I think lots of boomers and gen-x do care. (At least the ones I know). They just aren't tech literate enough to do anything about it.

I think we need more privacy oriented devices and software with simple ux, and advertising that isn't targetted at the tech community.

Run some TV ads for a privacy enabled smartphone, and play up how it works just the same as your current phone but doesn't spy on you. Shit like that.

Debrid is scummy, it hit and runs torrents without seeding. It makes torrenting worse for everybody. Only 1 debrid service I know of seeds, and it only does it for 72 hours.

This is yet another reason why public trackers are getting worse and worse.

Torrenting only works if people seed after downloading. Please consider getting a VPN with port forwarding (I use proton), and seed your torrents. (Depending on your country you probably don't even need a VPN, but it's wise to use one anyway).

If you want to direct download, consider a seedbox instead. There are probably good options for streaming directly from your seedbox too, but I haven't investigated.

I don't know what to tell you mate. Have you tried microG recently?

I'm running my banking app, social media apps, a bunch of games, mail app etc, all without play services.

https://community.e.foundation/t/list-apps-that-work-or-do-not-work-with-microg/21151

Paid apps are harder to get working, but I've had some success patching them with luckypatcher.

Honestly though, the biggest surprise to me was how little I needed those proprietary apps. Usually with a bit of digging I was able to find great open source alternatives.

I highly recommend lineageOS, or better yet lineageOS with microg.

Running a completely degoogled android phone right now, and it feels smooth as butter. Microg has gotten so good, the vast majority of playstore apps work completely fine even without Google services, including things like my banking apps.

Feels liberating as fuck, not gonna lie.

Only apps that don't work for me are ones that require IaP's. About 30% of those I can crack with LuckyPatcher. I can also crack other paid apps with license protection.

Mostly I havent needed to do any of that though, because I've found that there are so many great open source apps that do the things I need.

I know it's incredibly unpopular to agree with anything that Elon Musk says or does these days. But I actually have some moderately high hopes for this.

Elon has always been a voice of reason and caution in the field of AI, and has been fighting to keep AI ethical since long before AI made the public spotlight.

I don't know the details of the events leading up to Elon's departure from OpenAi, and we can only speculate as to what would have happened if he hadn't left. (I'm sure some of you would speculate that he would run the company into the ground like twitter). 

But what I can say, is that I was (and still am) extremely disappointed to see OpenAi become a closed-source & for profit venture, doing billion dollar dealings with Microsoft. This spits in the face of the initial vision of the company, and they are no longer deserving of having the word 'Open' in their name.

I have some major concerns that AI is now missing its top 'ethical' player, right as the race explodes. We sorely need a strong voice of reason in the industry, that can help push through sensible laws that simultaneously enable AI, whilest protecting the public from gross overreaches by Silicon Valley.

Now as for Elon's new project: I certainly have a healthy dose of scepticism. I doubt it will be anything close to what OpenAi once promised to be. But I'd still put more faith in it being a 'responsible' AI, than anything developed or funded by Google, Meta, Amazon, or Microsoft.

I have used a browser extension for this in the past, I can't remember what one it was but I just did a search and found this one which looks promising:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hohser/

You could give Odysee a try. I was pleasently surprised at how well it works, and how nice the UI/UX is. Especially considering it is a decentralized platform.

It's missing a lot of the content that youtube has. Especially if you trying to look up a specific video or niche topic. But there's still a lot of great content available if you are happy to browse.

Google is an ad company. To them, a web browser is nothing more than a tool for collecting user data and delivering ads.

When you use a chromium based browser you are allowing google, an ad company, to decide what the future of web browsing should look like. And this is the result.

Firefox is the ONLY browser which is genuinely competing with google. Do you think ad and tracking blockers are going to get better or worse once they die out, and literally every major browser is running on chromium?

Use firefox and u-block origin. Enjoy a superior, ad free, browsing experience, and support the future of an open web.

Your points are valid, but that doesn't mean we should do nothing. Enforcing federation and using copyleft licensing are both strong defenses against centralization and network dominance by a well funded third party.

As far as GPL goes, from what I've seen, big tech companies tend to take it pretty seriously. There is no reason we shouldn't be using that, and other license protections if we have the option.

As for natural centralization over time, I think that is a far less urgent problem than the current risks we are facing, those being major network fragmentation due to the use of defederation, and the risk of centralization around a proprietary platform and/or instance.

Removal of defederation and strong copyleft licensing seem to be natural first steps in combatting that risk.

Seems like just another reason why defederation should be completely removed from the protocol. It's way too easy to abuse and force centralisation.

There are other far less destructive and abusable ways of dealing with spam and content moderation.

I maintain that it's better to give the users the control, and allow them to decide which instances, communities, and users they want to be exposed to. Bottom up moderation, instead of top down.

For example, instances can provide suggested 'block' lists (much like how an ad blocker works) and users can decide whether or not to apply those lists at their own discretion.

By forcing federation, the network stays decentralized. Maintaining community blacklists that can be turned on or off by the individual user protects against heavy handed moderation and censorship, whilst also protecting users from being exposed to undesirable content.

Defederation is not the answer. Honestly, it's such a powerful and destructive tool that I question whether it should exist period.

Users should be treated like adults who are capable of determining by themselves what content they are comfortable with seeing.

If I don't want to see an extremist political community on my feed, I block that community myself. If an instance is full of such communities, I block that instance myself.

I don't want or need some other random on the internet to make judgement calls on what content I can or cannot interact with.

Defederation is a tactical nuke, that if used incorrectly will destroy the freedom, decentralization and openness of Lemmy, and replace it with a far more centralized series of walled gardens.

I fear that people are trying to recreate the reddit model on Lemmy. Lemmy is not reddit, Lemmy is better than reddit. Reddit is top down, Lemmy is bottom up. We don't need more mod control, we need more user control.

I would love to see more features built for user moderation of content. Perhaps I could subscribe to another users blocklist, or follow their 'recommended communities'. Instances themselves could maintain suggested block lists, and users could chose to enable or disable them at their own discretion.

I'm really not sure that defederation has any place at all. Even things like spam and bot instances I think would be better handled by a blocklist (enabled by default even), that users can turn on or off as they see fit.

This is the real answer I think. Users should be treated like adults who are capable of determining by themselves what content they are comfortable with seeing.

If I don't want to see an extremist political community on my feed, I block that community myself. If an instance is full of such communities, I block that instance myself.

I don't want or need some other random on the internet to make judgement calls on what content I can or cannot interact with.

Defederation is a tactical nuke, that if used incorrectly will destroy the freedom, decentralization and openness of Lemmy, and replace it with a far more centralized series of walled gardens.

I fear that people are trying to recreate the reddit model on Lemmy. Lemmy is not reddit, Lemmy is better than reddit. Reddit is top down, Lemmy is bottom up. We don't need more mod control, we need more user control.

I would love to see more features built for user moderation of content. Perhaps I could subscribe to another users blocklist, or follow their 'recommended communities'. Instances themselves could maintain suggested block lists, and users could chose to enable or disable them at their own discretion.

Honestly, I'm not sure that defederation has any place at all. Even things like spam and bot instances I think would be better handled by a blocklist (enabled by default even), that users can turn on or off as they see fit.