Ask HN: What more can I do against Apple (and big tech)? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What more can I do against Apple (and big tech)?

18 pointsradmuzom13 comments

After Apple betrayed my trust by announcing they are going to install malware on my phone, I have taken some actions "against" them and other big tech companies.

1) Deleted all apps which are not absolutely essential to me. Realized that for most of them the website functions perfectly well. 2) Ordered for a basic Android phone. After a 7 day wait period, I am going to root it and install Lineage OS+microg on it. 3) I have 2 iphones which I am not going to sell, as I consider it unethical to impose Apple's policies on the buyer. 4) Donated 200 USD to FSF. 5) Signed up with posteo and am going to use their e-mail service from now on - already migrated 90% from Gmail and the entire process should take a month. 6) Going to remove Windows from all my laptops tomorrow and replace them with GNU/Linux.

Some inconveniences I will face a) not sure how some essential apps I need will work with Lineage. Need to figure out alternatives, which I will. b) will never play a PC game again - as an introvert and loner, games have been very important for my mental health. But removing Windows is even more important.

Would love to hear more ideas from the community on actions I can take to help free software (not open source) and reduce the power of big tech.

There is nothing you can do to reduce the power of big tech until free software can provide an appealing option for regular people.

The best thing you can do to help is pick a problem that stands in the way of regular users adopting free software and dedicate yourself to working on it for 10 years. I don’t mean quit your job. I mean just keep the long game in mind. If you don’t have the skills now, start anyway and learn them as you go.

If a just few thousand people did this, the world would change a lot in a decade. If a decade seems like a long time, it is less time than it took either the iPhone or Facebook to become what they are today, and both of them took relentless effort by developers.

Do you have a bullet list of things people could dedicate 10 years to for inspiration?

I don’t off hand, but it is an excellent question.

An obvious area that iOS and Android are more mature than the FOSS alternatives is accessibility. You could easily spend 10 years just marshaling a project in that area.

Another obvious area is data persistence across devices. I’m sure there is a better name for this, but what I mean is that signing in to an iOS device is pretty much all that is needed for my data to start appearing. Apps and data will be populated from the cloud, whether it is from iCloud Drive or from a backup. Losing, upgrading, or adding a device has very little impact on workflow other than the cost of hardware.

This is an extremely valuable and sticky feature, and is part of what makes these devices into consumer ‘appliances’ rather than traditional computers.

The architecture to achieve this in Apple’s case is exactly where most of the complaints are targeted. E.g. the App Store, iCloud backups, and other services like photos.

The challenge is to engineer a set of alternatives that yield similar end-user benefits, but without creating dependence on a trusted (or distrusted in Apple’s case) central actor.

This seems to me like another area where many people could spend 10 years working.

Support Librem 5 and Pinephone with development and spreading the information.

It doesn't matter. Your personal actions have essentially zero impact on Apple or any other large tech company. This isn't to discourage you from picking the devices and software that align with your values - do that as you please. Just don't think that you're making an actual impact on the rest of the world because you really aren't.

While you are right, I wonder if there would any impact if all the HN users would do what OP did.

Well I’m pretty sure at least a decent number of HN users are intelligent enough to understand the difference between a piece of software that compares image hashes to detect potential child abuse material before, and malware.

If OP didn’t agree to the principal of his images being compared against a set of hashes he could literally just turn off iCloud photos, and the comparisons will not be done.

On right I forgot it’s the internet so everything has to become a controversy and there must be revenge.

>If OP didn’t agree to the principal of his images being compared against a set of hashes he could literally just turn off iCloud photos, and the comparisons will not be done.

Woosh. You've totally missed the point.

> if

Yea, that's not how people work

Ever try to rally a disparate group of people across the world where the only thing they have in common is participation in a text based forum?

Might as well try to wrangle every species of cat at the same time.

How would removing Windows accomplish this? Throwing your own stuff away after paying for it doesn’t make sense, they already have your money.

Microsoft and or/the vendor make side income from what the average user does in bing, preinstalled crapware, cut on games in Microsoft store sales, etc.

Stop using and stop buying their products and services.

Money talks.

Spread the word! Every person counts!

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