No need to be down!

• Fairphone exists and has just expanded business into the USA

• Privacy is hard not because it's difficult, but because we like free shit (free email addresses, free cloud storage, free apps, free news, free everything!). If you pay for your stuff, privacy becomes a lot easier!

• ROM quality depends on your make and model, and the volunteer work put into it. You can buy phones that fit your needs (i.e. /e/ or Pixels reported compatible with GrapheneOS) and you'll have little to no compatibility issues.

• Magisk and that one magical fix module have prevented apps from breaking for me! If apps refuse to let you use them, you can always use different apps!

• I don't like the SaaS bullshit in cars, but they give you a ton of hardware for free and all you need to do is read the manual and apply power to the right pins to get heated seats for free! With the right attitude, this crap is making your features cheaper!

• You rarely need to pay subscriptions for everything. Subscriptions are often cheaper and easier, but media is still available in physical form, software is usually sold (for more money) with permanent options, and car shit can be bought off beforehand.

The real problem is that people want privacy but they also like getting discounts or free stuff subsidised hy their data. Everyone wants YouTube, nobody wants ads, nobody wants to pay for YouTube premium. Everyone wants music, nobody wants to buy CDs, nobody wants to buy MP3s, and all that's left is subscriptions.

There are things you can't avoid (i.e. American ISPs selling your location history to bounty hunters and partnering up with advertisers) but there are LOADS of options out there that will serve you perfectly fine if you're willing to pay the money companies would've earned off you by selling your data.

DRM in websites has already existed for years at this point, it's why Netflix is allowed to give you HD video by the copyright holders. Google take on remote attestation sucks (but I think it beats the implementation Apple has built into current versions of Safari) but in the end it'll be your own choices that determine if this becomes a problem or not. Don't visit the websites that enforce this crap and, if enough people care, things will change for the better.

You will forever have these feelings, if you have a better world than the status quo in mind. Be careful to not be overwhelmed by them, if you suffer too much long term you could give up or become a cynic. Nothing is perfect, we strive to make better systems (and smartphones).

The walls of the cyberpunk dystopia are being built up around us

Yes, we need to pass laws that prevent companies from blocking access to their services on the basis of using privacy tools. Basically apps should be able to run on any customised client device and they should only legally able to say "no" if my session is clearly demonstrating malicious interactions.

We need better consumer protection laws.

It sucks because the obvious solution is for people to move away from these bullshit companies and show that they actually care about their privacy.

They don't. People don't care, don't understand, and don't care that they don't understand. The average person is oblivious of the way the world around them works, and they're okay with that. Ignorance is bliss, after all.

God bless the hackers, crackers, reverse engineers, and disrupters. Pray they help keep you free of too much pain.

It comes in cycles. 20 years ago, it was a struggle to maintain your digital freedom. 10 years ago, when everyone was basking in free software and low interest rates, it was quite easy. The industry is contracting again, so it's going to be harder to do so while using commercial offerings. But we will find ways and the cycle will repeat.

Persist.

Honestly? As I get older and as the tech industry chokes itself to death in pursuit of infinite profit, I find myself doing more and more things away from the computer or the internet at the very least. Spending time outside doing stuff, exercising, reading books, partaking in art or other creative pursuits, having pets, etc. I have really dialed back my social media involvement and I hardly ever use my phone now.

The internet is absolute garbage now. It's a completely unregulated trash fire that is only getting hotter as more gasoline gets dumped on it. The internet I grew up with, the internet of seemingly endless possibility and unfathomable amounts of information, is long gone. Search results (from any engine) are all SEO trash, websites are just AI-generated garbage covered in ads, and every app or service is a subscription that promises to suck even more money out of my bank account for basic services. Not to mention that all of the above will also monitor every single bit of my activity and sell it to third party buyers. If tech is just going to exist to be an ad-delivery platform then I can do without it. People did for decades, centuries, and we can too.

This bubble is going to pop eventually. It not might be today or tomorrow, but it is going to happen. This is not sustainable.

It's the #enshitification of everything. I listened to an interview with SAG-AFTRA by a new podcaster trying to survive and just when they start talking about the investors and products admitting to trying to build out till October when actors and writers start getting evicted... then some Amazon streaming services ad. And it happened again towards the end. And no warning or apology or mindfulness from the podcaster. So so depressing. The interview was great and happy to have heard it. Wish I could get access to information unpolluted by advertisement and capitalism. Thank goodness for the fediverse.

Dunno, I don't use shitty apps that aren't available in F-Droid and I'm all the better for it.

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥everything is fine🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Completely agree in substance and spirit, but not on this framing of everything as about ownership. Personally I don't want to "own" data any more than I want to own a car. What I want is control, rights, privacy and personal freedom. The ownership obsession seems to me a red herring that just proves how much we've been taken in by consumer capitalism.

Forgive the rant. I agree with you on the substance.

Agreed, I'm currently moving my digital life to free software to escape that bullshit.

While everything else seems to be caught up in enshittification, free software is constantly improving.

I undertand this feeling. I have a group of friends which use Messenger as a main chat app and they refuse to stop using it for convenience, but most of the features they label as convenience are the exact thing that are wrong with it. Many other platforms, despite not being perfect, have the same/more features and are better implemented.

Even if you transfer to a new and better platform, the big companies don't let go easily. They buy those new platforms and change them or just nuke them. If they can't, they will use ways to detect who is using alternative platforms and alienate them. It is just like the Phoebus cartel, which controlled progress to maximize profit. They are not against you or progress, they are against anything which reduces their potential monetary value.

I disagree when you mention subscriptions as a bad thing. Subscriptions have existed since forever, and work well when you deal with a service, for example paying a subscription to a video creator you like, or maintenance costs of hardware you use.

But not everything is grim. I have seen a lot of new FLOSS projects appearing everywhere, and people are becoming more aware of the many alternatives. I've even seen non programmers using ChatGPT (or equivalent) to create their own self-hosted platforms, showing that even those not techinal people are able to contribute to the general community.

Technology creates fiefdoms where rentiers extract value from the rest of us. But I’m not losing hope

Compatibility issues? Unspecified root problems? Nope, I ain't feeling'em.

Tech knowledge is required to use smaller services? Just a fraction of what was required before, just about enough to operate in digital world in general.

Cars are becoming SaaS? Whatever brings them closer to extinction works for me.

Things aren't as bleak in Europe :)