Many people effectively rate a computer today on how well it can access social media, and a computer that can’t is therefore useless. This means you permit these companies to determine when the computer you spent your hard-earned money on should go in the trash. That decision probably won’t be made maliciously, but it certainly won’t be made to benefit you.

These are private companies and they get to decide how they will spend their money and time. But we, in turn, shouldn’t depend on them for anything nor expect anything from them, and we should think about finding ways to extricate ourselves from them and maintain contact with the people we care about in other fashions. On our systems in particular this will only get worse and it doesn’t have to. The power they have over our wallets and our public discourse is only — and entirely — because collectively we gave it to them.

TenFourFox Development: Another way social media is bad

Flash is over! If you want it (2010)

The web has to mature beyond advertising as a business model. For this to happen people are going to have to open their wallets, pay for the services they use, and support independent businesses. That’s how we build a web where indies can thrive - one that’s more village centre than financial centre. I think the shift is underway.

Goodreads plans to retire API access, disables existing API keys | Joe’s website