this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
194 points (94.5% liked)

Fuck Subscriptions

3662 readers
3 users here now

Naming and shaming all "recurring spending models" where a one-time fee (or none at all) would be appropriate and logical.

Expect use of strong language.

Follow the basic rules of lemmy.world and common sense, and try to have fun if possible.

No flamewars or attacking other users, unless they're spineless corporate shills.

Note that not all subscriptions are awful. Supporting your favorite ~~camgirl~~ creator or Lemmy server on Patreon is fine. An airbag with subscription is irl Idiocracy-level dystopian bullshit.

New community rule: Shilling for cunty corporations, their subscriptions and other anti-customer practices may result in a 1-day ban. It's so you can think about what it's like when someone can randomly decide what you can and can't use, based on some arbitrary rules. Oh what, you didn't read this fine print? You should read what you're agreeing to.

==========

Some other groovy communities for those who wish to own their products, their data and their life:

Right to Repair/Ownership

Hedges Development

Privacy

Privacy Guides

DeGoogle Yourself

F-Droid

Stallman Was Right

Some other useful links:

FreeMediaHeckYeah

Louis Rossman's YouTube channel

Look at content hosted at Big Tech without most of the nonsense:

Piped

Invidious

Nitter

Teddit

 

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I don't know if it has a subscription per se, but holy crap/crab

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This age of being spied upon is either going to become such a norm that it will be weird that people had issues with it in the future

It's like this now though. I'm apparently a total freak (outside of lemmy) for giving a shit about my privacy. I swear that everyone I know thinks I'm a conspiracy theorist. When I mentioned that Alexa listens to you when you're not talking directly to it, I actually had someone laugh like it's a totally absurd idea even though a two second search will bring up a million articles on it. Not to mention the lawsuits for when it spied on children.

People either don't seem to care at all, or it's just easier and more convenient to stick their heads in the sand. Which I guess is pretty typical for Americans at least. I will just never understand how anyone is ok with any of this.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't disagree, but wouldn't Alexa have to listen to you always, if only to be on the lookout for 'hey Alexa'?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

People just think it's magic

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Ima a bit of a hypocrit there. I prefer Siri, configured with push to talk, so it’s not always listening, it’s processed mostly on device, and it’s controlled by a company that’s not in the advertising business and markets their products on privacy.

…. But also having Alexa listening in in every room is so damn convenient

Note to people who didn’t think there was new features in Apple’s recent announcement: the new watch has enough CPU that they will now be doing voice processing on device for that as well

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Most of us on here are a bit more technically minded than the general public, so we know how these things affect us. For your average person on the street though, nobody's given a decent answer to the question 'So what?'

'The government knows where you live' 'So what?'

'The tech company knows what phone you have' 'So what?'

'Your ISP knows what sites you've visited' 'So what?'

We know why these things can be bad, and how they might be used against us, but most people don't, and the attempted explanations don't get the point across. I'm not going to pretend to have any answers, but until we can convince people that trading privacy for convenience is bad, things are not going to change.