Billionaires love it when you try to vote with your wallet, because while billionaires only represent 0.00004% of the population, their wallets are 100,000 times larger than average. [1]
Tech sucks: You have to vote with your wallet, or nothing will change
71–80 of 83 posts
Re: Tech sucks: You have to vote with your wallet, or nothing will change
#72Voting with your wallet doesn't work usually, because your wallet isn't big enough. Vote with your vote! Our system is dysfunctional in the united states, but if you look at the political unity behind something like blocking datacenter construction and how much of a headache it's causing for big tech, it's clear we still can have an effect. Most of the problem with big tech are solvable through existing anti-trust in…
>Voting with your wallet doesn't work usually, because your wallet isn't big enough. Our collective wallets are HUGE. You need to do more than just boycott, yoiu need to spread the word.
> Our collective wallets are HUGE.
"Collective" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Are the top 1% in that collective? The top 10%? I don't think so - with that in mind, do you still think our wallet is huge enough for the job?
> You need to do more than just boycott, you need to spread the word.
Spreading the word is now done with a huge wallet and access to politicians - whose word is being spread can tell you who's got these. Are there other ways? Yes - still peaceful but complex, laborious and thankless - boycott isn't integral to any of them though.
Re: Tech sucks: You have to vote with your wallet, or nothing will change
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
“Regulating” in the current environment just means mandated coziness with intelligence and law enforcement: scanning your files (Chat Control 1.0), backdoors (Chat Control 2.0), suppression of ideas through mandatory moderation, age verification. What we need is antitrust enforcement, breaking of digital locks, and adversarial interoperability. This can be accomplished through certain forms of regulation, but you nee…
It's pretty obvious from context and from the specific example what I'm talking about.
Didn’t mean to criticize, I see the word “regulation” thrown around often here without any clarification, and sometimes the people using it don’t have our best interests in mind.
Re: Tech sucks: You have to vote with your wallet, or nothing will change
#74Sorey man, my wallet aint beating 12 yearolds and trillionaires and multitrillion dollar companies.
We need regulators free of monied interests.
Re: Tech sucks: You have to vote with your wallet, or nothing will change
#75People have been voting with their wallets since forever, and look where it got us. The reality is that asking people to vote with their wallets does not work. But this specific case is even worse, because it's not possible to "vote with your wallet" to begin with. The specific things the blog post notes are "how terrible the experience of developing apps for the iPhone/iPad is, how Apple takes 30% of all app store a…
Regulation is a part of it. But most of tehse companies make money off of the services. So if you want tos end Apple a message, cancel all your services...Music, iCloud, etc. Android phones are easy to use without a google account.
> easy to use without a google account
I'm doing that and I had to get a second phone with a Google account just for banking and government apps. Not exactly easy I would say.
Re: Tech sucks: You have to vote with your wallet, or nothing will change
#76Voting with your wallet doesn't work usually, because your wallet isn't big enough. Vote with your vote! Our system is dysfunctional in the united states, but if you look at the political unity behind something like blocking datacenter construction and how much of a headache it's causing for big tech, it's clear we still can have an effect. Most of the problem with big tech are solvable through existing anti-trust in…
> Voting with your wallet doesn't work usually, because your wallet isn't big enough. > Vote with your vote! My wallet is bigger than average. My vote is not. Of course in neither case are they big enough to make much of a difference by themselves.
But what about relative power?
US GDP / #votes in last presidential election = 208608 USD
You must indeed have a big wallet if you perceive it to be more powerful than your vote. Only a small percentage of people spend that much in a year.
Re: Tech sucks: You have to vote with your wallet, or nothing will change
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's pretty obvious from context and from the specific example what I'm talking about.
Didn’t mean to criticize, I see the word “regulation” thrown around often here without any clarification, and sometimes the people using it don’t have our best interests in mind.
Fair.
Re: Tech sucks: You have to vote with your wallet, or nothing will change
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regulation is a part of it. But most of tehse companies make money off of the services. So if you want tos end Apple a message, cancel all your services...Music, iCloud, etc. Android phones are easy to use without a google account.
> easy to use without a google account I'm doing that and I had to get a second phone with a Google account just for banking and government apps. Not exactly easy I would say.
Yeah, same. I have the phone I actually want, and then I have the phone I need because otherwise I couldn't function in society. It's workable but sometimes unpleasant, because I don't bring two phones with me, so I just can't do some things others can.
Re: Tech sucks: You have to vote with your wallet, or nothing will change
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Voting with your wallet doesn't work usually, because your wallet isn't big enough. Our collective wallets are HUGE. You need to do more than just boycott, yoiu need to spread the word.
> Our collective wallets are HUGE. "Collective" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Are the top 1% in that collective? The top 10%? I don't think so - with that in mind, do you still think our wallet is huge enough for the job? > You need to do more than just boycott, you need to spread the word . Spreading the word is now done with a huge wallet and access to politicians - whose word is being spread can tell you w…
> "Collective" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Are the top 1% in that collective?
Are you serious? Why do you think they all fly to Aspen every year? Just to catch up on their families? (Nevermind Bilderburg...)
Re: Tech sucks: You have to vote with your wallet, or nothing will change
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hiring someone to make an alternative. If your country makes labor difficult to buy then that's on your country, not Apple.
The apps you actually need to participate in society (digital IDs, banking apps, etc.) will never run on your homegrown OS. Having a billion dollars changes nothing about the fact that you need either iOS or a Google-blessed Android version.
> The apps you actually need to participate in society (digital IDs, banking apps, etc.) will never run on your homegrown OS.
This is a conscious decision that the authors of these apps are making and doesn't reflect any actual limitations.
It's not actually important for my banking apps to be able to use my TPM; someone who takes a photo of a check (i.e. literally anyone I pay) can already withdraw money from my account. I can log in to my online banking page with just my username and password.
The only reason why this happens is because:
1. Banks are very eager to avoid open APIs because they threaten their business
2. The minute decrease in fraud from requiring attestation is cheaper for banks.
IMO we need serious and comprehensive reforms to prevent tech companies from just trampling all over user rights. It's MY bank account, why the hell do I need to go through Plaid or some other random third-party to programmatically read my balance?