It is an awful state of things that you have to have a smartphone these days (increasingly for 2fa for banking and such) and now only two American tech companies are allowed to control them.
This is bad for society and humanity. This type of capture will lead us further into fascism and tech dependencies that are anathema to freedom and liberty.
Nah… no matter what they do, people - especially Americans, are too lazy and apathetic to care. We all know about all the spying that has been publicly divulged and admitted to - by the phone company, by the NSA, by Facebook, the list goes on. And how many Americans made any change to their lifestyle? None. They still line up in droves to pour out their money for the latest spy device. How many times was Alexa demonstrated empirically to have uploaded conversations recorded without the owner’s awareness or consent? The sheep still BUY such devices.
Please don’t delude yourself that people have any reluctance whatsoever. Open arms indeed.
I think you overestimate the average American’s aptitude for both understanding the ramifications of such spying, and to understand how to go about seeking out alternatives. Joe/Susie Random doesn’t have a clue about how what makes their phone screen work, only that it’s a tool to do things. Social media especially is so ingrained in modern life that you can become ostracized for not using it (even jobs sometimes see not having SM as a red flag). And even SM aside, what options are there (aside from FOSS, which does require a certain technical aptitude to adapt)? It used to be that you could customize android via roms to get away from it, but with these latest changes happening, even that’s becoming difficult to avoid big tech’s dominance. But again, it takes a certain level of know-how to seek out and implement such an alternative. And for the layman that doesn’t really have a clue about how this stuff work nor the bandwidth to learn it, i can’t entirely place the blame on them. The focus should entirely be on Apple and Google for strangling the competition that renders the options limited. I’m all for placing the blame on the individual when warranted, but we need to remember that merely by being on Lemmy we have a bit more technical understanding than most, and that must be taken into account for how we view these things. Many of the people out there aren’t inherently lazy or stupid, they just have different understandings and priorities in life, and we should be looking at these companies and also regulators for their failures of responsibility.
Sadly its too easy to claim a lack of understanding and continue on with life as usual. At this point, we should be working together to buy NOTHING from these corporations until our rights are firmly guaranteed. (exceptions for meds and similar essentials). I’ve cut back significantly, but I still made an Amazon purchase recently. A strengthening of secondhand marketplaces could take away another excuse for this. If they saw even a 25% drop in revenue it might be enough. We have to starve the beast.
I hate the noose of technology.
It is an awful state of things that you have to have a smartphone these days (increasingly for 2fa for banking and such) and now only two American tech companies are allowed to control them.
This is bad for society and humanity. This type of capture will lead us further into fascism and tech dependencies that are anathema to freedom and liberty.
And that’s what the sheeple welcome with open arms.
I wouldn’t say “welcome with open arms”. IMO it’s more like “having been misled by trillion-dollar global corporations over decades”.
Nah… no matter what they do, people - especially Americans, are too lazy and apathetic to care. We all know about all the spying that has been publicly divulged and admitted to - by the phone company, by the NSA, by Facebook, the list goes on. And how many Americans made any change to their lifestyle? None. They still line up in droves to pour out their money for the latest spy device. How many times was Alexa demonstrated empirically to have uploaded conversations recorded without the owner’s awareness or consent? The sheep still BUY such devices.
Please don’t delude yourself that people have any reluctance whatsoever. Open arms indeed.
I think you overestimate the average American’s aptitude for both understanding the ramifications of such spying, and to understand how to go about seeking out alternatives. Joe/Susie Random doesn’t have a clue about how what makes their phone screen work, only that it’s a tool to do things. Social media especially is so ingrained in modern life that you can become ostracized for not using it (even jobs sometimes see not having SM as a red flag). And even SM aside, what options are there (aside from FOSS, which does require a certain technical aptitude to adapt)? It used to be that you could customize android via roms to get away from it, but with these latest changes happening, even that’s becoming difficult to avoid big tech’s dominance. But again, it takes a certain level of know-how to seek out and implement such an alternative. And for the layman that doesn’t really have a clue about how this stuff work nor the bandwidth to learn it, i can’t entirely place the blame on them. The focus should entirely be on Apple and Google for strangling the competition that renders the options limited. I’m all for placing the blame on the individual when warranted, but we need to remember that merely by being on Lemmy we have a bit more technical understanding than most, and that must be taken into account for how we view these things. Many of the people out there aren’t inherently lazy or stupid, they just have different understandings and priorities in life, and we should be looking at these companies and also regulators for their failures of responsibility.
Sadly its too easy to claim a lack of understanding and continue on with life as usual. At this point, we should be working together to buy NOTHING from these corporations until our rights are firmly guaranteed. (exceptions for meds and similar essentials). I’ve cut back significantly, but I still made an Amazon purchase recently. A strengthening of secondhand marketplaces could take away another excuse for this. If they saw even a 25% drop in revenue it might be enough. We have to starve the beast.