this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2025
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Digital Fiefdom (aka walled-garden) Required

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This community collects stories, cases and situations where people are forced into a walled-garden to carry out a public transaction or essential task of some kind. As governments impose a digital transformation policy with no analog refuge, people are forced into becoming serfs in a technofeudal system that is subservient to lords (Microsoft, Cloudflare, Google, etc).

Well-known walled gardens include (but are not limited to):

(note I do not say X or Meta above because I do not recognize or promote obnoxious and detrimental trademarks)

¹It’s somewhat unlikely that a gov would impose Github, but it is listed as an example because some govs do have git services. E.g. the EU has a public-facing self-hosted git instance.

Somewhat related communities:

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Github isn't a fully walled garden though (lemmy.sdf.org)
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I wouldn't lump Github with Facebook or Twitter because, at its core, it's just a plain jane git server. If you stick to core features, you can exfiltrate your repos at any time in seconds and move them someplace else. And you can interact with Github's git server with open-source, fully documented tools.

It's the extended features Github offers that lock you in - the social media stuff and advanced git tools. So if you want to give Microsoft the finger, use Github only for basic services.

Me, I host all my repos there, and I use them also to host videos and as Linux distro repositories (apt and rpm) for my packages: I make it my duty to use up as many Microsoft resources as possible without paying them a dime and without giving them any edge to lock me in.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It’s worth noting that this forum is an attempt to collect cases where essential public interaction is forced into a walled garden. It’s perhaps rare that a government would force the general public to connect to MS Github. I should probably clarify that on the sidebar.

It’s also worth noting that the EU has a public git instance which they self-host. So it implies that there is a reasonable chance that a gov would push Github onto people.

(update: just noticed the FCC exposes the public to Github)