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Basically how i try to live my life! Buy physical media, setup a nas, unplug from the internet on most weekends (or limit it).
This post and several comments agreeing with this I feel are made with some level of ignorance on “Civil Disobedience”.
Minimizing participation in the orphan-crushing machine but also debating politics on available platforms are not antithetical. Debating online is as important as doing the rest of the things that are perceived as “real” worthwhile pursuits. For instance: How can we pursue a cure for cancer if the political climate ensures scientists are scorned and distrusted? If evangelising about the “real” problems you care about is labelled as politics then can you really make progress without “political” action such as boycotting, protests and civil disobedience?
In the same vein, doing the small things in protest is the stepping stones to doing bigger things. It works the same way for any pursuit. Why shouldn’t I practice discipline with my disdain for all the evil in small ways while also pushing for more?
Jeff Bezos makes billions of dollars, But He didn’t get the $100 from me this year. Sure that sounds like a waste of time and energy for not much impact. But It didn’t cause me any hardship. But believe me that $100 had either a compounding effect on my own wealth this year or to some people i gifted essential food to. That impact was felt a lot more by me or one of the people i gifted food or essentials to.
Yes, add to the third panel ordering food by phone call, going to the store when you want every small thing, buying your groceries in person, stopping taxis on the street, no file sharing, etc., etc.
I can’t tell if you think those are terrible things or not.
Because that’s how most people live their lives even today.
Those are terribly inconvenient things IMO. We shouldn’t become Amish to reject tech bros, because tech makes life easier. There’s enough talent to make these same services in a non-exploitable way, but the incentives are misaligned with the common good.
That’s why I love the Fediverse, proof that tech can be used without tech bros.
ordering food by phone call, going to the store when you want every small thing, buying your groceries in person,
Talking on the phone, actually buying everything you need when you go shopping, interacting with a cashier…
It says a lot about you that you think these are terrible things, rather than things people do every day and don’t think much about.
Would you care to complete your statement? What exactly does it say about me?
I get the idea, but I am kinda stuck on the letter writing bit. They do know that the post getting delivered is kinda built on middlemen right?
Also, food delivery has always involved middlemen. Instead of food delivered through an app, it was food delivered after a phone call. But, it was a human middleman delivery driver doing the delivery.
Yeah middlemen have been a part of almost all commerce from the start, every store, every trade and most services are in some way middlemen. I think the comic’s message is good but is attributing the terrible actions of llm to middlemen in error.
Usually those middlemen don’t open up your mail, read what you wrote, then serve you ads based on that.
GPG.
Everything you do relies on some middlemen, it’s just about cutting out layers.
You won’t grow your own food, but you can buy it from a farmer, instead of a store who bought it from a franchise center who bought it from a supply network who bought it from a risk management futures buyer who bought it from a farming company who bought it from a farm.
We’re techy enough nerds to know there’s another way to be free of billionaire influence while still keeping some resemblance of modern communication: self-hosting.
Good luck self hosting something to message your contacts.
Good luck self hosting something to message
Dude, it’s pretty easy to set up matrix on a docker container
your contacts
Fuck you’re right
Why self-host messaging when there are so many good options?
You’re asking the wrong guy. I don’t think it makes sense either even if I’m a (moderate) self-hosting guy.
Because fuck centralized software.
And there aren’t many good option, there is only one, and Signal still required phone number for some reason on my phone so I could not give a fuck about it.
My family and immediate friends are all on my Matrix server.
I have my own dedicated public server, so I can selfhost anything I want. And I do selfhost a lot.
I selfhost since so long that some of my domains could vote, but I still need some “mainstream” channels to be reached by several people.
If we can argue that close friends will put extra effort to contact you on whatever you use, it’s also true that your landlord, the plumber, the chick you picked up last night, won’t give a shit and simply consider you a lunatic 99% of times if you tell them to use anything non-mainstream.
Yeah, but Matrix has bridges for almost anything.
And people still use email.
Yeah, but Matrix has bridges for almost anything.
But then you are simply using Whatsapp with extra steps.
E-mail is a thing.
Dude walked face first into that one.
All your friends are on a group chat and they will periodically mail you the updates. Sure, why not?
All my friends chat over our self hosted matrix server. There is always a way.
Ðe peer group really is a concern. And OSS kind of stinks for normies much of ðe time.
I got ðe family on Circles, and my SIL (ðe one with ðe toddler) loved it… until it lost all of her posts for ðe family, and ðen shut down.
We (mostly my brother and I) convinced our octogenarian parents to switch the whole family group to Signal, many years ago. It works nicely. What saddens me though, is that Signal will never replace WA for most people, it’s Just One More App for them.
WhatsApp is just one more App for me. There are two people I wish I could convince to use signal but cannot…
And I self host mine!
So do I, but I wouldn’t recommend it for everybody. Hosting your email has sucked for decades. For a long time the issue was incoming spam. That never really went away, but now in addition to that you get a constant barrage of people trying to crack into your server. Plus, you get the fun of trying to convince the big email gatekeepers that you’re still legit. And for that one they change the rules constantly and on a whim.
or, you know, you can have best of both worlds with open technologies. tech that you own and control.
i wonder whether we will have to seize the means of computer chip production as well …
Of course we would.
Sure, why not?
Fast forward a couple of months:
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you lost contacts with 95% of your contacts you used to hear through apps. Last time you met a group of friends was when you randomly met them in a restaurant having a dinner together. “We invited you but you didn’t reply”. The 5% still calling you wants your money.
-
your bank started charging an extra fee because you did not object when they notified a change in the contract via email. You missed a notification from the tax office and now you have to pay a small fine.
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your car cannot circulate anymore because you live in Europe and cities may ban old polluting engines.
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you read less because it started to be expensive to buy all those magazines. On the flip side you are more fit because you have to walk 2km to reach a place that sells them.
you lost contacts with 95% of your contacts you used to hear through apps. Last time you met a group of friends was when you randomly met them in a restaurant having a dinner together. “We invited you but you didn’t reply”. The 5% still calling you wants your money.
Having done that I don’t miss 95% of that 95%. The real ones will follow you. The rest know how to find you.
As someone who walks everywhere…I am not fit. So no flip side. It’s uphill both ways
The comic is bullshit, your bullet points even more so. Except the one second to last. But then again, why the fuck are you driving in the city center? You are part of the problem.
Wow, your arguments are so solid! I’m totally convinced!
-
Too bad they crushed all the old cars
This is what using Linux feels like.
yeah no need to find 1980s tech to use.
I drive a pre-online car I can fix with the help of a friend, PC is Linux mint, laptop is Mac but highly restricted. My android device is silent, my iPhone is used for work only. My music is ripped and downloaded.
Please use windows XP and connect it to the internet and see what happens LOL
Try to exist in any kind of life above “hippy with hemp clothes living in a yurt on their parent’s property and a trust fund” without things like a smartphone, a car and a computer.
I connected win 98 to the internet yesterday. It was fine, and probably safer than win 11 is now. No built in Spyware either ha!
(Don’t use win 98 as your main os. I am partially joking and I only use it for running old programs and games.)
I’ve been hacked before #notfun
There are programs Searching for online old windows OS. You will be hacked sooner or later better to run linux and vm old windows instead. Putting old windows on the internet is like sticking your pp into Bonnie Blue without a condom and being the last man in line too.
I do use it within a vm on linux ha
That doesn’t count LOL
Yeah im not raw dogging it ha, unless I had my old hardware then I would
Don’t risk it they infiltrate your router too, happened to me.
I have. Nothing happened.
Oh well.
I’m going back in a lot of areas, yeah.
When you make a wrong turn, sometimes you need to go backwards to correct and go forward again
help desk -> sysadmin -> CISO -> goat farmer
Cutting out the middle man does not involve technologically regressing.
Cutting out the middle man means stepping up and learning how the tech you use in your daily lives actually works. The only reason some tech bro can step in and ruin your life is if you let them keep you ignorant through convenience.
You want to cut out the middle man? Use, and support, open source. Fight to make everything that requires a server, be a server that you own in your own home (or is federated and in your local community). Use, and support, repairable technology… And actually repair your technology!
does not involve technologically regressing.
The fallacy that technological progress is inherently good is simply flawed. You could say “instead of relying on Spotify, and instead of “technologically regressing”, learn open source alternatives and host your own Jellyfin server!”
But what was wrong with “technologically regressing” exactly? A MP3, CD or even tape recording player will: always work, sound great, require zero user friction, never receive updates or security flaws, not depend on a convoluted self hosted setup.
Do you want to listen to music or impress Lemmy? There’s absolutely no argument to be made that requires accepting all tech simply because it’s tech.
Technological progress isn’t inherently anything. It’s just technological progress; an inevitability. Fighting against it is like fighting the laws of the universe, if not outright stupidly phobic.
What defines the “goodness” of technology is how people choose to use it.
Everything more said is just pointless philosophical fluff.
Technological progress isn’t inherently anything
Exactly. So arguing that “you shouldn’t technologically regress” is meaningless.
Fighting against it is like fighting the laws of the universe
Not only is this not applicable to the argument at hand, given there’s no law of nature that makes a CD player implode just because Spotify exists, but this statement is so bizarrely wrong it’s almost hard to take the rest of the discussion seriously.
Exactly. So arguing that “you shouldn’t technologically regress” is meaningless.
Did you lose track of your own argument?
You assumed that I meant technological progress is inherently good. I said technological progress isn’t good or bad, just inevitable. That does not mean that technological regression isn’t inherently bad.
And yes, the CD player did implode, figuratively, because Spotify exists. :)
There’s absolutely no argument to be made that requires accepting all tech simply because it’s tech.
False dichotomy and a stupid comic strip making a stupid point all the way down.
If we cared about this issue we would be pushing for the installation of representatives who want to ban planned obsolescence and systems that require you to have the newest, most expensive vehicles, appliances and gadgets. Our current entire government is subservient to and employed by companies that make billions on this manufactured consent to always “needing” to spend our labor on useless junk.
To say nothing of the inherent, massive problem that we made it legal to buy and own politicians.
Yeah no. You just didn’t understand the comic and made a stupid point. It happens.
Okay, ya’ll kids keep arguing about “devices” while millions of people are forced to buy the newest phones so they can get their email and attend job interviews, while mountains of money get poured into politicians who are affording their fifth homes because Samsung pays them in wheelbarrows of cash to keep consumer protection agencies neutered or destroyed.
It’s also a fallacy that technology always progresses. If technology from 25 years ago serves you better than technology from today, it’s the superior technology.
Exactly.
Oh look. Lol Amish 2.0
Calling somebody using a retro MP3 player “Amish 2.0” is as moronic as calling you a tech bro neuralink implanted Musk boy just because you’re defending technological progress. Both would be equally ridiculous statements, but the difference is, you actually wrote the moronic comment.
These technology phobes are the next generation who will be scammed out of their pension fund, inheritance or investments just like current boomers who refused to advance along with the world, and they deserve to be hacked, scammed, robbed because they refuse to keep learning.
Learn or get left behind.
They are too lazy for that.
No. The capitalists are the problem. Not the tech grunts.
The idea that we can even DO anything about capitalism at this point is a forgone fantasy. Not to say we shouldn’t keep trying to push for a better, more equitable world until the time becomes more ripe to do away with personal gain above others, but we don’t get there all at once. There will be no revolution, nobody is coming.
But if we were to work together and firmly, decisively push actual, selected representatives into power who are committed to getting MOTHERFUCKING MONEY OUT OF POLITICS, that would bring a thousand miles closer to that ideal world we all want. Other countries have done it, but our problem in America is we have a population way too comfortable and atomized to ever band together and do this critically important thing.
I don’t have a way to reach enough people without some kind of massive disaster that forces people off their couches and makes food out of reach.
Oh, is that how we beat the Nazis? With half-assed reforms and vote organizing?
No, but keep enjoying feeling superior for knowing we need to do more while not doing more.
