AdmiralGinge

I have my suspicions about /r/ukpolitics as well. During the last few UK election campaigns the place has read like there's enough astroturf to supply the next dozen Olympics.

That's a terrible idea in my opinion, any advertising at all on Wikipedia would be the thin edge of a very unpleasant wedge. Wikipedia is many people's first stop for knowledge, we really don't want people being able to buy eyeball space next to what's supposed to be unbiased content.

Additionally, expanding advertising generally is a bad move when exposure to advertising has been shown to be negatively correlated to quality of life and contentedness. We need to be transitioning away from advertising as a primary driver of the online economy, not fuelling it further. Advertising should only be employed when there's no better option in my opinion, not the first thing you reach for monetising a site. We should see advertising like fossil fuels, a regrettable necessity that we should aim to phase out.

In all seriousness, Brave New World is an excellent book. It's quite startling how much Huxley got right (and also what he got wrong, instead of soma we actually got the complete opposite with an international version of American prohibition). The general premise that it's easier to keep the population ignorant by barraging us with endless trivial rubbish than than 1984-style authoritarian "Ministries of Truth" is spot on I think.

Huxley is definitely on my top ten list of favourite authors.

I love firefox too, it's my go-to browser at work on Linux and at home on macOS. It really isn't as well integrated into macOS either though, especially compared to Chrome and Safari. The trackpad support (or lack of it) would probably have been a deal breaker when I got a mac if I wasn't already a long-term Firefox user and quite Google-sceptic.