Thanks for posting! I’m almost only play cooperative games (no one in my group is too much of a fan to compete against each other), so I’m always on the hunt for more of these. Luckily, I own all three games you’ve mentioned, but only spent time on AE and The Crew. This definitely motivates me to open up Spirit Island and give it a go!

I actually own the Target exclusive Horizons of Spirit Island - from reviews, it seems like it’s a streamlined version of the original, with lower quality pieces. Have you tried this, and what are your thoughts on it?

Sadly, I don’t think he’s wrong. It’s quite easy to see how:

1. A lot of people currently on Lemmy still have a pretty big addiction to reddit - I’ve seen a lot of threads about how they instinctually pull up reddit
2. This is still a vocal minority. There were some statistics (I unfortunately can’t pull up the numbers - I think I saw them on a subreddit that has gone private), where the number of people using third party applications was an extremely small number that probably won’t move the needle for them revenue-wise.

That being said, I personally have been enjoying the discussions being had on Lemmy. It seems to prompt for better discussion, since it appears that most people here are more tech-adept and willing to go through growing pains. I’ll likely stick around, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the number of active users here drops once this blackout ends. Still hoping for a change.

To my knowledge, a lot of these tracking and accountability applications end up in hot water because of their usage from bad actors.

I know there was an app on Android called Cerberus that was supposed to help you track your phone if it was lost/stolen, and it had the ability to open the covertly take videos/screenshots, so you could provide it as evidence to authorities.

Eventually, Google Play Store pulled the application after it became a fairly popular app for people to stalk their significant others without them knowing. I know for certain that iPhones already limit a lot of features from these types of apps. Just look at the limitations that CE admits to having when installed on iOS, including the inability to grab text messages, and only working through Safari.

The major players in tech, imo, have done a good job in preventing people in accidentally installing these applications that could invade their privacy (and instead, allow their own applications to steal your data…) It’s another discussion to see how much personal data we allow big tech to access, but I can say that they’ve done a solid job preventing these third party tracking applications to stay on their devices. The only way they can be installed is if you agree to it being installed on your devices, or being coerced into it.

The only solution I can think that would work long-term is if people get educated on the benefits and sanctity of their right to privacy, and don’t give these tracking companies any business, leading to their eventual collapse. I’m not holding my breath for that to happen, but until that happens, more and more of these stories will pop up.