So, that Ed Zitron article is really good.

A Spectre, Haunting

@noracodes Its also rather incredible that he blames these woes on some new form of capitalism -- "growth capitalism" -- much as Doctorow blames them on "shareholder capitalism"...

These aren't some new variants of capitalism, they're just capitalism, working as intended.

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Lady of Misrule

@noracodes firefox / chrome isn’t why the web is full of bloat though. the web is full of bloat because no amount of free software can let you influence what somebody else's server sends you, or what requirements they put on letting you access their systems. (free software actually just lets somebody else's server send you even MORE code you don't want to run, because they don’t even have to write it themselves.) no amount of licensing can fix this. software projects built entirely around the four freedoms have no answer to this problem, and largely do not even recognize it AS a problem, or pretend that if you are running an open source browser, that somehow gives you power over what is happening on corporations’ servers. it doesn’t.

software CANNOT replace infrastructure and the free software movement has had ZERO interest in providing well-funded, reliable, maintained network infrastructure for everyday people. instead it is obsessed with an egocentric, libertarian model which concerns itself only with individuals and what they can self-host and what rights they have regarding their own machines.

Lady of Misrule

@noracodes you refocusing this from a conversation about networked infrastructure to a conversation about choice of browser application used to access that infrastructure is exactly the kind of missing the point that FLOSS has been doing for decades

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maybenot

@noracodes

i'd say @cwood meant that the typical buyer of the $239 shitbox will not understand a word you're saying.

i read the article more as a "this is NOT IN FACT fine" than a "this is what we should do", and also as an appeal to tech-savvy ppl, to think of those who aren't.

this message would've been somewhat diluted if he ended it with "actually, here's how one can sidestep all this shit"

i guess @pluralistic would've ended on that?

again, conjecture and all, could be wrong.

maybenot

@noracodes @cwood

also, and this /is/ somewhat offtopic, microsoft strangling the 4gb celeron with unrelenting garbage is only one side of the problem. This one falls to a debian installer, but the others don't. The shitshow that is the modern web, oligarchisation of the services, everything-is-now-an-app, or fucking facebook, aren't as easily tackled.

All of them are being fought against, but to address each front the article would be even longer.

again, maybe it should have been.

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Stewart Russell

@noracodes Ed isn't a Linux user, and likely doesn't know anyone who uses it in a professional capacity. He's only ever mentioned Linux a couple of times in his columns, and typically as the platform that Android runs on. He doesn't know the people to talk to about this — and then, what if they turn out to be annoying?

I read his experience with the Windows S craptop as an example of how hyper-monetized modern systems cause harm to people, not as the focus of the article itself

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Stewart Russell

@noracodes But has the very real, very concrete resistance been very effective? There aren't open alternatives to the platforms that he mentions. Linux is another way to run abusive software in your browser.

Ed's an opinion writer. He's not here to read and cite academic works. He runs a PR company. People pay him money to make their products sound interesting. I think he's in the "could care less about FOSS" camp

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Mudlark :blobfoxfloofevil:

@noracodes I think you might have missed a chunk of what he wrote about the average person using technology. Linux is not easier for the average user, there’s nothing more to it than that.

People for the most part use what they are presented with, and take the easiest path, nothing about switching OS is easy for the bulk of people. The Linux experience is different, but also poor for the end user, just in different ways. A lot of the problems with Linux usability apply to other foss solutions. Love foss, I think Linux is great, but he’s talking about the state of web and tech for the layperson

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Christopher Wood

@noracodes

It's entirely likely that I misinterpreted something.

I took part of your meaning to be that the linked article would be better by acknowledging there is an alternative to a low-end Windows laptop. That alternative is somewhere within the square bounded by points of low price hardware, Libre OS/software, spare time, and the skill to know what to do with it. Informing people about this alternative would have made a valuable contribution to the article's point.

My perspective is that this alternative isn't available all but a very technologically proficient subset of the population. At first I thought this was just based on spare time and skill level available for hardware/software management/repairs. After checking pricing and considering the real price of used hardware in shortened service life I also think that price point is a barrier here as well. There's a great deal of difference in a total package costing $350 USD versus a starter package costing $500 USD. ($150 USD is a month of bare-bones groceries for a person.)

With the Libre alternative out of reach for so many people I'd disagree that it might be usefully named as an alternative for people at the cheap Windows laptop price point in an article like this. (On the other hand I do think people would be way better off that way, as a different matter.)

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Mudlark :blobfoxfloofevil:

@noracodes the article is talking about the kind of person who buys the cheapest possible commodity PC and follows the path of least resistance -
I get what you're saying, but this most common user probably doesn't realise there are alternate internet browsers available beyond the default provided.

I see his essay as more of an observation of the current state of things, and an explanation of why it's wrong, as well as a dissection of how and why it got to this point of user hostility (surprise - it's capitalism, he can call it the rot economy, but yes it's just capitalism performing as intended)

I think the action suggested by the essay is that first step of identifying that the way things are in tech right now are horrifically wrong and harmful for most users. it's seeing that harm, and talking about it to others (a lot of people, in and out of the tech industry seem to think things are good the way they are) - people have to know, first.

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@Mudlark > I get what you're saying, but this most common user probably doesn't realise there are alternate internet browsers available beyond the default provided.

Totally! But again, I'm not saying Zitron needs to talk about specific open source software. Instead, when he, as you say, suggests "seeing that harm, and talking about it to others" - isn't it incumbent upon him to include the *only* existing intellectual tradition that actually engages with how bad things are, and how they got that way?

Or is "normal people haven't heard of it" a good reason to not tell them about it? Because that seems self-defeating.