I think lots of boomers and gen-x do care. (At least the ones I know). They just aren’t tech literate enough to do anything about it.

I think we need more privacy oriented devices and software with simple ux, and advertising that isn’t targetted at the tech community.

Run some TV ads for a privacy enabled smartphone, and play up how it works just the same as your current phone but doesn’t spy on you. Shit like that.

Yeah for sure, it’s pretty fucked. Hopefully I can do my banking through a web browser if my bank ever decides to pull some dumb shit like that.

One thing that really fucks me off, are schools requiring students to use proprietary nonfree software. Windows, adobe, MS office, etc

IMO all schools should be using desktop Linux, and teaching students on free and open source software.

It respects student freedom and privacy, and doesn’t unfairly punish the less financially fortunate. On top of that, it teaches students important lessons about sharing and collaboration. Imagine what the FOSS movement might look like if free and open source became the standard in education.

Well, I wouldn’t recommend anyone who doesn’t have basic computer knowhow try and install a custom rom on their expensive new phone.

But outside of hurdle of getting the custom rom loaded, I don’t think you need to be techie to appreciate or use LineageOs (even with microg).

It’s true that you make some sacrifices when changing to a custom rom. But you are already making significant sacrifices by NOT using one.

Consider the sacrifice of having to create and sign in to multiple accounts when you set up your phone. The sacrifice of not being able to uninstall preloaded bloatware/spyware/adware. The sacrifice of your privacy as Google, Samsung, and a dozen other proprietary apps harvest and sell all your personal information. The sacrifice of your sanity and freewill, as you are bombarded with manipulative targetted advertisements. The sacrifice of not being able to modify, control, or even inspect many aspects of the behavior of your own device. The sacrifice of not actually owning the device that you paid for.

So yeah, my custom rom doesn’t (quite) have the polish of a flagship OS (then again, can you really call an OS that comes preloaded with a bunch of unremovable bloatware polished?). But all those features you listed are basically just fluff, and most people who aren’t hardcore consoomers probably wouldn’t even notice the difference.

I’m not willing to sacrifice my privacy, be exposed to advertising, and have multiple big tech companies control and monitor the use of my device, just to have a camera thats 10% clearer and some ‘HDR enhancements’ etc.

I think that there are many, many non-techie people who would agree with this. But simply buy the latest Samsung or whatever because they don’t think they have a choice, or are scared because they think it will be too different and they will get stuck if they try something else.

LOS by itself is perfectly good and usable by anyone, in fact its probably more suitable to non techies than Samsung is, thanks to the clean UX, and lack of bloat.

LOS with MicroG is also completely usable by most non techies. It just comes with the caveat that certain apps just won’t work, no matter what. That’s obviously an actual sacrifice and people should know in advance before they try it. But most stuff works great, and people who are willing to do a little digging can often find an alternative or a workaround.

At any rate, I don’t think I was really trying to recommend to non-techies in my original post. I figure most people on Lemmy right now are probably somewhat technically inclined, interested in moving away from big corporate tech platforms, and willing to try new things even if they might lack a little polish.

There is an option in the microg settings to enable SafetyNet. I can’t confirm whether it works, since I don’t have any apps that require it. I’ve heard it’s a bit of a cat and mouse game.

I don’t know much about this, since I haven’t needed it myself. But personally, if safetynet uses Google servers or code for authentication, then I’d rather just leave it turned off. Even if it breaks a few apps.

Not being beholden to Google in any way just feels too damn good.

Aurora Store https://f-droid.org/packages/com.aurora.store/

Honestly, training their proprietary AI on GPL code (with no ability to opt out) was enough for me.

I don’t know what to tell you mate. Have you tried microG recently?

I’m running my banking app, social media apps, a bunch of games, mail app etc, all without play services.

https://community.e.foundation/t/list-apps-that-work-or-do-not-work-with-microg/21151

Paid apps are harder to get working, but I’ve had some success patching them with luckypatcher.

Honestly though, the biggest surprise to me was how little I needed those proprietary apps. Usually with a bit of digging I was able to find great open source alternatives.

I highly recommend lineageOS, or better yet lineageOS with microg.

Running a completely degoogled android phone right now, and it feels smooth as butter. Microg has gotten so good, the vast majority of playstore apps work completely fine even without Google services, including things like my banking apps.

Feels liberating as fuck, not gonna lie.

Only apps that don’t work for me are ones that require IaP’s. About 30% of those I can crack with LuckyPatcher. I can also crack other paid apps with license protection.

Mostly I havent needed to do any of that though, because I’ve found that there are so many great open source apps that do the things I need.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, defederation should be removed from the protocol. (And replaced with a default ban list that can be overriden by the user).

Each instance should basically just be a set of default settings that are used to access the same shared pool of content.

This removes the new user hurdle, because they can now join any instance and not be worried that they are making some important, permanent decision. If they find that they don’t like something about the instance, they can tweak their settings later.

Also, some of the other solutions to this issue carry significant risks. Pushing users towards a ‘default’ instance increases centralization. Apps that are preconfigured to use a specific instance are even worse (since people wont want to change instance if it means giving up a familiar app). Without some degree of vigilance decentralized services tend to centralize over time. This gives too much power over the entire fediverse to a handful of instance admins. If an instance with 60% of all users starts defederating all smaller instances, most users will just migrate to the larger instance.

This isn’t just some theoretical that I pulled out of my ass, its an easily abusable weakness of federated services. It has been abused in the past, and there is no reason to believe it wont be abused again.

Google used it to kill XMPP. Facebook will almost certainly use it to kill mastodon, once they siphon enough users and content to build a critical mass. Microsoft is so notorious for using this strategy that they has their own internal phrase for it: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

I haven’t really noticed that tbh, though I definitely believe it. A sizeable portion of people who populate ‘alternative’ platforms, are the people who get kicked off of, or censored on, mainstream platforms.

Unfortunately, that often means that those platforms struggle to attract regular users and content, since regular users are scared away by the existing users bad behavior…

The only way I can see those platforms really getting over that hump, is when the major platforms make stupid, overreaching, and greedy decisions. Pushing their regular users away, and onto those alternative platforms.

I don’t know what it will take to get ‘regular’ users migrating off of youtube. But I can tell you right now that I will NOT accept watching ads, nor will I ever pay a cent to google.

The day that I am unable to block ads on youtube will be the last day that I use it.

You could give Odysee a try. I was pleasently surprised at how well it works, and how nice the UI/UX is. Especially considering it is a decentralized platform.

It’s missing a lot of the content that youtube has. Especially if you trying to look up a specific video or niche topic. But there’s still a lot of great content available if you are happy to browse.

Odysee is a great, decentralised alternative if you are looking to jump ship.

If you do end up sticking with youtube, ReVanced is good. Smart Tube Next is good for TVs, and firefox + ublock origin on desktop.

Check out Odysee. Open source, decentralized, great interface. It’ s a great youtube alternative but is unfortunately still a little lacking in content.

Hopefully youtube continuing to pull shit like this will drive users there, much like reddit has driven users here.

Google is an ad company. To them, a web browser is nothing more than a tool for collecting user data and delivering ads.

When you use a chromium based browser you are allowing google, an ad company, to decide what the future of web browsing should look like. And this is the result.

Firefox is the ONLY browser which is genuinely competing with google. Do you think ad and tracking blockers are going to get better or worse once they die out, and literally every major browser is running on chromium?

Use firefox and u-block origin. Enjoy a superior, ad free, browsing experience, and support the future of an open web.

Yeah… fuck that lol. Why would you ruin pefectly good FOSS by knowingly slapping proprietary adware crap on top of it.

LineageOS for microg: degoogled android. DuckDuckGo: search. Firefox: web browser. Ublock origin: ad blocker. Proton: email. OsmAnd+: maps.

Only google product I still use is youtube, but I have made some efforts here:

On desktop pc I use firefox with sponserblock and ublock origin to hide ads and automatically skip sponsered content. I also have an addon called unhook, which hides recommendations, ‘people also watched’ etc.

I also use and recommend Odysee as a youtube alternative.

On my TV I use SmartTubeNext, on my phone I use revanced.

I host my own music server with navidrome (and my own video media server with Jellyfin). But when I dont have access to that, I also use ViMusic as a youtube music replacement for (degoogled) android.

Can absolutely recommend any and all of the tools I listed.

The problem is that defederation is that it causes damage to the wider network, and can be far too easily abused.

It makes instance selection very important to the user (which is already a major friction point). And causes terrible UX when users can’t figure out why content is unavailable to them.

It can also be used as a weapon by powerhungry admins to force centralization around their instance.

I know there aren’t really great alternatives to defederation for content moderation right now. But I think that these could easily be implemented. For example, instances could maintain a ‘blocklist’ which users could automatically be subscribed to upon joining, but they would be able to inspect and ‘opt-out’ from blocking certain instances or categories if they desired.

I think this is a good balance of protecting users, and also respecting their freedom.

Keep in mind that this doesn’t mean they could POST rule breaking content. (They are still users of your instance after all). Just that they would have the choice of which content they feel comfortable with VIEWING.

When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. And defederation is a nuclear powered sledgehammer lol.

Your points are valid, but that doesn’t mean we should do nothing. Enforcing federation and using copyleft licensing are both strong defenses against centralization and network dominance by a well funded third party.

As far as GPL goes, from what I’ve seen, big tech companies tend to take it pretty seriously. There is no reason we shouldn’t be using that, and other license protections if we have the option.

As for natural centralization over time, I think that is a far less urgent problem than the current risks we are facing, those being major network fragmentation due to the use of defederation, and the risk of centralization around a proprietary platform and/or instance.

Removal of defederation and strong copyleft licensing seem to be natural first steps in combatting that risk.

So block them and move on. Or if you disagree with them that badly, push to have that instance/community added to a public blocklist/filter. Defederation, besides being an overly authoritarian solution, damages the network in a way that can and will make Lemmy into a worse place for its users.

As instances start to defederate, it will matter more and more which instance a user signs up to. This will push users towards larger instances. As instances get larger, they will become less and less reliant on 3rd party instances for content, those instance admins will be incentivized to defederate from them, as they will a) not have as much control over those instances, and b) start to view them as competitors rather than collaborators.

The beauty of Lemmy and federation generally, is that information appears centralized to it’s users, despite being decentralized in reality.

The more defederation is used, the more centralized Lemmy becomes, whilest giving a more fractured, confusing, and disorganized experience to its users.

Defederation will kill Lemmy. It needs to removed from the protocol before it becomes too widely abused.

I see Lemmy going down in one of two ways:

In fighting and fragmentation with overzealous use of defederation leading to walled gardens, and a terrible user experience.

Or

A major player like google or microsoft sees the potential in Lemmy. Starts their own highly funded instance that is full of useful features and a wonderful smooth UX. (That is all proprietary and only usable on their instance, naturally) Then when the majority of users are on their instance, defederate from everywhere else. (If you don’t think this can happen, just look at what google did to xmpp).

Seems like just another reason why defederation should be completely removed from the protocol. It’s way too easy to abuse and force centralisation.

There are other far less destructive and abusable ways of dealing with spam and content moderation.

I maintain that it’s better to give the users the control, and allow them to decide which instances, communities, and users they want to be exposed to. Bottom up moderation, instead of top down.

For example, instances can provide suggested ‘block’ lists (much like how an ad blocker works) and users can decide whether or not to apply those lists at their own discretion.

By forcing federation, the network stays decentralized. Maintaining community blacklists that can be turned on or off by the individual user protects against heavy handed moderation and censorship, whilst also protecting users from being exposed to undesirable content.