Thank you for your contributions.

That is how it works, yeah. Very good point. Nobody needs to be actively malicious or conspiratorial, and it’s silly to imagine people being that conniving: The most profitable matching algorithm on a dating app just happens to be ineffective for most people, and whoever happens to stumble on that algorithm first ends up making the most profitable dating app – no need to know why it works, just that it does.

People find love through dating apps

That is part of the business model, actually: if these apps absolutely never work, then there will be no word of mouth, no success stories to use in promotional material, and users would pretty quickly figure out that it isn’t entirely their own fault that they haven’t made the progress that they’re expecting.

Also, like, language learning apps suffer from the same problem as dating apps: if these apps could actually teach you a language, you’d eventually get proficient enough at the language to no longer need the app — and if you no longer need the app, then it can’t harvest your data or subscription money anymore, and line goes down. So the app always needs to give you the impression that you’re making progress, while actually sabotaging your learning at every step.

This isn’t to say that these apps don’t have a place in the language learning process, but rather I’m saying that you need to be incredibly wary not just of the privacy issues, but of how to actually use these apps effectively. If you’re aware of their tricks, then they become less effective.

got sold to Microsoft while Newell still lives.

Surely you mean while he’s “Still Alive”, right?

Here’s a six-minute YouTube video explaining how to use it

TL;DW: Click on the extension icon, use the drop-down lists to find a browser and OS, select a pre-configured user-agent string from the list, and click “apply (container)” or “apply (all windows)”. Having your user-agent string change randomly with each request is possible but requires writing a bit of JSON in the options.

From what I remember, that image was hosted on hexbear.net, so I don’t think so.

I would say a user agent spoofer would be more useful for this particular image. The Mozilla team recommends User-Agent Switcher and Manager for Firefox users.

one bad Apple

♪ nagareteku toki no naka de demo kedarusa ga hora guruguru mawatte ♪