I was raised Catholic. I also have a background in psychology as well as computer programming, so I understand thinking things through step-by-step in a logical and complete fashion, as well as all the myriad ways in which humans tend to skip over things they don’t want to deal with.

I guarantee you that I understand “belief” far better than you likely do. Go ahead and get all “righteous” - deep down it’s just a cover-up for insecurities about the things you don’t know how to process. One that’s been part of your ways of “thinking” for so long that you don’t even remember how you go there - it’s just instinctual at this point.

Your whole personality is wrapped up in hiding those foundational insecurities, and you’re unlikely to ever admit it to yourself (let alone anybody else) unless you have no other choice - because if you did, then you’d be completely lost as your have to deal with the fact that so much of what you built all your world views around were just lies and fantasy. Not terribly logical or well-thought out ones at that.

I think maybe you’re… ahem …selling yourself short. It might be more difficult in the current economic environment, but I suspect there are enough people who’d be willing to pay for high-quality acting even when the plain text version is free. It’s the immersion in the fantasy that makes it worth it to them. How do you think OF does so well when there’s so much readily accessible free porn out there? Do it right, market it properly (and cost-effectively), and even in this economy (or maybe even because of it) people will still pay to experience their fantasies (or at least escape reality). You just need to commit to doing it well to make it worth them paying for.

Violence begets violence & usually just results in mutually assured destruction if the overall balance of strengths is relatively similar (they have money, military, & now hired thugs, we mostly just have numbers and decentralization).

I recommend subterfuge and sabotage instead - particularly by those programming & managing all the computers that make everything happen nowadays.

…I’m very religious but not at all superstitious…

Cognitive dissonance on proud display.

a.k.a. “business as usual” when the government that’s supposed to be policing such behavior had become primarily focused upon doing it themselves.

Those who make for the best leaders very rarely want to be leaders.

If I knew about that beforehand, I’d probably be much less likely turn it on to begin with. If I learned the hard way, I’d likely be dissuaded from ever trying it again & just get one of those other apps. Conversely, the fact that my current phone boots much faster than older ones did makes it not really as off-putting an issue at it once was. It sounds like a major PITA until you realize that.

What happens when it’s no longer profitable enough to make manufacturing film worthwhile? In recent years LOTS of companies have been moving towards focusing strictly on their most profitable items only - dropping things that were still profitable, but not enough to please their major shareholders who only care about profits being as high as they possibly can be.

You have control over it so it’ll soon be just like all the other pre-installed crap that you never use, but still eats up limited storage space.

With the addition, Google isn’t only thinking of users’ well-being, of course.

It’s reacting to increasing regulatory pressure around social media harms and algorithmic dangers. Today, many countries and U.S. states have created laws to restrict or ban minors from using social media, as the impacts of these apps on young people’s mental well-being have become better understood.

Google can now point to a feature like Pause Point to claim it’s part of the solution, not the problem.

Ahhh - there it is.

The thing that is much more concerning to me, tho: if this is pre-installed as a standard pay of Android, then it could potentially be abused by work, carriers, governments, malware, etc. to control what you can and can’t easily do.

Please do (even though I personally don’t use those apps). Including imposing more of the incredibly large fines the EU has become known for, and applying the bulk of them towards mental health services & initiatives.