Tech companies don’t really give a damn what customers want anymore. They have decided this is the path of the future because it gives them the most control of your data, your purchasing habits and your online behavior. Since they control the back end, the software, the tech stack, the hardware, all of it, they just decided this is how it shall be. And frankly, there’s nothing you can do to resist it, aside from just eschewing using a phone at all. and divorcing yourself from all modern technology, which isn’t really reasonable for most people. That or legislation, but LOL United States.
Nothing I can do to resist?
Microsoft is shoving this copilot in all its products? Alright, Linux and open source it is.
Google is bugging with its spyware? Well, I only use a Pixel phone, and ironically, its the best phone to put GrapheneOS on it.
Gmail? I don’t remember when I opened mine the last time…
All what’s really remaining right now is a good YouTube alternative.
Nothing I can do to resist?
I admire your optimism, but we are pissing in the wind.
Microsoft is shoving this copilot in all its products? Alright, Linux and open source it is.
Windows 11 is forcing people to throw away functional computers that Microsoft seems “not secure enough” (it’s lacking TMP 2.0)
This means you can get a great deal on one of these “inscure pc”… but in the long run your pc now and tomorrow will have TPM. As time progresses, the use of TPM/attestation will become more and more entrenched in application, web pages, everything. … and Linux, with its 4% user base, will be left out in cold.
Google is bugging with its spyware? Well, I only use a Pixel phone, and ironically, its the best phone to put GrapheneOS on it.
Currently, many banking apps won’t run on Graphene (or any custom firmware) due to attestation.
Graphene issued calls for help, because Google is restricting public access to the latest android source code (I cannot find the links atm).
Gmail? I don’t remember when I opened mine the last time…
Today things like “email reputation” make it difficult to host your own mail server, so your stuck paying someone who has a better “reputation”.
My point is: today, you and I can resist with some (minor) success, but our days are numbered.
You are arguing for the sake of arguing…
TPM has nothing to do with any privacy invasion, AI, or anything bad really. It was conceived by a computer industry consortium called Trusted Computing Group (TCG). It evolved into TPM Main Specification Version 1.2 which was standardized by International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).
Advancement in technology will always happen, and if your prose is to stop progress, you are up by your own by your own choice. Your argument about TPM is moot.
Quite a lot if banking apps are compatible. If your banking app doesn’t work, use the jail/sandbox compatible mode.
The fact that Linux has 2, 3, 4, 64467% has nothing to do with what is available at your disposal. Strawman fallacy here.
No one talked about hosting your own email server, there are alternative to the fucker-corps with privacy in mind.
You, my friend, are already defeated, but rest assured there are a ton of us still on our feet.
We can, but part of it is accepting that our tech will be a decade or two behind. Its not the worst thing. Life is more convenient now, but all in all i think it was better before.
The masses will go for convenient, and thats ok. You have near total control of how you live your life; you just cant have your cake and eat it too is all
Not sure how far back you’re talking but for a VERY long time they have been and continue to be in the business of what feeds the machine.
Why do you think we have computers in our possession 24/7? Not because we wanted it, but because they told us we wanted it and it enabled us to be available to feed the machine 24/7. You can work more. You can buy more.
Social media? Feeds the machine.
Television? Feeds the machine.
Cars? Feeds the machine.
Phones. Telegraphs. Fucking lightbulbs.
All used to feed the machine.
True, in a broad sense. I am speaking moreso to enshittification and the degradation of both experience and control.
If this was just “now everything has Siri, it’s private and it works 100x better than before” it would be amazing. That would be like cars vs horses. A change, but a perceived value and advantage.
But it’s not. Not right now anyways. Right now it’s like replacing a car with a pod that runs on direct wind. If there is any wind over say, 3mph it works, and steers 95% as well as existing cars. But 5% of the time it’s uncontrollable and the steering or brakes won’t respond. And when there is no wind over 3mph it just doesn’t work.
In this hypothetical, the product is a clear innovation, offers potential benefits long term in terms of emissions and fuel, but it doesn’t do the core task well, and sometimes it just fucks it up.
The television, cars, social media, all fulfilled a very real niche. But nearly everyone using AI, even those using it as a tool for coding (arguably its best use case) often don’t want to use it in search or in many of these other “forced” applications because of how unreliable it is. Hence why companies have tried (and failed at great expense) to replace their customer service teams with LLMs.
This push is much more top down.
Now drink your New Coke and Crystal Pepsi.
In the beginning though many I’ve ruins didn’t fill much of a purpose. When TV was invented maybe a handful of programs were available. People still had more use for radio. Slowly it became what it is today.
I get it though. The middle phase sucks because everybody is money hungry. Eventually things will fall into place.
The rich are cashing in our tax dollars to try to automate their control of an enslaved human race.
They will do anything besides just pay taxes and contribute to society
Luckily, 90% of what Google goes all in on fails. I remember Stadia and Google Glass.
I remember some people very vehemently telling me that I was dumb to be skeptical of Stadia, that it really was going to just take over the industry…
I still don’t understand how Stadia got out the door the way it did. It was the exact same business model Onlive tried back in the day. And it predictably failed the exact same way.
From what I call, the advocates kept saying:
- OnLive was just too soon, the internet needed to be better
- Google had just so much more resources at their disposal they could make it happen
Of course, no one ever explained why I would want to pay full price for a game and also have to pay a monthly fee to access it once purchased, which was the most mind boggling facet of Google’s concept to me, even more boggling than trying to make games render server side when the cheapest end user device can just locally render PS3, maybe PS4 level graphics nowadays.
Google has gotten so fucking dumb. Literally incapable of performing the same function it could 4 months ago.
How the fuck am I supposed to trust Gemini!?
google search got dumb on purpose, a whistleblower called it out - if you spend longer look on the search pages they get more “engagement” time out of you…
I was fucking irked when I wanted to use Hey Google to add something to my grocery list. I had switched to Gemini not realizing its scope, and suddenly Gemini was needing voice permission then some other seemingly unrelated, unnecessary permission (can’t recall exactly but something like collaborative documents) to add to my grocery list. Fuck that. Then it seemed very difficult to find the setting to switch back to Google assistant, but I eventually found it.
I work with ServiceNow for my job and a couple weeks back was the big knowledge 2025 conference in Vegas. The CEO came out for the opening keynote and opened with some like, “ah yea, doesn’t it feel good to be an AI company?” and I didn’t here a single cheer from the crowd, just polite applause. They have gone all in on AI, have made it completely unaffordable, and have just been shoehorning it into everything. I hope every one of these companies that that goes big on AI crashes and fails. They’ve already cut the employees, so the only people affected are the ones making the cash, so fuck em.
The Sunk Cost fallacy is strong
The two thing I use most, by far, from Google, is gmail and basic search.
Gmail, I’m looking to move away from it now, but I currently have every little addition to it disabled. Basic inbox and tags, no automatic filtering, no categories, no nothing.
Search, my browser is set to open the “web” tab with the query, no transformation, no summary, no “for you”, no AI garbage, no “we thought you wanted video so there’s only video in the replies”. It still works fine.
Basically, none of what they added for years… maybe decade at this point, had held a glimmer of interest from me. It feels like this trend will continue. I just want something very basic that works.
Switch over to the Qwant search engine for your basic search and a good email provider like Tutamail or Proton. I have for a few months and there really is no reason to go back. It’s simple and it works.
I’m self-hosting my mails; no need for another third party that will decide whatever whenever. The major difficulty is the decades of things that are reliant on the old one.
And I just said that google works fine for search, despite people claiming it’s on the decline, broken, unusable, etc. That’s not to move toward qwant, who are no less shady, burn money (sometimes coming from public money…), and despite wonderful claim of an autonomous index, completely stop working when Bing is down. As far as recommendations for search engine goes, google (and Bing for that matter) are far less disingenuous. All usable search engines these days are backed by the big ones anyway. Something like https://openwebsearch.eu/ would be a better alternative, assuming it follows on its promises.
Remember that you, the reader, don’t have to take part in this. If you don’t like it, don’t use it - tell your friends and family not to use it, and why.
The only way companies stop this trend is if they see it’s a losing bet.
I’ve been playing Watch Dogs Legion so I know how this ends.
Google did the same thing with Google Plus they went all in on social and it failed miserably
To be fair I think it is happening to Google as much as it is to everyone else, we are running down a hill and are going too fast to stop.
It’s crazy Google will lose its search dominance and all its money in my lifetime. Android will probably be the only thing left when I die.
from wp:Don’t be evil to Too Big To Care.
The last 20 years has basically been entirely a troubling trend in tech.
The other day I asked my phone for a measurement conversion while cooking only to be greeted by the new Gemini nonsense. Don’t touch my shit!
Then I was driving and tried to play a specific song, but the Assistant couldn’t get further than dumping me into YouTube Music and hiding my navigation.
So anyways, I just uninstalled Assistant and after failing to find something else I came to Lemmy and saw this.
