this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2026
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As much as people love doom mongering about big-tech coming for your PC, I just dont see it. There's a temporary price spike in some components atm yes, but that will end when the AI bubble pops. Further than that I just dont see what people think is going to happen, outlawing linux? Banning the import of PC components? The amount of damage either of those would do to the economy is so huge It just wouldnt happen.
Age verification, id verification, mandatory DRM, only allow certified apps from official app stores, block systems not on the approved list from login onto sites, issues using school and government sites. Then payment processors get involved to refuse cash to those not following the program.
It's a slow squeeze instead of outright ban that leaves Big Tech boxes and Dark Web boxes.
In retrospect, we dodged a bullet when the Internet developed the way that it did, in an open fashion, at Universities, largely by hippies (and, later, furries).
Remember Compuserve? And early AOL? I remember Quantumlink (Steve Case's company that eventually turned into AoL) and how my parents had to pay for it by the hour.
Tech Companies wanted to erect tool booths on computer communication, just like the phone network, but the Internet (and it's open architecture) beat them to the punch. They've been trying to fix that bug ever since. But they figured out that if the interconnect is open, they can still charge a toll if they have root access in the hardware at both sides. Once TVs became computers, it became so much easier.
None of those exist or, as far I am aware, are being proposed for computers though? Yes there are some restrictions being brought in to block access to some content on the web (DRM, ID and age gating) which are shit, but I've heard nothing about using any of that to block access to general computing.
Apple has always banned you from sideloading anything on an iPhone and now Google is following suit. Soon Google will make sidelong a giant pain in the ass and only available to "developers" with the reason being to scare normal people into thinking doing things how they are done now is "too dangerous" and that they need to nanny us and not give us full control of our devices.
Microsoft is still desperately trying to shove everyone onto their Microsoft store and their "universal" appx bullshit or whatever. Once enough people have been switched over, its game over for traditional executables.
For context the Microsoft Store came out in 2012 and was a big reason why Valve went all-in on Linux because they could see what Microsoft's long term goal was here from a mile away.
It's been 13 years of slow build up to this.
You are the frog in the slowly boiling pot.
No, these are things tested on gaming and phones. If it works and there isn't much resistance it'll come to regular computers too. First you had Steam for games, then came the iphone with an app store and then it became a thing in general computing. That's how things go.
I have the feeling that the AI bubble isn't going to burst as everyone expects, it will, but I don't think it will restore prices to the good old days
Oh it will, but what it will leave behind is the same mess of big megacorps who will retain the technology and use it for evil..
you know, like normal.
Even if prices fall, the economic damage will be severe and nobody will be in the mood for spending much on components. Folks have already probems and jobs are cut at the height of the bubble so that's not going to end well.
End goal is to make humans idiots at computing so all they know is bezosnet with an ai slopbot to ask what you want. Very idiocracy style.
Then us nerds are the minority and there won't be a market for hardware so it will be dissolved. I give this 10 years.
Hell, we are already the minority. 99% of humans use a phone as a computer and store everything in centralized cloud services. I don't know 1 person who stores stuff on their hard drive anymore (if they know what a hard drive is, its a miracle).
Yeah I’m finding this too, people just opting to save in a cloud.
I do some stuff on iPad or iPhone like the payments, I think their ecosystem is probably the pick for that and I’m degoogling that as well. All that is sent to my PC though, and the records stored in my hard drives.
I use clouds as little as possible and anything that automatically sent to one, if it is, is on my hard drives as well.
Dropbox continually asks me to update my storage. I just don’t use it any more.
Just like temporary gas price hikes... right? Right? Riight?
Yes. Some countries and states have proposed laws for age verification that would make Linux illegal.
I think they make cloud gaming very cheap, so that at one point you just rent a system and can play all the AAA titles with Ultra graphics for like 20€ a month, so it's not worth it anymore for the common gamer to invest into PC components. Then after they got you locked in the service will drastically enshittify. This in combination with locked up OSes due to all the age verification and think of the children surveillance. I am not saying it is likely to happen in the next 5 years, but at one day maybe? I mean the children nowadays are growing up with IPads and stuff, if they want to game they buy a console or a steam machine. When I was a kid it would have never been possible for me to afford a PC for gaming at these prices.
This is what happened to music and tv/cinema. Now that nobody has mp3 players or blu-ray collections, they force you to subscribe and STILL shove ads down your throat.
That's already been tried though (google stadia) and it was a massive flop. There are limitations around latency that are hard physics based ones which wont be easily solved.
So Google Stadia 2.0, this time without a decent, unfixable controller with shit battery life but also one of the best D-pads known to man?
They already ban the import of some components. Apple is asking for special permission to buy from a banned manufacturer. This won't hurt big tech, only the consumers.
They don't have to ban imports, just control WHO can import. And as long as those companies are jnder their thumb, they can control which consumers can have what.
On the damage side. Personal purchases of components pales in comparison to commercial. So they could live with damage to the personal sector. And of course it will make a whole new way for the to extract profit via yet another middle man.
The AI bubble isn't going to burst like you think. If it does, sure, component prices may fall, but most of us won't have jobs anyways so we still won't be able to afford them.