Giving Fairphone shit because while trying to build a long-term viable, sustainable and socially and economically fairer device they also think about the people in the real fucking world who are supposed to use them and offer them the software most of them rely on (like Google Apps) is more toxic purism than I can stand.
People who are willing to suffer in their life by using something different, something slightly incompatible to what the rest of the world uses already do install roms and run whatever on their machines.
Getting real actual people to buy a phone that's not built to be thrown away in a year of two, that highlights the values of sustainability is a huge win.
And making the medicine ("your phone might not be as fancy as your peers' phones") taste sweeter ("for 8 years you have access to all the applications you need for your life to function within a digital society") is just a smart move.
If your job is working on open source and you don't need all the stuff that Google etc provide, awesome. I get it, running only free stuff is really cool, I do it myself. For me.
But that's based on my skills, the things. I care about. It's kind of my hobby so to speak and it oftentimes means that I have to dick around with wonky solutions. Which I am okay with.
But demanding that of real people in the world? People who just need a simple thing to do a shared spreadsheet for some gift for a nursery school teacher leaving should have the whole "Let's use Glorp!" - "No Glorp is run by a transphobe. Maybe Snoot?" - "Snoot is to hard to run, because it demands an old version of Zonk" - "Could we set up a mailing list?" dance? Get fucking real.
@tante Who demands that? This brings the wrong spin into it... of course its not easy... someone who do not want to fight (work on their tech skills to be sovereign enough to be able to use this complicated shit) should maybe not use this complicated shit then... but we can help people get educated so they maybe can do it and make the open/good/"communist"/progressive left tech more accessible....
@cwillmes@tante Someone who does not want clean water badly enough to understand public infrastructure and can run their own filtration system should not drink water then.
Someone who can't afford and does not know how to cook a healthy meal does not get to eat.
Someone who is not excellent at math deserves to be screwed over by a bank.
Is that what you're saying? Because that's pretty much what you were saying just now. Just in "computer" instead of water/health/finances.
@claudius@tante of course, you can interpret it that way and try to compromise me, but I did not say and meant it that way. My point is, that this rethoric talks the arguments for the Apple, Google and Meta afficionados of this world, Implying that this is super duper good and just better what they do, and give them leway to just go on...
@cwillmes@tante my point is: lots of shit is complicated. We nerds just often point to computers and say "everyone must be this tall to ride".
And that clearly sucks.
We need better legislation. We need better alternatives. We need to grab corporations by the balls. We don't need to put more strain on the individuals who have a ton of other things to worry about.
@claudius@tante no, I did not say or meant that evrybody needs to fight this fight. Waht I meant is, you should not give arguments to those who do not want that anyone fights this fight at all. Please do not infere from your own thinking what I may have meant to say.
@tante and often, especially for these low-stakes tasks like organizing a picnic or whatever, if not using corporate-controlled tools is important enough to put in some effort, a non-tech solution might have a lower barrier for most people after all. “Give this person a call or email them, they’ll take care of it” is remarkably accessible and flexible
@esther@tante yep, sticky notes all around the place are a crazily good option too! And they also remind me something like little gifts around my house :blobfoxheartcute:
@tante As a professional geek, having run servers (web and otherwise) for many years, if someone gets heavy-handed in recommending Linux without a more… holistic… approach to consumer usage patterns, I can quip back:
:Wonka.gif: "Oh, so you want me to use a UNIX-like hybrid vendor operating system… GNU/Linux, was it? I prefer something actually UNIX certified, thanks. Like my Mac."
They so often forget to mention GNU.
Linux is "just" the kernel.
Mac?!! Watch for the eye tic.
It feels good. 👹
@tante I've got a Fairphone and my only complaint after 5-ish years is that it's still too big for my small hands and pockets. At the time I got it, I wasn't ready to leave the Google ecosystem. I'm absolutely in the target market for it, though.
@tante I think that their current approach – offering a "what most consumers expect" Android experience and referring to @e_mydata for people that care about sovereignty over their digital life – is just fine. Hoping that they'll integrate partnerships more of course, so that all Fairphone customers are made aware of the choice.
@tante I think the problem here was a prominent and unnecessary endorsement of google. Fairphone can do what they do without going out of their way to stress how google is the best thing since sliced bread, a thing that everybody clearly loves.
@tante I feel kinda sorry for them because since me and my wife have an FP4, we probably won't need to buy from them until they release the FP8. Yeah, google sucks. But the fairphone supports other os'es, too, even if society doesn't.
@tante I wish the Ubuntu project for phones (and other devices) had been successful. Quite apart from the software and apps just having a good enough sustainable (both business and environmentally speaking) hardware platform would be huge win. If you look at what % of all phone users are on the latest flagship ~ $1000 a pop phones I'll bet its < 10%. The rest of us can use something like Fairphone. And if it's a hardware spec then like "the PC" it can be cloned and mass produced.
@tante I had a Jolla phone and was happy with it aside from the fact that I couldn’t use Signal. If you don’t care about the networks your friends, family, and coworkers use, you can be a purist.
I can put a ROM without nasty nasty evil Googles on a phone. What I can’t do is make the damned thing smaller. That’s the thing I will give Fairphone shit about. Phones are too damned big. Make a smaller phone and more people would buy it and use it longer.
Smaller? What? I want a phone that's thicker so it's more physically stable, doesn't bend as easily! Use the volume to a) avoid camera bumps and b) include more battery capacity, so it holds longer than a day despite heavily using Element... @akareilly@tante
@tante My reaction to the news was : "Oh cool, I'm gonna wait until it's supported by my custom ROM to buy it !" Not "fuck FP for giving people stock android instead of debian on arm with plasma mobile 😠" lol
@tante I really love Fairphone’s intentions, they put it into practice, walking the walk. For the privacy minded the unfortunately named /e/ OS(seriously) is an option, idk if it’s available on the 5, but I can’t imagine it wouldn’t. Taking fairphone to task over a vanilla android install is performative outrage and a missed opportunity to educate. Ditching the headphone jack however leaves me completely nonplussed, so I still won’t be buying one.
Every few months someone starts that same discussion on the FP forum, again and again, it's sooo fucking tiring.
FOSS purists have enough options, Fairphone has been very supportive when it comes to custom ROMs. There's not only /e/OS, the FP4 can be bought with iodéOS as well. CalyxOS, DivestOS, LOS all work great, but some people need the default to be what they want, because can't have regular people use the phone as well I guess … :Blobhaj_Sad_Reach:
Now giving FP shit because their QA sucks (can't use my FP4 in the sun right now, in summer) and the security releases constantly being about a month behind schedule, that I'm all for.
>Getting real actual people to buy a phone that's not built to be thrown away in a year of two, that highlights the values of sustainability is a huge win.
Is the phones being built that way actually the problem? I do not want to throw shade, genuinely curios.
Are these lower-medium price Samsung/Huawei phones or what are the problematic devices here? iPhones seem to last quite a while and while I know that the availability of security updates is an issue for a lot of phones - I doubt that people are super concerned about that? Probably less than they should...
I think he's commenting on others complaining that theres a version on offer with googles play store and other stuff that is bad for privacy but that many customers would expect to have available.
(And the term #surveillance#capitalism is as short-sighted as the book that it comes from. Criticizing "surveillance capitalism" implies that there are better forms but every issue that Zuboff's book points out directly stems from capitalism itself. It's just about the big C, the "surveillance" prefix is just a veil to make things less clear.
[Additional theory: It's a very anti Google/Meta thing which is why a lot of the people pushing that term end up being very vocal Apple supporters])
@tante Even if the surveillance economy was born out of capitalism, it is a distinct phenomenon on its own. It can survive the capitalist framework, and be "functional" under many other economic systems.
It could also have not happened at all (its existence depends on a long list of science, tech and social "innovations" that are not directly tied to the economic system; and some of them were even created against it!), while capitalism continued fucking us all in very distinct ways.
@tante You do see, that you do defend toxic tech silos with this kind of rethoric? May I add, proprietory silos like Apple iOS and lesser so Google Android are indeed capitalist/conservertaive/neo-liberal/politically right-wing tech models. I get that people are layzy and do not want to take up this fight and problems that come with it. But that you give someone, like fairphone, who does take up this fight (for you also) "shit" is just plain bad.
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