Yep it's frustrating.
The convenience argument doesn't hold true anymore either. There was once a time where encrypted messaging services and self-hosted solutions were much trickier to on-board. That's not the case anymore and even with the ability to just download and launch some software that does all this for you people still choose oppressive and unsafe technologies / providers.
Yep, inter-socially policed techno fascism is here to stay.
I haven't had a cellphone for 2 years. The amount of objective problems this causes in my life is somewhere between negligible to none. The amount of social problems this causes me is endless - people become personally offended that they can't demand to chat with me at their liberty.
I'm unsure whether people would assume you had robbed a bank, I think this would depend largely on your character / build. I know for a fact that if I did this, no one in my life would assume or think for a second that I had done that.
Would this be legal? Is there anything preventing you from dying currency, if there is no intention or act of counterfeiting?
Depends where you are but in a large number of countries it's illegal to deface currency. (This doesn't change the fact that people do deface it and I've never heard of anyone getting in trouble for it).
Shop owner's can also say no if your notes are too busted, I've had this happen before trying to purchase with bills which have a tear.
And I'm assuming anywhere else that microsoft operates (the entire world) would be the same too, no? I don't know why this rhetoric would be specific to the EU.
Two days from now there's a seminar happening in the capital city of my country on a technology called mesh/meshtastic(?). They claim to have found a way to send messages in blackout conditions.
Oh cool I'll give newpipe a go