I guess the stawman of ‘most FOSS advocates’ could be anything, but attributing ‘free as in beer’ to FOSS, taking it from their slogan ‘free as in freedom NOT free as in beer’ is beyond stupid.

Why is that funny? If you want something to work and there are bad consequences to it not working, fishing for reasons it might not work is exactly what you need to do.

Have you ever applied a layer of paint, finish, or glue to something? Getting a smooth, uniform layer of a coating is not a no-brainer. I would expect uneveness, brush marks, etc.

It seems like getting caught having tried to obscure your fingerprints would be bad. How does one fill them in without it looking like you have a mess of glue on your fingers? Is there some technique for making it smooth so that you don’t produce prints that look obviously messed with?

They definitely want your photo. They will photograph / scan your face everytime you fly.

Time to add a tinfoil suit to the hat!

You said

you would probably end up degrading your own experience; getting irrelevant ads

Irrevant ads = less targeted ads. You seem to think this is a negative. I’m saying it is actually a positive.

Getting more targeted ads is not really in your interest. That is an idea promoted by the ad people.

All of history is one people taking over another peoples land. I’m not saying its right, but in virtually any part of the world there is a history of some invader or colonizer coming in and displacing or swallowing up the existing people, probably multiple times, down through prehistory as well.

The basic screen design is pathetic. When I do a search I want to see search results. The whole right half of the screen is taken by related searches (your example differs from mine where it puts that Wikipedia summary in the upper right). Then half of the left side is taken up by a “people also ask” block. That leaves a quarter of the screen for search results, which with their inefficient spacing, fits 2 whole results before needing to scroll! If I scroll down I get 7 more before needing to use paging.

When they first rolled it out, they asked for feedback. Good luck trying to find where to submit that.

I’m using 7 pro right now and there is absolutely nothing making me think about upgrading. So I support the idea that you’re fine with a 9.

F-Droid is not a shop

Not sure why this is a response to my query.

Sorry, my wording was unclear. Their vpn verbiage suggests to me they are promoting access to the existing content of the web. Secure and anonymous they claim in other website verbiage.

When they say "All the content in the world’’ and compare it to a VPN, I take that to be promising secure anonymous access to all the existing content of the web not just some new social network’s own content.

The way you use caution saying something in a public place that you don’t want everyone to hear is by keeping your voice down so that only certain people can hear it. Without privacy settings there is no equivalent to that.

WHAT?