I’ve added a note that this is true.

The part of my brain responsible for my previously irrational distrust of Telegram is feeling so vindicated right now.

The API killing my preferred third party app did it for me. And the blatant astroturfing/karma farming also meant that it wasn’t a good experience on there.

I will say though, the Reddit hivemind effect is still present on Lemmy. Though I think there’s less tepid posts to raise account karma here.

Exactly. Introducing vulnerabilities to everyone means that foreign powers will be able to use it to spy on EU citizens as well. Fucking bananas.

It’s horrible that I can immediately recognise Scomo by his ever-balding head.

I watched this a couple of weeks ago. It’s good to be reminded that it’s okay to be imperfect at online privacy.

TOR is basically incognito mode for me now and I think that’s my personal best use of it.

I think your assessment of Linux Mint with XFCE is a really good first choice. Cinnamon could be worth a try though as the UI is a bit more modern looking. I’m biased towards XFCE because it looks fine and runs extremely well on old laptops. I’ve got a laptop from 2008 running it (it’s my only computer that still has a disc drive) and it’s honestly a usable machine again.

I think XFCE Mint is a good experience. That said, depending on how W10 has been running for you, Cinnamon won’t be worse than that.

Oh yeah for sure. I think if Gnome works for people they should use it. I’m not stoked on the situation of Gnome Extensions being needed for some pretty basic customisations, adding instability to the DE though.

Gnome has the apple philosophy that the user conforms to technology, not the other way around.