It could be FOMO. Personally, I see value in keeping social media from children. The problem is I don’t believe this is all about that. As usual, it’s all about surveillance.

GenX entered the chat.

Sufficient enshitification results in us simply reverting to how we did it in 1990. I am using actually useful software, but when that becomes unavailable, I will walk away like I already did with so much.

I’ve been using Linux since 1995, for this very reason.

Increasingly, when I find services don’t work any more, support says, “we don’t support linux”. I stop using that service and find an alternative. Never been on Facebook, and it’s stopped me from spending money at several retailers. Oh, well. Their loss, not mine.

You did it when you spent a considerable amount of space explaining how sexual abuse is different because these abusers don’t think they’re doing anything wrong, so society needs a way to police them.

This was the bulk of your response to being against total public surveilance. You also didn’t explicitly agree or disagree with my assertion.

Instead you gave an explanation of the problems of criminality in society, asserted that something had to be done, and presented a huge cultural shift as the solution.

This neatly leaves the uncareful reader to potentially conclude that the surveilance is a reasonable approach to deal with an intractable social problem.

However, it really is not an intractable problem. it is a hypersensitivity to a horrific behavior that gets eyeballs in our truly fucked up profit-driven media system that thrives on manipulating our often morbid curiosity.

It is the constant airing of these events twenty four hours a day. If there are only 24 cases of such behavior on the planet in a single day, you will hear about it. That is 24 out of 9 billion people. Clearly evidence of the horrific cruelty of most humans, and particularly men, right? We have to do something to protect the innocent (insert women, children depending on the nature of the intractable problem).

Our history is littered with authoritarian movements making people believe the reality of a few bad actors is rampant cross society and is due to the “other”. They rally the weak willed foolish into destroying freedom, individuality, and life for their dear leaders’ enrichment, all while believing their moral certainty is unassailable.

Oh, yeah, that was my point, screen loss.

I didn’t mean to point out the disrespect and clear statement that we either agree or have to suffer the annoyance of the equivalent of someone standing in front of us at a baseball game repeatedly asking if we would like to buy a hotdog.

Why should we complain? We can still see the game around him, after all.

It’s happening, but do you really believe a bunch of nonprofit low income “woke” “DEI” loving hippies are going to lobby more effectively than billion dollar corporations - er, sorry, PEOPLE - will lobby? These people literally bankroll candidates for office to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars and have hundreds of lawyers to pick apart any resistance.

Sure, lobby. Just understand we are just continuing the fight on principle, not because it will have any impact.

We can’t give up, but we aren’t going to win, short of a literal uprising and even then it’s probably just going to remove the lipstick from this political pig, and the pretense of “for the people” will fall away.

We were hyped over the tech and the “punk” aspect. That’s the rebellion against the dystopia, not embrace of it.

I think I’m past the principle. I’ve been fighting for my privacycfor decades. I think we are beyond any hope now. Not only is it relentless, but it is happening on every front imaginable. I think I’ve checked out. Nothing short of total collapse or ground up revolution will change anything.

As “the kids” say, we’re cooked.

For sociopaths like Musk, yes. The rest of us, not so much.

I actually commented on that somewhere. Cyberpunk is a good example of authors warning us of dystopian possibilities, not glorifying them.

Oh, yes they are…

You’re implying there is an option other than not owning a TV. Please send us specifics so we can join you.

Yep. My LG is not configured for internet. I updated it once with a USB stick. There is no reason to connect tv or speaker to internet. A good antenna gets me critical stuff.

We are already there, but with cars.

They do not exist. I looked.

This is the way. Bonus with HDR, Dolby vision, Atmos.

Steam Deck looks and sounds awesome with this setup.

I still remember adjusting the wrabbit ears on our black and white tv to get one of 4 tv stations.

I am perfectly happy with walking away from video entertainment once my work-arounds fail.

The world will continue spinning when the media manipulators go broke because nobody watches their tripe any more.

I hear these things called books are pretty entertaining.

I’m guessing this situation is the existential threat they feared most. They are ruthless. Revenge is in the culture (so I hear), so I think they are acting on “if I’m going down, you’re coming with me” mode.

I’m not even going to read that tripe.

This is the wealthiest, most powerful nation on earth. The only way either the Navy or the economy collapses is because the billionaires see profit in it for themselves.

We have the means to easily pay for everything, but the greedy bastards calling the shots want it all for themselves. If the shits who have stolen all the income of this nation paid like they did between 1945 and 1970, the debt would be obliterated in a few years and we could have universal healthcare, childcare and elder care.

That will never happen until we party like it’s 1795. Even then, some other megalomaniac will hijack it and leave us in a reign of terror.

If you don’t know my references, you are sadly lacking basic history education.

What mean “we” round-eye?

I built my life around tech, but I never believed it was anything this article claims “we” believed.

Tech is a tool, not a panacea. Apparently “we” never grew up watching Star Trek, or reading the many authors’ works that fully explored the folly “we” are building (Fahrenheit 451, I, Robot, Ender’s Game, any number of cyberpunk books, et. al.)

Holy Fuck. A child could see this coming. I know because I saw it coming. Decades ago.

I checked out the link, and noticed that the “we use cookies” obscuring pop-up does not disappear when one chooses to not accept “unnecessary” cookies. I guess we just have to power through the 20% screen loss unless we accept those cookies. Hard pass.