Swapping Microsoft for Google is not much of an improvement imho

Using SearXNG and DuckDuckGo though, but the piece does read a LOT like an ad. Even the writing style is making me suspicious.

That’s just my impression, not trying to convince anyone

The article isn’t talking about smart devices generally but corporate owned devices subject to enshittification

It’s supposed to reduce how much a company can leverage their market dominance in one market to get an unfair advantage in another one.

See how Amazon places their products (ex. Backpacks) in more prominent positions on their dominant market. Here the unfair advantage is that if a company is already using Microsoft Office and it comes bundled with Teams (for “free”) what chance would Slack or other comm systems have?

I think people are more worried about the trend than the specific changes. Discord might still be okay for now but we’ve been down this path enough times to know where it might lead

I’d say Matrix / Elements is a good alternative.

It’s based on an open and interoperable protocol, similar to the fediverse. So it doesn’t matter the client, as long as your friends are on something that support Matrix they’ll be able to join the group.

As an added bonus, if elements start going down the enshittification path you can just drop them. Also, you can host your server just like teamspeak

Just a reminder for me to check this thread later.

As if LLMs are in anyway appropriate for this… We need to stop putting “AI” in everything and thinking that will somehow solve some problem

Very well written piece, thanks for sharing! I’m one of the people that would be very fast to believe social media is one of the big reasons behind this rising levels of depression and anxiety. This text made me reconsider some thoughts I had

Look, the difference is in the language. One company hasn’t “done it”, the industry as a whole moves, sometimes cooperatively other times in a tug of war.

As the commenter above mentioned, Apple was in a unique position of being able to leverage all the work done in the phone and tablet spaces to push for an ARM laptop. This helped other manufacturers which already showed an interest in doing the same.

On the other hand, with the lock in mechanisms apple has in their products they also stifles competition and innovation in other areas.

They can both help push and hinder innovation. Just like any company. It’s not about hating or loving a corporate entity.

Though I agree with you partially there, I still think there should be options for users to access their data easily. Last time I tried getting my chat backups out of an iPhone was a nightmare

Nah, that’s about right, I paid like maybe 20 cents for a cd collection on graigslist, don’t know who bought all those vinyls though

Agree, it won’t be easy…

Another sad example is Google’s influence on RSS: https://openrss.org/blog/how-google-helped-destroy-adoption-of-rss-feeds

Me too, hopefully they federate at some point. The team behind Hardcover seem to support the ideas of the open web… at least data portability and so on. Let’s see if a meaningful connection with Bookwyrm is possible in the future.

Your first point is fair, and I’m not really sure if it’s just the technology maturing or a symptom of stifled innovation. Personally, I think there are still innovations to be made in this space, even big ones. But it’s not just Apple’s fault. The duopoly of iOS and Android has completely cornered the international market, new players have almost no chance, and the 30% cut app developers have to give Apple or Google puts them at a big disadvantage. I think a shakeup in the phone market would be very good for consumers.

iPhones seem to have better battery life.

I just have annecdotal evidence from people I know with iPhones (and mine, too, though it has been a while). It seemed to me, at least, that Apple phones tend to slow down quite a bit after a few years, and they start having battery problems. Some people I know seem to have gotten lucky with the battery thing, others not so much. But if it works well for you, then great!

More importantly, the “garden” is not the problem. If someone chooses to, they should be able to only use Apple products, download only Apps from the Appstore, and trust Apple with their data. It is the “walled” part of the deal which is the problem. Once inside, there should be an out. That is what the DOJ and the EU are trying to accomplish.

I think if we are going to support the idea of an open web, we need to be consistent about it. Federation should be possible with threads and blusky. One of the main advantages of federation is that it is interoperable.

But we have to be careful. When you have an agent as powerful as Facebook/Meta at the table, it only takes a few missteps for the fediverse to crumble. I don’t think Mark Zuckerberg has had a sudden change of heart, the success of the fediverse is not his goal.

There need to be clear requirements for a platform to be allowed to federate. Basic rules like not manipulating engagement metrics and respecting the protocol. But we need to think as a community about where we draw the line.

Personally, I think user mentions from thread users opening the threads application is a huge violation. This behavior is not expected, and is only meant to suck people into their ecosystem. It shouldn’t be accepted.

It’ll be a long road fam, but I think it’s worth it for a better Web.

I’m always impressed how far corporations managed to convince people to be loyal to them. Not saying it’s a person’s fault, I used to fall pretty badly for corporate bullshit myself.

The whole “walled garden” concept is inherently anti-consumer. Have you ever asked yourself why there hasn’t been any real innovation in the phone/smartwatch fields for years now. Or why phones aren’t cheap to fix anymore. Or why battery life gets so bad after two or so years that most people are forced to buy a new one.

Things don’t have to be this way. We can have well designed products that work together without all the lock in.

Thanks for sharing, but they seem like the last people one should ask about the evaluation…

Not federated but I can really recommend trying out hardcover.app/

They’re not federated but have very good import/export tools if you want to take your data somewhere else.

Finally! Always glad to see the EU forcing Tech Giants to be user friendly