I accepted the terms, signed away all of my privacy, and completed a whole questionnaire regarding my goals for using the app, my level of knowledge about my menstrual cycle, regularity of my periods, symptoms I experience before and during my periods, and other conditions I have which impact my sexual health.

Only after the app had harvested all of that from me did it reveal that a subscription is required, and the only way to trial it is to commit to payment when the 14–day trial period ends. Like all “free” trials, I can “cancel any time”, and like all “free” trials, it’s my job to remember to cancel it before it automatically charges my card, so fuck you very much and uninstall.

Having already agreed to my sexual health data being sent to “people you can trust because we just want the best outcome for you we promise”, I would have actually been fine going the whole way and trialling it if there were no strings attached, because it did seem to be a lot more about sexual health generally than just tracking periods.

When it asked for my goals, I included “better orgasms” and “sexual intimacy”. It asked for my current level of sexual activity and something about my masturbation habits.

When it asked about my other conditions, it provided options for PCOS and Endometriosis. I was genuinely curious at this point. I was basically entering the responses my wife would give, and right now we’re strategizing ways to alleviate PCOS–related pain. Data driven insights may have been genuinely useful. Could have persuaded us to subscribe, at least for a couple of months, had the trial showed promise. Guess we’ll never know.

I would prefer to use a standardised, client–agnostic messaging protocol than anything that requires a specific app.

I stopped using WhatsApp because using a Meta product makes me feel icky. I use Telegram and Matrix to contact drug dealers. My work requires a combination of Google Chat, Teams and Slack. Some of my friends like to stick to Discord.

What would be really great is if we could all decide on one protocol for sending end–to–end encrypted text and media over HTTPS to a globally unique ID and have everyone use whatever client they like. Like SMTP but more streamlined and secure. Google, Apple, Samsung etc can ship devices with a default client, but allow users to install another one that they like more.

But OEMs don’t like things to be open. Apple has iMessage, Google has RCS, and Samsung probably does some bullshit I’m not aware of since committing to the Pixel life. So I will probably always have a folder with 15 different messaging apps.

That’s a good point. I was thinking the prevailing content here shows that my interests aren’t aligned with those of most members, and it would be inappropriate to post other stuff. Which was a really stupid way to think now that you point it out. Communities are splintered enough in the fediverse. No need to carve out more niches.

It seems not, and I’ve been thinking that if this doesn’t change soon I’ll have to start that community myself. The problem is that during the “building it and waiting for them to come” stage I’d need to contribute to the community to encourage others to do the same, and my only contributions would be stuff like “I really wanted to try the MKC75 and I kept putting it in my cart and I did buy the keycaps that I thought would look really nice with the e-pink but then the board itself sold out and I feel like an idiot”. Would you guys be into that or…?