We need to stop calling these sites and services “free”. Anything that’s financed by ads, spying and profiling is not free, the user is paying with their attention, integrity and right to privacy. This is not nothing.
Presently, it’s a shady and dishonest practice since the terms of the transaction are rarely transparent to the consumer; in other words, it’s a scam.
Lots of greenwashing going on here too. The nordic countries are just as capitalist as anywhere else, we just had a strong labour movement in the 19th and 20th century. And sadly, a lot of what was won has been slowly whittling away in the last decades due to the complacency and inaction of the generations after.
Well, but what does “caring” mean? It means that their well-being affects your emotions.
That would be an extremely reductive definition that doesn’t really tell us much about how caring for others is actually experienced and how it manifests in the world. How would this for example explain sacrificing yourself to save another person, if the very core of caring is to create positive emotions in yourself? Dying is a pretty negative thing to experience and there will be no more positive emotions for you after that. I guess this idea that caring is in its essence transactional feels profound to people because we’re so ingrained with capitalist ideology… but it’s a lot more complex and multifaceted than that.
Of course, you only ever do things because there’s something in it for you,
No, sometimes you do things because you care about other people and want to help them. That you also probably feel better about yourself than you would if you did shitty things all day doesn’t mean that feeling is the only and single motivation.
We hear that argument a lot, and though some people’s charity may be motivated purely by egoism I don’t think it applies to the majority at all. The argument assumes that if doing something makes you feel good, then that feeling must be the sole motivation for that action, which is dubious. And if we follow this logic to its natural conclusion, every action that does not make you feel bad is egoistic, and the concept becomes completely meaningless. Saving a child from falling down a cliff? Egoistic! Intervening when someone is treated unfairly? Egoistic! Giving up your chair for an elderly person on a crowded bus? Egoistic!
Let’s take this last (admittedly small, everyday, non-dramatic) example. Sure, you could give up your seat purely because you want to look like a good person to others (although it’s doubtful anyone would even notice). It’s also possible to experience this feeling called empathy, to see an elderly person struggling to keep their balance while standing up and to want to alleviate that particular suffering. Everyone else is sitting down looking at their phones, so there’s no community pressure to speak of. No one would call you out if you just pretended not to notice. And the discomfort from standing up on a really crowded bus on a bumpy road could easily outweigh that little buzz you get from doing good.
I’ll go even further; it’s even possible, in a scenario like this, to not even think about how it’s going to make you feel or your self-image or whatever. You just want to help someone else because it’s in your power to do so. If this isn’t an example of not being egoistic, what would be? What would be the opposite of egoism? To act completely dispassionately?
And what about someone sacrificing their own life to save another? Striving to do good in the world does feel better, yes, but empathy is also a burden. Still, there are genuinely good people out there, that do good deeds and do not take any credit for it, even do it anonymously. And I can tell you from experience, not all of them walk around on clouds feeling like saints. Some of them even experience crippling guilt because they feel they do not do enough. How is that egoism?
Food service and retail needs to exist, (commercial sales) call centers should be banned and their owners shunned from polite society.
Sure, nothing is more masculine than having a preference for men.
This gem also springs to mind
Apps are challenging to preserve, but it’s the MMORPGs and online games that are almost impossible since there is no game without active servers and people playing the game. Hardware can be emulated and code preserved, so the apps you’re talking about could be preserved IF Apple, Google et al wanted to - which of course probably won’t happen, but still.
It was more in response to your comments. I don’t think anyone has a problem with useful FOSS alternatives per se.
So, lick the boot instead of resisting you say?
Edit: actually, read zerakith’s comment instead.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to criticize you, it’s just a joke.
Heath
I had a coworker in the early 00s that would repeatedly fail to search for something because she would type “www.goggles.com” into the address bar.
How about punk rock is the only thing that is punk rock, starting now?
I like this idea more and more. All computers off, noone is allowed to work, just a big new years party for everyone.
I use it to make my phone less appealing and thus waste less time on it.
Yes, that’s what I use mine for as well. I have the apps I need to access daily as shortcuts and all other apps stuffed away from sight.
Thanks, I’ll check Blank out as well.
I used to work with an Apple fanboy that knew next to nothing about how computers actually work, but he knew that Apple was the best at everything. Any time someone brought up something about a device or service from any other company or with any other OS, his stock answer was always “switch to Apple”. Any time someone pointed out that their device offered a feature or functionality they appreciated that Apple did not offer in a convenient way, his stock answer was always “You don’t need that.” Sometimes he’d add “why would you want to do that? Do X instead”.
Fast forward to today, I ended up killing him and am writing this from jail.
This seems like a good opportunity to tell the story of “Balloon man”