I’m genuinely surprised there hasn’t been any significant effort made to make it more readable.

Quite the opposite. They’ve tried to make it better, and in turn, they’ve made it worse.

They used to have a pretty straightforward Linux file structure, and you were expected to put things in the external Pictures folder. And downloads went to the external Downloads folder. Back then, internal storage was small and SDs were large, so apps couldn’t really afford to store these things locally and the SD structure was well enough defined that it was pretty clear where pictures would go.

Now, Google has pushed against SD cards. They also started requiring more permissions for external storage. They’ve added some “documents” APIs that were supposed to make it easier to tag/find files, but it’s a tangled mess and most apps don’t touch it. And they’ve rewritten their storage model multiple times at this point. If you’re writing a new app, it’s unclear which model to even follow anymore because Google has created a giant cluster fuck of options and paradigms.

Google is actively making this problem worse and worse. I wish they had never tried to “fix” this in the first place.

This is one hundred percent sensationalism. Just because the app pulls it doesn’t mean that it’s being used to track you down. It’s probably just for crash reporting etc.

A lot of these are just standard things that things like crash reporters pull. In other words, Discord probably included a crash reporter in their app, and it pulls things like memory usage, device state, os version, what orientation the device is in, etc so that when a crash happen, it can tag those to the developers. Those are all useful variables to the developers to understand what is causing the crash.

Tons of apps use crash reporters to keep their app stable. I’m sure most apps will pull the vast majority of this information. That doesn’t mean that they’re using it to track you.

IMO the thing is that people don’t care about their privacy. Sure, some people around here do, but your average person owns an Alexa, has a FB/Instagram account and constantly posts their location, uses the same password on many sites, uses TikTok, doesn’t block cookies, etc etc etc.

Most people don’t actually care. Some claim they do, but then can’t even be bothered to stop using Instagram etc because of the “inconvenience”… So do they really care?

Some companies (Apple, etc) push their products under a narrative around safety and security, and people will repeat that point as a way to justify a decision they already made, but if they actually cared, they would be doing other things too. But they don’t.

The number of us who do actually care about privacy and security is actually very small.

Yeah, my main problem so far has been finding communities actually worth following/joining/contributing to.

If suddenly tons of average people join, they won’t really find communities, they’ll deem that their analysis of Lemmy, and leave with tiny chances of a second chance. It’ll just boom and bust in it’s current state. Most people aren’t interested in starting or growing a small community.

Meanwhile, if we stay at this size for a while, communities may form/grow, and as people trickle in, they’ll grow bit by bit.

OK, now point me to the place I can give money for the food that doesn’t pollute/throw it all away.