this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2025
390 points (97.1% liked)
Privacy
1023 readers
1101 users here now
Protect your privacy in the digital world
Welcome! This is a community for all those who are interested in protecting their privacy.
Rules
PS: Don't be a smartass and try to game the system, we'll know if you're breaking the rules when we see it!
- Be nice, civil and no bigotry/prejudice.
- No tankies/alt-right fascists. The former can be tolerated but the latter are banned.
- Stay on topic.
- Don't promote proprietary software.
- No crypto, blockchain, etc.
- No Xitter links. (only allowed when can't fact check any other way, use xcancel)
- If in doubt, read rule 1
Related communities:
founded 3 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I am so tired of feeling like I have an adversarial relationship with everything in my life
It's because This Is The Bad Place
It's what's known as "vulture capitalism" or "parasitic capitalism", where sociopathic kleptocrats are allowed control and treat all aspects of life as hostile and adversarial — value must be extracted and stolen from others — rather than a mutually beneficial relationship to improve and enrich the experience for everyone.
This is exemplified by the stock market and "line must go up" — the belief that stable, sustainable profits are a failure and growth must be continuous and exponential, in a planet and civilisation of finite resources, analogous to cancer.
So, capitalism.
Or please kindly enumerate what other kinds of capitalism provably exist.
There is even a rumor that, perhaps, no other form of capitalism truly exists.
I was about to say that just sounds like capitalism.
We're in the era of Sinisterization
Hard agree. It does feel like we're entering an age where that may start to shift, though. Well, not so much a shift in the "mainstream", but it feels like we're starting to see more and more parallel products and services that have anti-enshittification built in. And I think that's our best path forward, all of us who care should work towards a parallel ecosystem that cuts these practices out as much as we can.
And be vocal about it! People are usually surprised in how I run services. Many many people won't be able to, but many people can, so let them know they don't have to be locked into paying for services.
For example "ugh Google, I hate paying for drive every month"
What do you use it for?
Why not just an external hard drive then, or there are more expandable options out there.
This!!!! All this!
I selfhost and use mostly FOSS and have ways of blocking 99% of ads and locally control all my IoT so if you're willing to learn then you don't have to feel that way. Because I feel in full control and in harmony with everything.
Sure, Jan. I guess you're not using a web browser to post this? Not using an app, because that would mean having an Android or Apple phone?
I think you underestimate just how shitty everything now is, even if you're putting a massive effort in by using almost exclusively FOSS and maintaining a stack of ad blockers.
My phone is running LineageOS without GAPPS. I use Firefox but with the advent of this news, will be changing to more hardened versions of it. I spend no effort maintaining my ad blockers past the initial setup, the fact that you have no idea how much work is involved shows that you have no idea what you are talking about.... you are a smoke blower.
I'm more than happy to go back and forth with you and give you specifics to show just how little you know, but I'm curious. Why did my comment seemingly irk you? Do you feel insecure because are lazy and adopted a defeatist attitude to justify your laziness and/or lack of knowledge? Because it is 100% possible to control your devices and data, honestly, you're probably just kinda dumb buddy. But again, if you want to learn, I'll happily educate you on specifics.
So, you use a browser that's vulnerable to enshittification, because there's no way to avoid this. There are only 3 companies working on browser engines, only 2 work on non-mac platforms, and both depend on advertising. Sorry you didn't realize that.
You realize that Firefox and Chromium are open source and there are hardened versions that have the "enshitification" aspects removed from them, right? How fucking slow are you buddy, because that's the great thing about FOSS... if we don't like something in a project, we fork it. Let me know if you would like me to continue schooling you.
Firefox and Chromium are open source, but virtually everybody working on them is employed by Google or Mozilla.
If you look at the changelogs and dev blogs of all the various forked versions of those projects, what you'll see is that the devs spend basically all their time trying to keep up with all the changes coming out of Google/Mozilla and then trying to find out how to re-integrate the tweaks they've developed that makes their version different -- which is normally just applying a skin, or a plugin, or removing something they consider a misfeature.
Oh, I wasn't aware you'd started. You must be a terrible teacher.