to do so.

    Do I think putting more business towards a restrictive company, that already has a near monopoly in the developed world is an ideal solution? Absolutely not, in any other situation I’d say it’s a terrible idea. But in this case it just might be the best option. And maybe, just maybe if Google notices a loss in market share, not just in Google Pixel users but all Android devices they might back track on this awful decision.

    I’ll be having a long think about where we’ll go from here, and whether I’m willing to leave Android behind. What I am certain about is that I will never have another Google account, and Google will never receive another penny from me, either directly or indirectly through Play Store purchases.

  • “The once great internet”

    Logging onto my site just now I read my own homepage blurb, “Welcome explorers of the once great internet”. It made me think, I wrote that over 6 months ago as it was obviously something I was feeling at the time. However fast forward 6 months and it’s got infinitely worse.

    If I thought it was bad then, and now I’m looking back at how it was better (albeit still bad) than it is now are we just on a never ending downward spiral?

    What will the internet look like in another 5-10 years. AI generated marketing masquerading as websites, places of human conversation legislated into extinction and our “consumption” being doomscrolling short form content that is most likely AI created too?

    You can count me out.

    I have enough games from the golden era before micro transactions and DLC to last me a lifetime, in both handheld and large screen form.

    I have offline copies of Wikipedia for information.

    I have a large collection of movies and series.

    I already don’t rely on the cloud or have any subscriptions.

    The point I’m making here is that if the internet does become a government controlled, whitewashed hell hole people will just step back from it. Yes you’ll have your people that are perfectly happy reading clickbait and doom scrolling and you know what? That’s perfectly fine, whatever gets them through their day. But for me I’d rather go back to not having it rather than putting up with that.

    The “internet” is just a large network that we collectively agreed we’d connect and contribute to. There is nothing stopping people getting together and making their own, unregulated mesh networks. If we carry on down the route we’re going I wouldn’t be surprised if we see that start to happen, similar to what Cuban’s have done. I’d be all for it, a new wild west.

  • Downfall of Amazon (shopping)

    I’ve specifically mentioned shopping in my title because Amazon is nowhere near just a shopping platform. However that’s all I’m talking about today.

    Years ago, maybe around 2006 I remember placing my first order on Amazon. It was for a PS3 game and I remember specifically having to register an email address, to then register an Amazon account, and then deposit some money into my bank account so I could pay with my card (back then I was paid cash). It was a bit of a shot in the dark, I wasn’t sure when my order would arrive if at all and it felt strange making a purchase over the internet. The game did arrive (nowhere near as quickly as it would with “prime delivery” today) and it cost me substantially less than if I’d purchased it at my local game store.

    Over the years I’ve used Amazon quite a lot. As someone who finds a day out shopping, particularly around Christmas time unpleasant and downright stressful having the ability to choose gifts for my loved ones at my leisure and from the comfort of my own home has always appealed to me. It used to be a brilliant platform that collated good quality products from all the shops and brands you could imagine and offer you them at a slightly cheaper price. Until it became something else…

    Those products from well known brands are still there, but you’ll be hard pressed to find them. Amazon opened their arms to drop shippers armed with rafts of unbranded Chinese goods. All of them have brands that are just random combinations of letters such as “Oakxco”, “Yatwin” or even “Tiixxa” (Those were the first 3 results from a search of “Phone case”). These random names are a result of Amazon requiring their sellers to have a brand that is a registered company, so Chinese sellers just throw a random combination of letters in to try and avoid clashing with another brand. If you search a generic term like I just have that is all you will see. If you want a specific brand, you have to be specific in your query. However even that isn’t bulletproof, sometimes unknown brands will still creep in.

    So, why am I coining this the “Downfall of Amazon”? Well quite simply, Amazon clearly didn’t realise what their USP (Unique Selling Point) was. You could buy the products you wanted, all collated in an easy to find format, at a better price than a brick and mortar store and it all arrived next day. The tantalising allure of extreme profit margins, only possible from selling lower quality Chinese goods at an extreme margin was clearly too strong to resist. Not only are there unknown brands now, but there are also fakes amongst the genuine listings that are impossible to distinguish until you receive the product.

    I don’t use Amazon at all anymore. If I want something from a well know brand, I’ll purchase it from Argos. I can collect it the same day, and I can be confident it will be genuine. If I want some Chinese tat I’ll go direct to the source. Aliexpress is my Chinese marketplace of choice, but others use Shein or Temu. The prices are generally less than half of what Amazon charges for the exact same product and I’ve even received genuine products from there when I didn’t expect to. For small electronic components, or things needed for a repair they’re unbeatable. Just this week I received my replacement Oneplus 13 screen with frame after ordering it only 5 days earlier. It was delivered to me for £130 and is a genuine product. Amazon don’t even sell this screen and sourcing the part directly from Oneplus would’ve cost me £280.

    More and more I’m hearing people turning to buying direct from China. People that barely even know how to use a computer, not just the savvy. When someone can get a product for less than half price they could locally, with good customer service and within a week you can bet they’re going to jump at it.

    Some people will say we should be buying local, supporting our own countries economy but honestly our government has made that impossible. We are in a cost of living crisis where every penny counts. Food is getting more and more expensive every week. Aside from that our brick and mortar shops have become so poor that I wouldn’t even be able to find the products I needed if I wanted to. Our town centres seem to be transforming into services rather than shopping. There is an abundance of bars, coffee shops, sandwich shops, butchers and bakeries. However if I wanted an electronics shop I’d have to travel 20 miles, and they don’t even have a store front I’d have to either order online or order at the counter from the catalogue. All we have in towns are vape shops, phone case shops and charity shops. I’m afraid the damage is done, and as much as I want to do the right thing I don’t have the energy to keep fighting.

    If Amazon does fall I can’t say I’ll be sad to see it go. They’ve become too much of a monopoly, they’re prices aren’t that good anymore, the sales are appalling and “prime”‘s pricing has increased far too much over the last few years. They treat their staff poorly, and the Amazon delivery drivers desperate to meet unrealistic targets are a danger on the roads.

  • Online Safety Act 2023

    The UK has always been a nanny state. After all we’re a member of the “Five Eyes” (If this is the first you’ve heard of it, look it up and fall down a rabbit hole for a while). GCHQ have been charged previously of mishandling the data of their bulk intercepted communications so this is no conspiracy. However up until now a privacy concerned individual has been able to take steps to preserve their online privacy, at least to a certain degree.

    The Online Safety Act 2023 is the first step in destroying that possibility entirely and making any movements on the internet entirely traceable.

    Under the guise of protecting children (SPOILER ALERT: This Act has nothing to do with protecting children and everything about surveillance) as of 27/07/2025 anything deemed to be “Adult” content must be be locked behind age verification. So far this has been through either a “selfie” to estimate your age (and be able to link you digitally to your online passport photo), or directly uploading scans of your photo ID.

    The blocking pornography part of this is the part I’m least bothered by. Anyone with half a brain will have browsing their “adult entertainment” using a VPN for years now, and will have no problem continuing to do so. The part that really worries me for the future of the world is that this will be used to control access to information. Anything deemed “graphic” will be locked behind the ID verification, and the aim of this first stage will be to normalise sharing this information.

    With the threat of “Digital ID” being thrown around as a “solution” to the migrant issue this will go hand in hand perfectly. Out of convenience, I’m sure if this ID system does come into effect you’ll be able to link it to your smartphone to automatically verify yourself anywhere it’s required. At that point your entire digital footprint will be directly linked to you as a person.

    In theory you wouldn’t have an issue if you’re just shopping online, watching funny cat videos or looking up a recipe, but the problems may start to arise if your political views don’t align with the current government. Should you start looking for news sources different to the current preferred state propaganda your future might start looking less bright very quickly. In this digital dystopia you could be denied access to finance facilities, blacklisted for jobs, banned from places in person or online. We only need to look to China and the CCP to see just how authoritarian things can get if we let them.

    What can you do then? Unfortunately not a lot. The time to act before the bill has passed, and the majority of people ignored any calls to action. The government played their games very cleverly with this one. Branding it as a bill to “protect the children” meant they could very easily demonize anyone who spoke out against it. All you can do now is at the next election vote for a party that promise to repeal the act.

    Similar to the mass surveillance laws enacted post 9/11, watch out for Digital ID being pushed as the solution to illegal migrants. It won’t solve anything. Someone willing to hire someone who can’t legally work in the country won’t care if they have a digital ID or not. It’s just an excuse to push it through parliament. Do what you can to resist the authoritarian regimes and do not allow governments to encroach on your freedoms.

    If we carry on the route we’re going, it won’t be long before I could be arrested for posting something like this.

  • The current, bleak state of things.

    15 years ago if someone had told me about the dead internet theory I’d have laughed in their face. To quote Wikipedia a definition of it is:

    “The dead Internet theory is a conspiracy theory which asserts that, due to a coordinated and intentional effort, the Internet now consists mainly of bot activity and automatically generated content manipulated by algorithmic curation to control the population and minimize organic human activity.”

    Doesn’t sound too far fetched in 2025 does it? Just yesterday my Android phone installed an update and notified me of improvements to “Gemini”. Namely that it could now do deep research on a prompt, and convert those generated results into a podcast style summary. Curious, I gave it a go. The topic I’d been debating online (who knows if I was talking to a bot) was whether or not we need to use cases and screen protectors on modern smartphones anymore. So that was what I asked.

    About a minute later I’d been given a huge wall of text on the topic, and a click of a button and another 1 minute later a 10 minute “podcast” was ready to listen to. I popped in my earbuds and pressed play. I was deeply disturbed at the results. There were two voices in this audio, a male and a female conversing on the topic. This didn’t sound like text to speech at all, there were breaths taken, pauses in the right places, consistent accents and what sounded like organic conversation taking place.

    If LLM generated audio can sound so convincing, there is little to no chance we’d be able to discern between true human written text and the “AI” content. I’ve seen videos exposing the uncanny “AI” generated videos, that unless told we would have no idea weren’t real.

    These tech companies have scraped through all of humanity’s history on the internet, our books, our movies, our music, our conversations and even our photos. In a very simplified explanation they’ve boiled all this content together and given it to very powerful computers that can now recite all of this knowledge and do it in a manner than appears very human. It can create images from a prompt, videos from an image and new music from artists that have long since passed.

    This is undoubtedly an achievement like no other, even 5 years ago I would never have believed any of this would be possible this half of the century let alone the same decade. But at what cost?

    It’s rapidly destroyed our online communities that closed the gaps between continents, allowed for collaboration in ways never seen before and more importantly gave people that struggled to fit in places they felt at home. Government regulation has closed down all but the biggest of these communities, and most now rely on their own little spaces within the major social networks. Namely Facebook and Reddit.

    Facebook is never something I’ve been comfortable. My online identity and my “IRL” identity have always been kept separate. A platform trying to force me to combine these identities was never going to sit well with me. For that reason (amongst others!) Facebook is a no go for me, and I’ll never have a profile on there.

    Reddit used to be what felt like the final outpost of humanity on the internet, but now I’m not so sure. Regulation has been weighing it down for some time, as the owners have been deemed ultimately responsible for any content posted on there censorship has increased dramatically. Recently the “Online Safety Act” has come into play which has made things much, much worse. To even be aware of the existence of what Reddit deem to be “adult content” on Reddit, you now need to be logged in and have your age verified with either a selfie or your national ID. Aside from being absolutely dystopian this now puts it in the same boat as Facebook. Your online identity and your real life identity become one.

    Anonymity online is essentially dead anywhere it actually mattered now. No longer can you enjoy discourse around your hobbies online without it being linked back to you. No longer can you vocalise political views without risking a knock at your door.

    As an old school internet user I vehemently oppose regulation of the internet, I promote open source collaboration and promote free speech whether I agree with the opinion or not.

    Unfortunately the internet as we knew it is dead. The only certainty in browsing it in the way we used to is that you will be spoon fed marketing and propaganda. We can no longer guarantee that anything we read on there is real, especially when it’s claimed to have been posted by an individual.

    Does that mean our communities and collaboration are dead? Absolutely not. The communities will just migrate to places that have less regulation. Encrypted chat channels, tor networks and private online communities to name a few. The downsides of this is it’ll be much harder for newcomers to find their way, and that actually nefarious communities such as black hat hacking groups and people that have interests or beliefs that are actually a risk to the public will be harder to find. However the latter is not our problem, and is a direct result of the lawmakers actions. Surely these people would learn from history, just one look at the results of alcohol prohibition and the criminalisation of drugs would tell them that! Overnight the population of the UK’s knowledge of VPN’s increased dramatically, a very bad result for what can only be described as a nanny state if you ask me.

    Anyway, I digress. What, if any value can be extracted from the internet in it’s new form then? In traditional use, very little. Unfortunately, the only way to interface efficiently now is to use the new tools. Use “AI”. While “AI” is still in its early phase the tech companies are still very keen on improving their algorithms. That means they want people to converse with it, en masse. As a result, there a very little ads being served and very little if any cost passed on to the consumer. Use “ChatGPT”, “Gemini”, “Deepseek” or whatever you fancy to trawl the web for you. But use it as a starting point only, it generally gives you its sources of information so use those links to your advantage. Don’t blindly take its output as gospel, it’s often inaccurate, or slightly but importantly incorrect and misleading.

    Will I follow this advice myself? I’m not sure I can bring myself to feed its language models, nor do I want to help them build up an even clearer profile of me. There’s also a part of me that feels like it’s completely destroying peoples ability to think critically. For some though, especially those that really learn how to extract value from it, it’ll be an opportunity to get ahead of their peers. For me, maybe I’m just happy to be left behind.

  • Smartphone addiction or social media addiction?

    We see it all the time. People are at war with their own screen time. Or not. I’d argue some people don’t even know they have a problem. It’s very telling though when both of the major smartphone operating systems have built in methods to help limit screen time and use their devices in more productive ways. Would they actually want you to use your smartphone less though? Obviously not, but there is enough of a demand that they need to be seen trying at least.

    If you use a smartphone, take a look at your screen time in the settings of your device. If this isn’t something you’re mindful of you may be surprised at just how much time you spend staring at it every day. Secondly take a look at the breakdown by application, if you have any form of social media installed on the device I’d bet with fairly high confidence that the social media application is at the top of the list.

    The argument I’d like to make is that when we hear people talking about smartphone addictions, with people regularly hitting 10 hours or more a day on their phone (which is frankly insane!) they’re actually incorrect. I think what most people are describing is a social media addiction, the reason that the smartphone is blamed as the culprit it because it enhances the problem due to it’s convenience and portability.

    Have you ever noticed that neither Windows or Mac computers have settings to limit screen time? They simply don’t need it. When we use a computer it’s more intentional. Generally we perform the task we set out to complete and then we switch it off again. In my case I primarily use a desktop computer, to use it I have to sit at my desk and if I’m not at my desk any task I need to perform on the computer would have to wait until I’m there. The 27″ monitor I have can display information at a much larger size, I can type at 80 words per minute on it’s full sized keyboard, and I can select things and operate much more accurately with a proper mouse. Considering this and many more reasons, using my desktop computer is the most efficient and productive way for me to interface with the digital world. Yet if I wasn’t mindful of my usage I would be sat on the sofa trying to do these things on my phone. Why? Because it’s more convenient.

    Yes you can use social media on a computer, in a web browser but I doubt many people do this, especially those that aren’t mindful of their social media consumption. The majority of people will use social media on their mobile device, with a dedicated app that can send notifications to them at any time, and that’s when social media can become a problem.

    A smartphone, when used intentionally can be a very powerful productivity tool. It provides a way to interface with the digital form in a portable form factor. You can access and manage your finances. You have the entirety of human knowledge at your fingertips through its web browser. You can take photos, record videos, play them back or send them to friends and family. You can take and store an almost infinite number of notes. It can be your alarm clock, timer or stopwatch. You can read books or watch films on it. It can also replace your wallet. Obviously it’s also a phone! This is really only scratching the surface of the near endless functionality of a smartphone. Looking back only a few years having a modern smartphone in your pocket would be the equivalent of having access to a pocketable super computer. Is it the most productive form factor? Absolutely not. A relatively small touch screen as the only input and display is not a particularly ergonomic or effective way of using a computer, but considering it has to fit in our pocket the options are quite limited.

    I argue strongly that it is not the smartphone that should be demonised, for it’s merely a tool it is in fact the social media apps that have completely hijacked our smartphones that is the problem.

    Don’t believe me? Don’t take my word for it. Take part in my challenge. But before you do anything I’d like you to record some data as a baseline. For 7 days, at the end of each day, write down your total screen time for the day.

    Once you’ve done that delete every single social media app from your mobile phone, and block access to their web versions from your web browser (depending on your device the steps for that will be different but the information is easily found on popular search engines). You don’t need to delete your social media accounts, and you can still access the accounts on a desktop, laptop or even a tablet as often as you like but just not your smartphone. Do this for 14 days, and at the end of each day write down your total screen usage.

    I’ve done exactly as I described above, however I went one step further. I also completely deleted the accounts. The only account I still have is Youtube and I limit my usage of that to my tablet.

    The first couple of days you’ll find your screen time is still high, however it will be slightly lower than before. You’ll find yourself unlocking your smartphone regularly out of sheer habit, but because the allure of social media is gone from it you’ll probably swipe through the Home Screen for a minute or so before putting it back in your pocket. Try your best not to replace scrolling social media with mindless web browsing. By the end of this challenge I am almost certain that (unless you’re involved in multiple group chats that you participate heavily in) your screen time will have at least halved. You’ll find that when you do use your smartphone it will be to complete a task that you decided upon before you unlocked the screen, and once that task is completed the screen will be switched off.

    If you have taken part in this challenge, please share your results in the comments if you’re comfortable doing so. What I’d also be interested to know is that at the end of the challenge will you be reinstalling the apps or are you going to continue to keep them off your smartphone?

    For me personally I enjoy being intentional with my consumption of media, and I like to be present when I’m spending time with friends or family. A face to face conversation is much richer and more fulfilling than anything I could ever see on my smartphone so I prioritise that. I spend less than an hour a day on my smartphone now, and yet I still listen to music, I still use my GPS, I keep in touch with people, I do mobile banking and I keep on top of email. My device can go almost a week between charges because unless I need the phone for something, it’s not being used.

    To conclude and summarise: When you next hear the term “smartphone addiction”, consider correcting it to “social media addiction”. It’s nigh on impossible to be addicted to a tool. To put it crudely; a drug user is not addicted to a syringe, but the drugs they administer through it. Used correctly a syringe is a powerful tool that can be used to saved lives, but it can also be misused to devastating effect.

  • Staying sane in the digital era

    We are living in the biggest mental health crisis in modern history. People are more anxious and depressed than ever before. Doctors are throwing medication at the issue, with record numbers of people on prescribed medication, many others are self medicating the issue with illicit substances.

    We can cure more conditions than ever before, with diseases and illnesses that would’ve been a death sentence in years gone by now trivial. Yet mental health is still murky territory, and the knowledge we have on the subject lags years behind our advancements in physical conditions.

    Irrespective of this, it could easily be argued that the mental health of the developed world’s population is worse than ever, particularly in younger generations.

    Excessive smartphone and internet use have been cited as causes for a decline in mental health, and I’d argue it’s the main factor.

    Smartphones and internet, when used in a positive manner are two of the biggest technological advancements of man kind. We have the entirety of human knowledge and history at our fingertips, accessible to everyone and we can store the whole thing in our pocket. No longer does a question have to go unanswered, and everyone regardless of their education can find guides and a wealth of information on any task they are presented with.

    However, something that started with pure intentions of the advancement of humans has quickly been corrupted by greed and as of today there’s very little left of the internet that isn’t trying to make someone richer. At first the internet became littered with adverts, generic at first, then targeted through algorithmic analysis. Then came the influencers; advertisements in the disguise of content. Most recently came “AI”, human content is now at war with computer generated content, and the use of AI doesn’t come cheap for corporations so it’s used to either advertise products, harvest data or sway opinions in the favour of it’s overlord.

    People flock to social media as a last huddle to escape computer generated content, but this is not much better. Deep fakes, bots and generated content flood this too, often posing as a human poster.

    So what are we left with in 2025? Mass data collection, targeted advertising, political propoganda, AI generated content, fake news, malicious scamming and a mass of bots. Does this sound a healthy place to be? If you described that to me I wouldn’t want to spend one minute there, let alone upwards of 10 hours a day that an alarming number of people do today.

    There’s a lot to examine here so I’ll break this down into the different ways that this hurts our mental health:

    • Isolation – Human’s are social creatures, and interacting with each other and forming positive relationship improves our mental state. It’s an innate behaviour that we seek out interaction and approval of our peers. Social media preys on that. It exchanges genuine human interaction for cheap, low effort interaction. A like, a comment, an upvote, a retweet, a share all take next to no effort. The sender feels like they’ve got behind the poster, and the recipient feels accepted, like or admired. Both get a quick rush of dopamine, reinforcing the behaviour, encouraging the cycle to repeat. In actuality, these people haven’t interacted at all, but they feel like they have for a brief moment. People are using this as a substitute for staying in contact with their friends, family or acquaintances because it’s low effort. However for something to be genuinely fulfilling it needs to be given effort. Think of it as receiving a thoughtful, relevant gift opposed to a gift card. This whole cycle leaves people feeling more isolated and lonely than ever, which in turn leads them to spend more time on social media trying to fulfil a longing for human contact, obviously this just compounds the issue, but benefits the social media company massively as the user spends more time on their platform, consuming their content, sharing more of their personal information and feeding the advertisers.
    • Anxiety – You’ll have most likely heard of the term “clickbait” and maybe even “ragebait” by now. Even so, I’m sure you still fall for it, we all do. It’s a well known fact that negative content gets more engagement than positive. Someone who is outraged, scared or full of dread is much likely to click on an article, share or engage in discussion than something nice. It’s the same concept as you only see bad reviews online, people are generally more likely to go out of their way if they’ve had a negative experience. Marketers and news outlets know this, and as their income comes from your engagement they’ll produce what makes them more of it. For someone who gets the majority of their news from social media or less credible publications it would be very easy for them to form a view that everything in the world is terrible, on the brink of all out war, and that everyone is out to get them. In reality it’s not, but if that’s all you see you’ll start to believe it.
    • Too much exposure to news – Previously there were two ways to get your news. Either a newspaper or the televised news, usually once a day. To cram all this into one paper, or a small period of time on a TV channel news was concise and relevant to it’s readers/viewers. Do we really need to know of every conflict or problem occurring in the world? Does knowing about this enable you to do anything about it? Not every problem is ours to bare, and the increased mental stress of knowing all this information can weigh us down. Not too long ago we had town criers, who would deliver local news to the population. Being naturally inquisitive leads us into trying to be up to speed on worldwide events, even when there is really no benefit to us knowing about them.
    • Less time spent in the real world – Every minute spent online is a minute that could be spent doing something else. Buying something online substitutes an actual shopping trip, that would generally include some exercise and social interaction. Watching short form videos could substitute someone going for a walk in nature, playing with their children or learning a new hobby. I could go on but I’m sure you get the point. Granted that not every moment spent on the internet or a smartphone is productive time, but generally the time spend online does our mental health more harm than if we just stared at a wall.
    • Lack of boredom – This sounds counterintuitive but boredom is actually pretty important. I’m old enough to remember being a child or teenager, bored out of my mind in my bedroom, with only my thoughts. When we have no distractions the voice in our heads wake up, we start to think about and process our experiences, we start to be creative and eventually we seek out something interesting to do. When I hear that people are spending 10 hours a day on their phones it baffles me, what does that really leave any other time free for? Assuming the average person spends 7 hours a day asleep, and 8 hours a day working there literally is not enough hours in the day. Sleep problems are on the rise, and is it any surprise? That voice in our head that gets subdued with mindless content consumption wakes up when we close our eyes to try and sleep, we haven’t given our imagination and subconscious any time to be active.

    So what can we do?

    The most important thing you can do by far is remove yourself from social media. There is nothing beneficial there anymore, it’s mass data harvesting, propaganda and advertising thrown together in an addictive pot. Consider deleting your accounts, your apps and keep yourself as far away from it as possible. Reddit and Youtube count too, however these can be beneficial sources of information so I would suggest using these without an account and avoid the comments sections. Staying signed out keeps the algorithm from sucking you in. Personally I deleted all of my accounts years ago and the benefits have been huge. The funny thing is I’ve never felt like I was missing out. Nothing on those sites was of any real value.

    Secondly, limit your news consumption both in volume and geography. Consider setting aside 10 minutes a day to catch up on the news, and do it conscientiously. Either buy a local newspaper or stick to your towns local news outlet. You don’t need the whole worlds problems bearing down on your shoulders. And if it’s something you really need to know, you’ll find out.

    Thirdly, spend more time outside of your bubble. Step out into the world, go for a walk, explore a new place, even just go to the shops in person. Your outlook will begin to brighten quickly when you see life isn’t what the internet portrays it to be.

    Finally, embrace boredom! Achieving moments of boredom will look different for everyone. For me that meant keeping my smartphone very minimalist. I don’t have a web browser and I don’t have any apps outside of functional ones. My phone becomes a tool. For times where I need the internet, or apps I have my tablet and a PC. They’re less convenient and generally not on my person, so I can moderate their use more easily. To this day when I’m feeling bored I sometimes instinctively pull out my phone, only to realise there’s nothing to do on there and put it away. I’ll either find something else to do or just allow myself to be bored for a while. Eventually it stops being so uncomfortable and feels peaceful.

    The resolution looks slightly different for everyone, because we all have different circumstances and needs. For you, it might be a less extreme solution, even just reducing screen time but the key point is removing yourself from what has become a toxic environment.

  • eBay – A downward spiral?

    Of the older ones among us that were the pioneers of the internet, most will have memories of eBay in its early days. My earliest memory of it would’ve been around 2003 as we didn’t get internet access at home until around 2005. I remember borrowing my Grandfathers laptop and browsing listings, there were no businesses on there it was just average people selling their unwanted belongings as it was originally intended.

    Fast forward today and you have to set up a search specifically just to find a private seller. The majority are “businesses” (in the loosest sense of the definition) reselling things can be purchased for a 5th of the price on Chinese market places such as Temu and Aliexpress.

    eBay seem hell bent on ruining their marketplace through poor decisions over the years. Pushing buyers and sellers away in their droves. I’ll list a few that come to mind:

    • Charging ever increasing selling fees.
    • Forcing all payments through their platform, and charging higher payment fees.
    • Siding with the buyer regardless of the situation, leaving honest sellers out of pocket.
    • Promoting alternative sellers items on a product listing, drawing attention away from the item that was clicked on toward a sponsored listing.
    • The entirety of the Global Shipping Programme. This abomination has left buyers and sellers all over the world frustrated and out of pocket through sheer incompetence.
    • Packlink shipping. They act as a broker for different couriers but when a shipment goes wrong neither of the parties will take responsibility.

    I could go on.

    The latest nail in the metaphorical coffin is the abolishing of the seller fees. This was in response to a loss of traffic due to Vinted. Vinted offer zero selling fees and put the onus on the buyer to pay for a “Buyer protection fee”, which in effect is just paying the platform tax.

    For a brief period of around a month eBay experienced a new golden era. Sellers sold their items with no fees, and buyers paid no fees. Sellers got paid immediately and could withdraw funds at any time. However this was not to last.

    Not satisfied with ad revenue and sponsored listing income eBay tried to follow Vinted’s footsteps and implement buyer fees, buy of course in a much worse way. As of Feb 2025 if you now go onto eBay and search for anything you will see all the prices look a little strange. Where an item was £9.99, you’ll now see an item at £10.76. This is because eBay have slid their fees into the selling price of the item. The seller still listed their item for £9.99 but now it looks like they’ve priced it higher.

    The honest way for eBay to implement this would have been to state the original price, and then clearly state their fees which make up the total. Interestingly this fee only applies to private sellers. Seemingly another effort to push out entire market they’re promoting themselves to. To stand any chance of competing with the droves of business sellers on eBay the private seller will realistically have to lower their asking price to incorporate eBay’s slice of the pie.

    To make matters worse eBay have made a change to how sellers get paid. Payments will now be held until a confirmed delivery is made, based on the tracking number. In the case of a collection or untracked delivery they will hold payment for 14 days. This leaves sellers out of pocket when they need to pay for postage, and they will not have the money for the item that is no longer in their possession.

    I think we are witnessing the end of eBay’s 30 year run, at least eBay as we know it. One of the first big websites, a household name and a hobby and a passion for many coming to an end. If the company does survive their truly dreadful decision makers latest blunder it will not be as we know it. We can expect more of the Amazon esque off brand products, a search that is fed by the highest bidder and algorithms and an ever worsening user interface.

    Truly a shame.