I have recently started university and am required to use an app that has three Facebook trackers, one of them being a Facebook location tracker according to Exodus App Privacy, for the dining plan, when it would literally work perfectly fine using your student ID and ordering to a real cashier, LIKE HOW IT HAS BEEN DONE FOR DECADES.
I have also read many stories of people that live in apartments that require them to use a mobile app for god damn LAUNDRY. All you need, is a card reader, and it will work perfectly fine like it has been for the longest time.
Privacy concerns aside, it is just annoying that you need this app and that app and this app and that app and it just clutters space on your phone. Security concerns too as now they have all of this additional info on you online, such as your phone number your email your real name, instead of just your credit card info like a card reader would have. And I am willing to guarantee that their security model is absolute horseshit because they have such a small team of engineers working on the app and the servers.
Literal enshitification
I’m sure we’ve all experienced this…
Go to example.com
“Ooops! It looks like you’re on a mobile device, which we for some asinine corporate reason don’t support on our desktop site! No “enable desktop site” won’t make this message go away because we make an unreasonable effort to deny you access to our site. Go to mobile.example.com instead.”
Goes to mobile.example.com
“Just kidding! What, you think we were actually going to let you access this without installing something? No, fuck you! This page is literally just a full screen ad for our app and has no access to any other part of platform, download it and agree to it’s fifty permissions before we’ll even give you a glimpse of our content!”
This won’t help in the above case so it’s a little off topic. But I got rid of Twitter on my phone and still use Twitter on my phone - Basically you just open twitter.com in Firefox, and go to the menu and click “Install”. Now you get a launcher icon to an “app” but it’s just the website hosted by the browser.
Instantly saves 150Mb, stops it doing evil shit and because it’s hosted in Firefox I get to block all the ads.
I would advise doing this with any app which has a desktop / mobile version and see what happens - Facebook, Reddit, LinkedIn etc. Some social media sites will nag you to install the app but some won’t or will be functional in spite of it.
I realize you may just be venting but consider complaining to your college administration either via your student council or by yourself.
It should not be the norm to have to tell a stranger where you are to eat food.
You are paying for your education even if you are doing so via a loan and that gives you the right to tell them how you feel about them invading your privacy. In college and in jobs authority figures routinely try to control you and it is worth learning to take a stand against such abuses.
They literally could not give one fuck less. They are probably being paid or otherwise are getting some other kind of kickback to push these apps. Colleges are…I hesitate to say greedy, but let’s call it “capitalistic”.
I agree with the sentiment, but if no one ever complains things are guaranteed to not change. At least this is, at the very least, an exercise in explaining your own viewpoints and understanding the workings of an institution. That is a skill and lesson that is valuable in the professional world.
The number of business that just expect that everyone has already downloaded and installed their app has become ridiculous.
Best Buy now demands an app be installed for order pick up. They are so sure you’ll have already done that there are no instructions in their parking lot for pick up that don’t include the app, no way to call them, and the lot employees say, “Just use the app and we’ll get your order.” It’s like the 20% tips programmed into just about every payment machine these days. No, I won’t leave you a 20% tip for handing me a receipt.
Even when going to Best Buy’s service desk the reps looked at me like I was crazy. “No, I won’t install your app to pick up an order” was met with confusion and open irritation. Fuck that.
And don’t get me started on ‘Reddit is better in our crappy Reddit app.’
A person’s music taste seems to crystalize at some point in their teenage years. The bands you loved at 15-17 are probably the bands that you’ll love forever.
Likewise, I’m finding that my relationship with information services as a whole probably crystalized a while ago, and the new era of “apps for every individual thing” is just wholly unappealing. Give me a web browser to interface with your information. If I can’t get it done with that, I’m more likely to move on to some even older tech and skip your product altogether.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m late to bingo. And get off my lawn.
Me: “seems to” “at some point” “probably” while making a minor, secondary point. Others: Severely Triggered
I’m doing my best to constantly listen to new music every week to keep fresh and malleable in my taste
yea, discovering is part of the fun
Funny you mention enshittification, I just watched a talk from Cory Doctorow who coined that term and he pointed out the reason for insisting on an app is that it means you can’t block ads without violating the DMCA. Browsers can have adblocker extensions, apps cannot (unless you hack them.)
This one? It came up as the next post on sync:
it means you can’t block ads without violating the DMCA. Browsers can have adblocker extensions, apps cannot (unless you hack them.)
I imagine this is just going to lead to more people using DNS ad blockers. My phone literally can’t access your ad server, sorry.
Private DNS FTW!
On Android:
- Swipe down and select settings (the gear)
- Search for: DNS
- Select Private DNS.
- Select Private DNS again.
- Select Private DNS provider hostname.
- Enter: dns.adguard.com
- Select Save
- Enjoy most ads being blocked in apps.
- Might work poorly on public wifi (Walmart wifi for example doesn’t work with a private DNS set).
On Apple:
- Fuck if I know.
I heard there are security concerns with this as adguard cannot be fully trusted. Anyone got the scoop?
Ed: as in didn’t adguard get bought by some questionable company?
Thanks!
NextDNS.io can block the trackers in the apps
Seriously email your IT and/or privacy team at the university level. I work at a university and that would be removed ASAP for sharing PII. If you’re in the US or UK it’s a major violation of your privacy. Unfortunately most IT offices aren’t involved in many of the decisions and many of the people making those decisions are complete ignorant to the situation.
I went to Buffalo Wild Wings the other day and they tried to have me download an app to pay my bill. I almost had my first Karen moment when I saw that.
I can understand refusing to accept cash (to an extent) but holy shit that’s insane.
Yeah I was flabbergasted. They said “scan this QR code to pay your bill” and then the website said I needed the app. I’d be fine with online pay but not a fucking app.
Smart phones ruined the internet
As a musician, I have to maintain an artist account on all the major social media platforms. It’s frustrating that a lot of features for posting only exist on their respective mobile apps instead of making them available on the web version where I have all of them neatly arranged in tabs on my laptop browser. Instead, I had to install all their apps on an extra phone (because I don’t want those things on my primary personal phone). Not to mention how hard it is to edit content on a tiny phone screen instead of a full browser window on a laptop.
What sites are you mainly using?
Which one is the most pain in the ass to manage?Love to check out your tunes if you’ll drop a link!
All the big ones (fb, instagram, twitter, youtube). They all have their own pains on web. For example, you can’t schedule posts on instagram on its own. Profile editing is also limited. You also can’t create reels on both fb and IG, although at least Meta’s business suite allows you to post standard photos and vids on both platforms simultaneously. You can’t create shorts on youtube web too. Twitter is absolutely basic, and I can’t say much about the app because I refuse to install it even on my extra phone. Besides, it’s not really intuitive for posting anything other than links, static photos, and standard videos, and most musicians are more active on IG now.
Thanks for the interest! I do a different genre on every release so there are genre tags for each album. Just pick your preference :)
A while ago, I started keeping a personal library/journal/etc. using Logseq. I could fire up Logseq in any browser on the planet, connect to my notes, and jot down whatever idea I had in the moment, all in a FOSS journal that stored my notes in plaintext markdown.
Then … I don’t know what happened, but 100% of their effort went into building an app, which then required them to build a (paid, proprietary) sync service, all rather than just releasing a self-hosted build of the web interface so I could spin up my own note-taking server. (Please don’t suggest alternatives; I’ve probably tried them all.) To “preserve privacy” and promote “local first”, I had to download an app and rely on a closed-source backend to do something I could trivially accomplish on my own. If my platform doesn’t support the app, no notes, unless I rely on the increasingly unmaintained web “demo” that does exactly 100% of what I need from the service, despite dozens of features missing compared to the app version.
But the kicker is that I cannot install things on my work computer. At all. Not portable apps, nothing. I will get a phone call from infosec if I even try, because we are a heavily regulated company. So if I have a bright idea at work, a thought I want to preserve, find a good article, etc., I have to go to another device. I have to interrupt my workflow, change my focus completely, and, probably, lose half of what I wanted to capture.
The thing is, I don’t think they’re data farming. I think they’re running a really good project! Users were begging for an app. “When are you going to release an app?” was a common question forever, because a whole generation of dingleberries cannot be bothered to go to a website that does the same thing, faster, and better than any app.
I’m still going to mention Zettlr and you can’t stop me.
Though it doesn’t have mobile apps and you’d have to use your own method of syncing the files, so not really what you’d need anyway.
There really isn’t a lot of FOSS apps than can replace Obsidian, while also being local-first and usable without an account, is there?
Logseq is really, really close. It’s basically a page I can start writing on, forcing minimal organization through bullets but otherwise freeform. Backlinking, plugins (meh), plain markdown. It’s just so good. It doesn’t require me to do anything other than write. It used to be entirely browser-based, syncing through a github repository. They could have released a self-hostable version of that and I would have been over the moon. Or, alternately, a self-hostable version with non-local storage so I could store my notes on a notes server I control. But they went with the app + sync service route. Understandable but sad.
So I just rolled my own sync through a git server and it works fine (other than iOS, which requires a maddening setup, but that’s not logseq’s fault).
I looked at Zettlr once or twice (thank you for mentioning it). Obsidian makes me crazy with all the UI fiddly bits and configuration. I tried. Oh how I tried. But it just didn’t work with my brain. (It’s the exact same reaction I have to KDE – there’s just TOO MUCH and it sets me off in unproductive directions, and that’s not a criticism of either project as such.)
I tried Logseq after looking for an Obsidian alternative, but I already failed at understanding how to import my notes. Can’t you just point the app to a folder? The import function seemed to only work for single markdown files, but maybe I was just missing something obvious.
That was a lot more straightforward in Zettlr, so I just kept using that, since it already does everything I need
Sort of, but the notes aren’t organized in the filesystem. So you point to a location where the files will live and it creates, e.g., journals and pages folders into which journals and pages are dropped. Each is one flat directory (which seems like a scaling problem after a while, but I’m nowhere near that being an issue).
Because logseq doesn’t do freeform markdown by default, you cannot just open any arbitrary markdown file in it. Or, rather, it will give unpredictable results if you do. If you’re used to a free-form editor that organizes files hierarchically, that is going to seem very, very strange and may not be what you’re looking for. My preference is to spend zero time organizing files and organizing text, so logseq’s choice to make both a non-issue is an absolute godsend. Open the app, start typing. It’s great (for me).
Yeah okay, no wonder I couldn’t warm up to it. I need that order and hierarchy in my notes
Need an account just to use my new gaming console. Another account to play Diablo IV. I bought the goddamned console and game. I had to sign into an app for the console. Why can’t I just play the game? The Samsung display that I got for the console (I have a projector, so I needed something for daytime use) is a “smart” display. That wanted me to create an account with an app on my phone. I just woke up, so if I rambled, oh well.
I think we’re at the point where everything will suck to the greatest degree from now on. There’s no room left for business not to suck (Amazon ads on Prime unless you pay more, as an example). Goodbye anything that isn’t terrible.
