Corporations certainly would bend to consumer demand if consumers were wise enough to boycott and make demands. But the question is whether consumer wisdom would ever advance on a scale to make that happen. I think I have little hope of seeing it in my lifetime.

There are 35 million Mexican adults (38%) without a bank account. So living unbanked is at least an option, and more than ⅓ find it viable.

Nonetheless, it’s interesting to hear that all banks in Mexico are digital and that not a single one offers offline service. And that not a single digital bank offers logins w/out 2FA, or 2FA by SMS (which includes feature phones), or 2FA by using a card reader. If all that is true, consider posting about it in !smartphone_required@lemmy.sdf.org.

This is extremely reductive and oblivious to the actual realities of banking in various countries.

I think you will be hard-pressed to find a country that does not have a single bank that can serve those w/out smartphones. If you find such a country, plz post about it in !smartphone_required@lemmy.sdf.org and send me the link. Then we may be able to make a case for ppl in that specific country not being boot-lickers, if at the same time being unbanked is illegal.

If you think it’s easy to be “unbanked” then I would suggest that you try it yourself first.

I have been simulating an unbanked life for years now. 5 creditors are threatening lawsuits for non-payment after refusing my cash. One took me to court and it was an easy win for me. I just appeared without a lawyer and pointed to the law.

It’s also worth noting that unbanked is more extreme that simply choosing a bank that does not require a smartphone.

It’s banking:

https://slrpnk.net/post/28294479

The army of corporate boot lickers in the mobile phone context is largely composed of people who think banking on a smartphone is wise, despite the attack surface and despite the bank being empowered to monitor their customers more closely. Banking apps are the most significant culprit for gluing people to Android.

We may never see the day when more than 5% of the population realises the importance of FOSS enough to shake free of their addiction to convenience.

I agree. But you have to start somewhere. The guideline has been converted into legislation in Belgium since last week.

Do you have more detail on what was implemented? I could only find this repairability index, which I suspect won’t be much more useful than energy indexes and nutrition indexes.

This is why I said at the local level. City council cannot change federal laws.

The EU has been grappling with right to repair laws for over 10 years now. It’s a complete shit show.

At the moment, a washing machine maker in the EU is only required to release repair documentation to professional repairers who are insured, not consumers. And they only have to do it in the 1st 10 years, not in the time period that things actually break. At the 10 year mark, they automatically lose the docs and stop making parts.

The law you reference is not yet in force AFAIK. But when it comes into force and each member state eventually legislates, look at what we are getting-- from your reference:

A European information form can be offered to consumers to help them assess and compare repair services (detailing the nature of the defect, price and duration of the repair). To make the repair process easier, a European online platform with national sections will be set up to help consumers easily find local repair shops, sellers of refurbished goods, buyers of defective items or community-led repair initiatives, such as repair cafes.

That’s crap. It’s fuck all. Consumers are not getting service manuals. They are just being told where they can go to get someone else to do the work. We can of course already find repair cafes because they publish their own location. But repairers at repair cafes are just winging it. You cannot bring them a large appliance like a washer. They don’t even have water and drain hookups. And even if one repair cafe made an exception for large appliances, their repairers are not insured and thus cannot legally get access to service manuals.

Everything at the state/fed/intl levels is a total shitshow. This is why I asked in the OP what can be done at the local level.

I should have linked the parent thread. Federal laws are a shit show. In the US, most states have paltry R2R protections typically only covering cars, wheel chairs, and farm equipment.

This is why I am collecting ideas for what we might petition LOCAL govs to do, like city councils.

I don’t think that is true. I never heard of a creativity test or measurement as a precondition to copyright protection. As I understand it, anything you write (regardless of artistic creativity) is automatically protected under an all rights reserved copyright unless you explicitly state otherwise.

fwiw, here is an emacs version:

https://codeberg.org/martianh/lem.el#headline-11

I think what would be most useful would be a usenet→lemmy gateway, so that rich catalog of usenet clients can be leveraged on Lemmy.