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It’s really not about me being able to find an individual solution for myself. I do use imported chinese devices without play shit for my personal stuff and a still supported grapheneos device. By choice I route all my internet traffic through remote jump boxes and shit.
I do almost all of my internet on hard mode. But I cannot avoid the worst downstream impacts of these changes, and neither can you, because they are social in type and scale.
big problem with “privacy” concepts is the idea that the problem or any solutions are individual. it is not an issue that can be meaningfully addressed at the consumer.
Can’t seem to crystalize my thoughts into the reply I want to make, but this really reminds me of how liberal countries individualize the problem of dealing with (usually “external”) existential threats.
Like issuing advice and toothless water restrictions during drought. Pandemic response. Climate change. etc.
I have snapped pretty harshly in other threads at people who push the “its your problem and you can deal with it” type of attitude and I haven’t quite understood why it provokes such hostility in me because I don’t think it’s a purely altruistic concern for people who aren’t technically capable of protecting themselves.
The intuition that I’m feeling is that a lot of people who don’t have anything to gain by doing so still push and mainstream issues into the “individual solution” problem space as a coping mechanism / psychological defense.
Like if you make the problem individual, then it becomes a matter of individual opinion whether something is good or bad and whether we should be actively involved in doing something about it. Maybe there’s a self interested part of us that subconsciously knows that when things are terrible and terrifying that there is self soothing “value” in convincing yourself that you had a choice and opted in even if that means you’re to blame.
So, perhaps, my response comes from seeing “just get a china phone bro” people as basically victimizing themselves and encouraging others to do so, thus actively removing any potential in themselves or others to even make informed decisions in their own self interest.
MAYBE I’m doing too much thinking on part of this. Maybe the other take away is that this too is as inevitable as the climate apocalypse. Shit pisses me off tho I tell ya whut
I think there is a heavily (right) libertarian slant to “privacy” because of various issues such as
having the time and wherewithall to acquire the background technical knowledge to understand the issues
as a “hobby” it is expensive requiring purchase of specialized devices (like getting a pixel, even a used one, instead of a cheaper more common phone so you can install a custom ROM)
intersection with “prepper” and other right wing ideologies
intersection with criminal/corporate interests — those who are successful enough to hire lawyers and other pros to help them
higher levels of privilege which allow one to exempt oneself from surveillance if wanted — don’t need to be on facebook, whatsapp, venmo etc as a matter of survival
discretionary financials available to provide funding
have status and influence within private, public, nonprofit, software, politics etc
So all the above is the ideological foundations. It selects for the people you can find in forums, producing content like writing or videos, contributing to software or other development projects, or running organizations. It snowballs. Plus the individual solutions are inherently more digestible because they can at least be implemented a bit. With them is the false logic that if only everyone (or some critical mass) would get with the program, then the problems would be solved. (Like how everyone decided to only buy cars with seatbelts.)
I’ve had an 11T for 5 years and just got a Redmi Note 15 and it works great.
The phones come with dev mode enabled, you can also just toggle the bootloader unlock from the dev settings (this may cause issues with like banking apps and such).
HyperOS is just a wrapper on stock Android from what I can tell. So you still have to deal with the Google stuff and disable whatever factory bloat they install. I can’t remember if the Xiaomi name brand stuff comes with the boat or not because that was 5 years ago, but the Redmi one did (just like random apps you can uninstall and some additional Xiaomi system apps)
https://keepandroidopen.org/
I’m really starting to feel like a cornered animal.
no kidding… the enshittification is only picking up steam now
we’re gonna need a bigger more expensive word for enshittification of this sort.
You could always buy a Chinese smartphone
It’s really not about me being able to find an individual solution for myself. I do use imported chinese devices without play shit for my personal stuff and a still supported grapheneos device. By choice I route all my internet traffic through remote jump boxes and shit.
I do almost all of my internet on hard mode. But I cannot avoid the worst downstream impacts of these changes, and neither can you, because they are social in type and scale.
big problem with “privacy” concepts is the idea that the problem or any solutions are individual. it is not an issue that can be meaningfully addressed at the consumer.
Can’t seem to crystalize my thoughts into the reply I want to make, but this really reminds me of how liberal countries individualize the problem of dealing with (usually “external”) existential threats.
Like issuing advice and toothless water restrictions during drought. Pandemic response. Climate change. etc.
I have snapped pretty harshly in other threads at people who push the “its your problem and you can deal with it” type of attitude and I haven’t quite understood why it provokes such hostility in me because I don’t think it’s a purely altruistic concern for people who aren’t technically capable of protecting themselves.
The intuition that I’m feeling is that a lot of people who don’t have anything to gain by doing so still push and mainstream issues into the “individual solution” problem space as a coping mechanism / psychological defense.
Like if you make the problem individual, then it becomes a matter of individual opinion whether something is good or bad and whether we should be actively involved in doing something about it. Maybe there’s a self interested part of us that subconsciously knows that when things are terrible and terrifying that there is self soothing “value” in convincing yourself that you had a choice and opted in even if that means you’re to blame.
So, perhaps, my response comes from seeing “just get a china phone bro” people as basically victimizing themselves and encouraging others to do so, thus actively removing any potential in themselves or others to even make informed decisions in their own self interest.
MAYBE I’m doing too much thinking on part of this. Maybe the other take away is that this too is as inevitable as the climate apocalypse. Shit pisses me off tho I tell ya whut
I think there is a heavily (right) libertarian slant to “privacy” because of various issues such as
So all the above is the ideological foundations. It selects for the people you can find in forums, producing content like writing or videos, contributing to software or other development projects, or running organizations. It snowballs. Plus the individual solutions are inherently more digestible because they can at least be implemented a bit. With them is the false logic that if only everyone (or some critical mass) would get with the program, then the problems would be solved. (Like how everyone decided to only buy cars with seatbelts.)
This cut through the brainfog like a knife. Good observations.
Will Xiaomi phones work with f-droid, if they still use (their version of) Android?
I’ve had an 11T for 5 years and just got a Redmi Note 15 and it works great.
The phones come with dev mode enabled, you can also just toggle the bootloader unlock from the dev settings (this may cause issues with like banking apps and such).
Do they come with play services / play protect / play store shit installed and enabled from the factory or do people enable that later?
HyperOS is just a wrapper on stock Android from what I can tell. So you still have to deal with the Google stuff and disable whatever factory bloat they install. I can’t remember if the Xiaomi name brand stuff comes with the boat or not because that was 5 years ago, but the Redmi one did (just like random apps you can uninstall and some additional Xiaomi system apps)