This post is acrid; I’m venting. You’ll probably feel attacked.

I’d like a serious answer, but I’ll probably will only get replies from petulant adult-children though. That’s not a provocative jab; it’s a statement of disgust. The whole consumer side of tech is largely adult-children who fail to take any responsibility. This isn’t even new. From day dot commercial software vendors have been exploiting you.

the market only has two offerings: Google’s Android and Apple’s <whatever their mobile-computer O.S. is called>

Does no one see an issue with this? A duopoly? It’s not even one market in one country, it’s nearly a duopoly on a global scale.

get mad at increasing surveillance by surveillance companies (Google, Apple, et al.)

scream at internet, for the Nth time

Just don’t use them.

but my Discord my Bank apppppp~

You’re all willingly giving up your autonomy whilst crying about it. Why? Just why? The alternatives aren’t good enough for your pampered ass? Stick an external battery to the pinephone and suddenly it lasts for two days.

That’s too goofy; what would my friends think of me?

Install GrapheneOS on models that support it.

Too many buttons to click; it should all be done for me. Waaaaaa~

Too hard to escape the Google/Apple ecosystem

Are you all for real? Pressing buttons on your computer is too hard? Holy shit.

I wouldn’t blame fiat at all. It’s an issue of governance, classes and growing poverty. Capital has been shrinking labour’s share, year on year. Your inability to afford a nominal price has nothing to do with fiat. The capitalist class have just grown more brazen and they’ve realised no one will say “no”.

https://fortune.com/2026/01/13/us-workers-smallest-labor-share-gdp-on-record/

If you want to quip about AI being mentioned in the above article do note that labour’s share of GDP had been on the decline before ‘AI’ was a twinkle in your father’s eye. It’s been a set trend, with politician’s endlessly arguing with the working class: you’ll get your share soon™, but not now. It never came and it never will. The political promises are the same, but they increasingly sound ever hollower.

It’s just more capitalists doing what capitalists do.

I’d argue it’s the government’s fault. In the computer-age government’s failed to educate their populations on what and how to use computers. They instead taught their students how to use X, Y and Z software. Ignorance here is the root of the problem. A symptom of ignorance could be stupidity I suppose… but users are lazy too. Governments also failed to regulate the nascent software-industries whilst pouring billions into that market. It’s too harsh to just criticize the individual.

Good to have you back in the corpo., kid. Stay blind as we shunt you into a new era of authoritarianism. You’re absolutely right. Freedom is inconsequential compared to framedrops. Framedrops should never happen. Linux is far too buggy to be used. It’s little more than a toy at this stage. Check back in ten years. Until then your trusty Windoz3 eleben with enhancements from Givbidia will distract you! No, don’t look there! Ad!

Removed by mod

He blew the whistle because the surveillance apparatus was surveilling Americans; everyone else was fair game. The complete rejection he suffered from the Americans might’ve morphed into “mass surveillance is generically bad”, which now catches non-Americans too, but he’s an American dog who got a fright when he saw the reality outside propaganda reels. The system continues unabated. ACAB.

Sports coverage is not news; there’s always a sports segment in every ‘news’ program. Entertainment masquerading as news. Kill Rupert Murdoch and his progeny.

Kill all those who hold obscene wealth whilst depriving their sisters and brothers their human rights. Vanquish the landlords, the economic speculators & the remote-owners who make profit in leisure. You should not even miss them for you do not even know who they are.

The vast majority will never see those they labour for or those they support through legalised exploitation in the paying of rents. This anonymity and remoteness of the owning class allows them to be cruel and vicious in their actions. It’s also a one way mirror: for the working class must be surveilled in ever more obscene detail. Through technical innovation you will be deprived another fundamental human right! The right to privacy. Every moment of your life becomes their data.

For the working class there is no loss. Until we are all free there is work to be done. Those that shirk that responsibility can be thrown to the wayside.

If your murder a CEO the state will provide you with free housing & food. Something to think about…

I’m also in favor of hardware passkeys & 2FA. They help alleviate vendor-lock in and are more secure.

Usually only YubiKey is mentioned. I do prefer NitroKey’s aims of transparency. If other users know of other vendors please list them.

From what you’ve written you’ve conflated separate things. Passkeys are not related to biometrics. Google wants your biometrics. Full stop. Google is a surveillance mega-corp. Full stop. Why are you still using Google? or Microsoft, which you clearly are uncomfortable with? That’s rhetorical. Don’t answer that. No one’s interested in your pissing and moaning for why you can’t leave this abusive relationship. Passkeys say nothing about biometrics. They’re unrelated.

The surveillance corps implementation of passkeys will always be in their interest. Hardware passkeys are superior to device-locked passkeys that are stored in a TPM. Such schemes are nothing but vendor-lock ins. Oh, I don’t want to buy a new phone; all my logins are stored on this phone. It’s too much hassle. I can’t leave Google’s Android, it contains all my credentials securely. Hardware passkeys have no such friction. I can use them on any hardware.

The surveillance corps software-implementation is dodgy too. They’ve opted not to use some of the spec, which objectively weakens security. They’ll claim it’s for user-ease and whatever else they want to spout. The ease of silently using passkeys to access data they shouldn’t, or to migrate the users passkeys to their new Google android phone–only Google android can migrate you to a new Google android device. You need Google android. Hit me harder daddy.

I mean, really, what are you trying to ask? You clearly don’t trust these surveillance-companies. Passkeys are a good. Just like cryptography is just maths. There’s no issue with the maths or passkeys. The issue lies in these mega-surveillance-corps that parasitically extract value from your computers–whether that’s a desktop, laptop, server, smartphone or some other mobile-computer. You pay for the hardware, electricity, data-connection and you labour on them and these corps take everything from you. That’s why Alphabet, Facebook and whatever other shit software-company has valuations in the billions or trillions.

Security is something they want. They want to be the sole holder of your information. They want a market monopoly. Strong cryptography helps them do that. Much like how a serial rapist and the police both like steel bars: one to keep their victims locked up in, the other to keep their victims locked up in too… huh… point is everyone likes strong cryptography.

That’s romanticizing history. When communication via post became economically feasible for a large number of citizens its surveillance began–in the 19th century. I’ll make a more contentious point: religion played the role of what modern-states now call domestic intelligence. The state’s desire to control (that’s what surveillance is about) has always been there. It’s an intrinsic aspect of a state. Technology only allows what would have been economically unfeasible to now enter the realm of feasibility.

What one should take away from this article is that: Signal is a central point that can be compromised silently; Signal has the power to revoke your access to its software at any time (leaving the Canadian ‘market’). Both point to Signal’s users being rubes. They are not in control of the software and are subjugated by a private dictatorship branded ‘Signal’. Users should not be concerned about the government’s will here (it’s the same; it has not changed). Users should be concerned that the private dictatorship–that they paradoxically hold dear–is a private dictatorship.

Signal users yearn to be subjugated and told sweet lies.

Ah yes, the classic: I want privacy, but I actually don’t, because it’s too inconvenient. There’s technical reasons why any network that prioritizes privacy will be slower than those that don’t. i2p has a technically superior model to tor’s onion network. It’s good software.

I would say liberate yourself first. Buy computers that can or already are liberated (that is to say computers running libre software). Once liberated you will understand how it is done and can then teach others how to do it too.

You should not be concerned about politics here. Already the people are rendered mute under Western democracies.

Even if you don’t think it’s folly to persuade others, what are you persuading them of? To use software that you yourself don’t use? Build it. Use it. Promote it. Can’t write software? Donate to the orgs that are writing libre software. Can’t run it? Haven’t you liberated your computer? If you have you can run it. Can’t promote it? Are you not able to communicate?

Ditch Apple and Google. Use GrapheneOS. Use a linux powered mobile-computer like Pine Phone. Use encrypted overlay networks to communicate over the internet like i2p (it has a Java implementation and a C++ implementation), tor, hyphanet or my personal favorite: GNUnet. Heck, use all of them!

I will preemptively address an infantile critique of GrapheneOS: it uses Google branded hardware. File off the logo if it disturbs you so much. This critique fails to address the reality: hardware is subsidized by technological behemoths like Google because their product is not the hardware, but the software that is built off data collected by the hardware. An argument could be made that taking advantage of that subsidization maliciously damages Google more than purchasing non-subsidized hardware. Something to think about. Regardless, Foxconn makes both Google Pixels and Apple Iphones. The branding blinds people of the reality.

Anyway… rambles, rambles. It’s not about convincing others, it’s about you doing what you think is the correct thing to do.

You are absolutely correct, which is why this and even your comment is a distraction. Regardless of how much we dislike the sophisticated surveillance regime you can’t deny material reality: it exists.

The correct thing to do is to materially destroy it. Its current existence is the threat, not a theoretical oh, it might be compelled to do something to me. The actual fact it could do something to you now is the issue. It is doing things to you right now. Every user of these commercial entities labours freely for these trillion-dollar companies.

E.g.: A Google android phone provides data to Google which they use in their commercial mapping-software, which they sell access to. “Oh, but I get free-access to Google maps; if my mobile-computer spies on me to improve Google maps then it’s beneficial to be spied on.” Such reasoning is trotted out ceaselessly, but it ignores the commercial nature of Google: other companies (& governments) are required to pay a license to use it. You’re a rube labouring for free. You are an employee of Google, only you don’t realise it; neither does the law. You materially impoverish yourself whilst enriching a capitalist corporation. The data you’re giving away has value. Even if you want to deny that value consider the following: you pay for the hardware, the data connection and the electricity that enables the extraction of that data. !Socialise the losses privatise the profits! Free access to Google maps isn’t charitable. It’s a requirement to extract labour from you that improves Google maps. (EDIT 3: this is an important point that I wish to impress upon the reader: that improvement allows Google to demand higher prices from other commercial entities [& governments]. If the product stagnates then the price does too. To prevent this you are required to purchase increasingly sophisticated mobile-computers to extract increasingly sophisticated data sets.

Have any of you used commercial software recently? Consumer computers are fucking super-computers, yet Microsoft windows and Adobe’s PDF reader lags like a motherfucker dancing in molasses under the ocean in a pit of sand–just wtf!)

You might as well praise your employer for providing shelter whilst at work. How charitable of them. Gee golly, I sure am pleased my employer lets my use a building whilst I labour for the owners. Gee golly, they’re so charitable that they’re not demanding a rent. (Satire.)

I will reiterate: it exists now. Ask yourself what can you do now to weaken what it is you’re fighting. This cartoon distracts from the fact that Apple is a private surveillance-corporation. Don’t use Apple controlled computers. That is the correct line.

Yes, your data will be inadvertently collected by rubes, but this cartoon says nothing about that fact. This cartoon is just a distraction. It shouldn’t be applauded by those who want privacy. It should be critiqued for what it is: a distraction.

EDIT: Apple would love this cartoon. Apple do not want to share their power with any government. This cartoon creates social-pressure to ease governmental oversight of their private, for profit fiefdom. This cartoon only aids Apple. Critique this cartoon.

EDIT2: just look at the fucking cartoon: Apple’s mobile-computer is on the left, brightly light. It’s white like virgin snow. It’s painted as a good thing. Apple’s mobile-computer is a private prison. It’s anything but good.

FINAL EDIT: on the topic of Google maps. I was shocked to learn that a store’s manager refused to comply with Google’s terms for being listed on Google’s maps. The shock was not from their refusal, but the requirements Google were demanding. They wanted a video that showed how to access the store (located within a larger commercial building) and privileged information. This was dressed up as attestation that they were in fact an employee of the store and therefore the data was valid and correct. However the privileged information they wanted was absurd: passwords to store safes and company logins.

That was what I was told by the manager. For those who work within businesses do these requirements sound familiar? Is Google actually demanding such information as a requirement for new listings?

Build the alternative and use it.

You’re either the dictator of your computer or you’re not. A government ‘forcing’ companies to hand over logs describing what happened on their commercial platform means you have not even begun the fight. It’s a complete farce.

It’s a distraction from the fact all these companies are rolling in capital by manipulating their users–oh, but I want to be manipulated by daddy Apple or daddy Discord, just not daddy national-government. What?

It’s a fucking larp. How many of you will agitate against this, but you will still use your fucking Discord/Apple/Google/Meta whatever?

Oh, the government is going to hunt you down for using different software that is non-compliant with legislation? What? In what fantasy land? Wake me up when there’s boots on the ground invading people’s homes by authorities to check what software I’m running on my computer. It’s never going to happen.

EDIT: Sorry, the more I look at this cartoon the more this pisses me off. It’s painting Apple as an innocent. It’s fucking not. Come on, dear artist, labour more to paint mega-corp dictatorships as benign, aloof, white, middle-class targets. Get fuckt.

one common runtime

The year is 2XXX. The one common runtime to run them all is within reach… we all just need to use XXXXXXXXXXXX. Scratch that, we’ve just built XXXXXXXXXX. Hang on, scratch that… we’re now all doing something different.

Just a throw away comment, but as a user I do avoid flatpaks. It takes forever to install anything and it’s just absurdly ugly in design. The benefit is… ? I genuinely don’t know.

The people who want software to just run, whilst having no understanding of a computer are actively being herded towards entirely different ecosystems by capital. They’re already patrons of businesses. Capital spends a portion to ensure they stay patrons. No one is paying advertisers to advertise GNU+linux. No one is paying OEMs to ship GNU+linux. No one is lobbying governments to entrench GNU+linux into organisations.

Those that want it to ‘just run’ on a unix derivative are probably a very queer minority.

I am absolutely acrid towards computer users. Look, it’s just like the app store! Just press this button and it will work! That’s all software: press the correct button and it will work. Users don’t give a fuck. Libre software will never entice users like commercial software does because only commercial software can pay for users.

Capitalism & software on a comment about flatpak’s removed design and the common runtime to rule them all. I’m getting lost; what’s new. Does flatpak actually have any momentum? AppImage? I genuinely don’t know.