Is banking at the root of much of our tech-based oppression?

I’ve been trying to work out how so many people got to be obsessed with smartphones to the point of using the tiny screens for tasks where it makes no sense. There are many Lemmy apps for smartphones but just a couple half-assed ones for the desktop.

It’s banks. Banks have been cattle-herding security-naive people onto smartphones designed for obsolescence with huge attack surfaces to push their closed-source app which requires licking Google’s boot to obtain. This seems to strike a parallel with Zuckerberg’s comment: “I don’t know why those dumb fucks give me all their data”.

The number of people willing to resist banks can probably be counted on one hand. From there, most people are easy enough to just say “fuck it, I’ll run the app”. This is what drives the “must have a recent phone at all times” brain malfunction. Most of the population is trapped on this shit like caged animals that can’t see the cage bars.

Many don’t bother owning a PC now. They want an all-in-one device. Then they read large amounts of text on that tiny display. So every industry has to cator for smartphone pawns to stay relevant.

Consumers wise enough to keep the GSM SIM slot empty and use smartphones just for innocuous tasks like offline navigation face this onslaught of app-pushers. Some public operations between ppl and government are becoming “app only”.

We are losing our human right to self-determination and autonomy. Normally we could let fools be fools and carry on. But there is a critical mass threshold by which the foolish consumption of many triggers oppression of the few who had enough sense to avoid it.

The offline alternatives and FOSS alternatives are being silently driven out of existence.

I was an early adopter (AOS 2.2). Thought: great, Android is linux based and under FOSS licensing. I am liberated. Got my update to AOS 2.3. Then I was abandoned. I saw right away the shit show I was baited into. Being at the vendor’s mercy for upgrades sent a stark msg to me that I learned from. And apparently not many others.

I wouldn’t care about the foolish decisions of consumers to keep buying new phones if it only affected them. But it’s fucking up the world.

15 comments

There are many Lemmy apps for smartphones but just a couple half-assed ones for the desktop
On the desktop? A web browser. Why use an app?
It’s banks.
No idea aboutbanks, to me it's people being lazy and behaving like sheep.
- On the desktop? A web browser. Why use an app?
  To be clear, the web browser /is/ an app b/c it’s JavaScript. The browser is just a vessle for the stock Lemmy JavaScript app which does not work on terminals. Since the app is JavaScript it does not have decent local drive access, which means all the data is kept exclusively in the cloud. The moment an instance goes down, all the users are fucked. User’s history and comments are gone.
  There are a couple desktop apps that liberate us from JavaScript and the GUI:
  NeonModemOverdrive -- so buggy it cannot be regarded as functional
  Lem -- an emacs client for Lemmy. This may have hope but I cannot try it yet because it demands a very recent version of emacs.
  The selection is a bit poor with at least one of them being ½ baked. This would not be the case if there were not this frenzy of smartphone addicts.
  
  Then why say there is only half-assed desktop 'apps'? A web browser is not half-assed, even less so compared with most apps.
  As for the offline part, even though I 100% agree, I also see social media as an online activity so I don't really mind not being able to access it when I'm offline. It's a very personal thing for sure but I already spend a lot of my time offline so I'm ok with that.
  The same goes with being reliant on javascript, btw: I don't like that but since it's so often required... I simply use a dedicated web browser to access those 'normal' web sites (I use uBo to block all I can) and next to it I use a different browser to access my own website (no script at all) and the few other sites I know I cna trust likewise.
  The moment an instance goes down, all the users are fucked. Their history and comments are gone.
  Yep. Which is why I also use a personal website for the stuff I don't want to see go away without me having any control over it.
  
  Cool I didn't know there was an emacs Lemmy client. On the github I didn't see any version requirements, so how recent does it need to be?
I don't carry a desktop everywhere I go, and I don't have a laptop. My phone is good enough for most tasks, it's reliable, it's in my pocket, and I don't need to turn it on.
I use GrapheneOS, and the banks applications are better on the phone. I only need to check how much I have, and I can send money wherever I am. Also my banks are free.
People HAVE an all-in-one device. They want that whether I like it or not.
Some public operations between ppl and government are becoming “app only”.
It's not that way in France, we have web sites and it's a good thing compared to the paper mess we had up to the 90s.
We are losing our human right to self-determination and autonomy
Because some banks require phones? Find another bank.
- We are losing our human right to self-determination and autonomy
  Because some banks require phones? Find another bank.
  No, banks are just the catalyst. It’s because apps are being forced on us regardless of banks.
  The banks are the cause of masses of people deciding it’s a good idea “chase the shiny” and continously buy new phones, w/data plans and GSM. With so many Google boot-licking people running recent phones, countless corps and agencies have decided it’s okay to marginalise the few who do not.
  
  Which applications are forced on you ?

15 comments