this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2024
1379 points (98.3% liked)
Greentext
4638 readers
1738 users here now
This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.
Be warned:
- Anon is often crazy.
- Anon is often depressed.
- Anon frequently shares thoughts that are immature, offensive, or incomprehensible.
If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Except people aren’t necessarily going back to piracy en masse
Torrent sites are dwindling, even the big ones have sad membership numbers compared to 10yrs ago
A large amount of internet users access the internet via devices that are openly hostile to or outright disallow anything that would enable piracy. The devices are then connected to an internet that is further hostile and aims to steer you away from anything deemed unsavory
Phones and tablets are cumbersome and unintuitive to navigate. In the case of apple torrent clients are not allowed to be listed on their app store and sideloading is involved and kind of a pain. Chromebooks and windows 11 are better obviously but less utilized then you’d think
But that leads to the second point, which is kind of angry old man yells at cloud, but people are just less tech inclined now. It makes sense because modern tech is designed to oppress the user whereas tech in the late 90s and early 2000s was more to empower them. They don’t bother to figure out how to install applications, use the file explorer, change settings, etc. the very basic steps needed to pirate shit (you obviously don’t need to be a super hacker). They don’t need to. The command prompt or a terminal is something that makes them think you’re hacking shit
They download applications like steam and then their browser auto opens the installer, then steam handles installing games and mods from that point on. They are safeguarded against having to deal with the icky filesystem and their hand is held every step of the way. Or they just download stuff from the official MS app store and even more hand holding. It’s okay because they’re only gonna install 5 streaming apps anyway and then use the browser to visit the 6 approved websites that google or bing search sends you to for basically any query.
And that’s only if they actually have a proper computer. If they have a tablet or phone they either are pushed extremely heavily towards the above scenario, or in the case of apple they simply have no other option
10 years from now the internet will just be 2-3 social media sites, a few shopping conglomerates, wikis, and streaming sites. The devices used to access will no longer let you access the filesystem directly, apps will be unable to be installed if they aren’t code signed by apple or google or ms or whoever, sealed in epoxy, and draconian drm everywhere. 40 years from now your grandchildren will think you’re weird for complaining about how you used to have autonomy and authority over your devices once you owned them and they’ll remind you it’s time to pay another $400 bezobucks to rent the google chrome ar internet hub for another month because you’re not allowed to own it and it’s a federal crime to take it apart
I think the end is where some people are moving but I think its a bit too pessimistic. While kids are becoming more tech illiterate there is always gonna be a certain amount of people that know a bit more than the masses and they are not gonna let themselves be pushed around.
What are they going to do? Manufacture their own silicon? The ability to make a computing device of reasonable power is fairly prohibitive and as things move forward manufacturers seem intent on doing things that are more and more hostile to consumers. You say people won’t let themselves be pushed around and that sounds nice but people have consistently done exactly that to date.
Our power as individuals is minimal here; we can vote politically and financially. These companies do amazing financially so voting with our wallets doesn’t work. Voting politically also hasn’t done in terms of enacting regulation aside from some small wins in a few states with right to repair (and big losses in many more states as well as federally). And given the fact that those wins are small and fragmented with only a very small handful of states having any policy (like less than 10) it’s likely that big tech will push back hard rather than simply comply. And we are heading into political times where regulations will likely continue to erode.
So as things worsen the people who “know a bit more” can have the choice of using cutting edge hardware that is more locked down, or being a stallman type that uses relatively ancient hardware full of compromises because it is compatible with an ideology. That is just but it also means they will be constantly hampered and the problem will only be compounded as technology becomes more advanced, which is inherent and constantly occurring
This is also not just a generational thing to be clear. People my age, younger, and older, who were into this stuff have become tech illiterate as time progressed because they’ve allowed themselves to move away from their computers and go to their phones which have become a reddit/youtube/tiktok/pintrest/amazon/twitter/instagram/etc box. The etc is whatever skinner box game they’re playing at the moment, because most of them who played actual games don’t even bother to play games anymore. They’re so caught up in the cycle of “engagement” that they don’t care about much else. they come home and doom scroll then complain about how they feel aimless and anxious all the time and never get stuff done
You’re right that there exceptions, but they seem to be dwindling
I've made a similar comment on r/austrian_economics and got called a communist for it lol
But yeah, well said.