I’d prefer to imagine a world in which a multi-billion dollar corporation isn’t tracking my every step to sell me more shit, and yet here we are…

I have no complaints about Lemmy, but posting on Mastodon is basically screaming into the void - I’ve been trying for more than a year, and I basically hardly ever get any reaction at all. In comparison, in the first week on Bluesky I found multiple people following me, commenting on my silly wine and cactuses posts, and in general just interacting.

Don’t get me wrong, I still prefer Mastodon technically and ethically, but it’s just so goddamned barren and dead I feel completely unmotivated to post there…

Zorin has a pro tier that costs money but it’s supposed to have the look and feel of classic Windows - maybe it’s that?

Did they also say that one of the big pots they were using for cooking was actually a camouflaged Hamas Control center? Because that’s about as believable…

Not sure about Lemmy community, but I use this page when searching for communities: https://lemmyverse.net/communities

Amen. Basically this survey reads to me as “we decided to focus on AI and we need some pretty graphs to show it’s an awesome idea - please tell us why you think AI is the best thing ever!”

"A new eye-opening report (that we are not going to link, or even give you a title of, because trust us bro) has revealed something surprising about our social media platforms

How many military orphanages, military preschools and military press tents are they planning to strike this time? Are military supermarkets, military food banks and military temples also on the target list, or not this time?

Is there really no other word apart from SLAM that those “journalists” (or perhaps AI bots) are taught to use? Just one other goddamned word? I’m so tired of everyone and their mother slamming everyone else all the time…

And I bet at least one of them had a Hamas command center hidden in his back pocket too!

Thanks, here’s hoping! I love it as a phone, but I suspect it might be another app showing the icon - there should be no way for a disabled app to do so…

Anyway, I’ll keep casually digging, maybe start disabling apps one by one to see which one is the culprit or something :)

Factory reset is out of the question - I spent way too much time installing and setting everything up after changing phones to nuke it all (because Google sucks and doesn’t allow backing all the settings and such without root, but that’s a rant for another day).

I did reboot the phone, yes, multiple times - after turning calendar notifications off, disabling the app and so on. No dice, the icon keeps coming back. Oh well, guess I’ll have to get used to it - it’s a distracting eyesore, but the phone is working fine. Maybe it fixes itself after the update to Android 15…

Thanks a bunch for all the suggestions and willingness to help - appreciate it!

That didn’t work unfortunately - my Google calendar is actually completely empty, no tasks, notifications or anything. Cleared app data, even tried force stopping and disabling the app completely (can’t fully uninstall it, since it’s system), but the darn icon is still there. Maybe I just need to learn to live with it, even though it annoys me…

That’s a great find, thanks! The problem is, I don’t actually have any tasks scheduled right now, and the icon never disappears. Disabling calendar notifications completely doesn’t hide it either, I even tried disabling the calendar app completely, and still nothing…

This clickbait title will make you (or at least me) not want to click the link because it sounds like a shitty ad!💥🔥🍄

Put it on the pile: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_lines_in_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War

Amen to that. I’m not a busy CEO of four companies, I don’t need or want an assistant, digital or otherwise. I want to read through articles and watch videos, I can scroll/fast-forward through myself if I feel like it. And while we’re at it, I don’t really need or want personalized anything - just give me ALL the search results and I’ll sort through them myself. Luddite? Maybe, but I literally cannot think of a case where this would be useful or helpful to me…

A big reason I replaced my old S10+ with a battery that wouldn’t even hold half a day with Xperia 1 VI is that it has both the headphone jack AND an SD card slot. Might be the only flagship left that has both…

They used to have invite threads on Reddit - that’s how I got mine when the API changes were announced. I think it was in Reddit alternatives subreddit? Not sure, haven’t been back since. If there’s still a thread (and if the subreddit even exists still), asking there might work.

I don’t know (or, frankly, care much) about the “why”, and I like Lemmy the way it is, but if your looking for deeper discussion and longer posts I do recommend Tildes, if you can get an invite: https://tildes.net/ It’s not open to the public, so the post volume is quite low, but most responses are well thought out, longer and often thought-provoking. I don’t post much there, but enjoy reading it a lot.