Technology

Don't download the app then. You don't need it. Whatever it is. You don't need it. Whatever bullshit productivity promises someone made to you, it was a lie meant to trick you into installing their spyware. All smartphone apps are spyware. Period. Call a restaurant instead of using UE/DD, send a text rather than whatsapp, tiktok is brainrot and totally unnecessary, any and all social media platforms all work inbrowser (although, they themselves are also spyware, so it's best to not use Facebook, IG, TT, Snap, or any other similar platform). The only useful thing that smartphones offer that wasn't previously just fine on other devices is an internet browser in your pocket.

I actually often prefer using apps over websites, because my phone is quite slow and using a browser is often way slower than an app.

Not sure anyone actually read the article, cuz yall are talkin about apps vs. web sites, and data collection. Two points which are briefly covered, but ultimately shrugged off in favor of the larger thesis:

Smartphones … meant [companies] could use their apps to off-load effort. … In other words, apps became bureaucratized. What started as a source of fun, efficiency, and convenience became enmeshed in daily life. Now it seems like every ordinary activity has been turned into an app, while the benefit of those apps has diminished.

I’d like to think that this hellscape is a temporary one. As the number of apps multiplies beyond all logic or utility, won’t people start resisting them? And if platform owners such as Apple ratchet up their privacy restrictions, won’t businesses adjust? Don’t count on it. Our app-ocalypse is much too far along already. Every crevice of contemporary life has been colonized. At every branch in your life, and with each new responsibility, apps will keep sprouting from your phone. You can't escape them. You won’t escape them, not even as you die, because—of course—there’s an app for that too.

It’s not simply the code delivery mechanism, and it’s not whether the data exchange is safe from prying eyes… It’s the fact that a digital UX has invaded every aspect of human interaction, including mourning.

This is partly corporate greed and partly a failure of the Web. A website should be all you need. You shouldn't need a separate app for every little thing.

Amount of store apps on my phone: zero.

My wife has an app that is basically a card holder. Instead of pulling out a loyalty card, she pulls up the one app that has all of them scanned/copied. It's great.