Love how it highlights that big tech (much to capitalism's fault, TBH) can only drive innovation if the tech has a moat around it, if no one else can, or would, copy it and deploy it at a lower cost.
Which is... the argument that people use to defend capitalism? That capitalism drives innovation and makes it accessible to everyone at the lowest possible price.
I like the frugal tech idea as much as I like degrowth.
“Capitalism creates innovation!”
The innovation:
That's basically saying that "big tech" (as we know it today) and competition-friendly capitalism just cannot coexist. Which I'm inclined to agree with.
There's no reason you couldn't have people grow a new Internet that isn't reliant on AWS and cloud flare and other big tech stuff, it's just that it's much easier to do that since it's already there. And you still have the problems with spammers even if you try to move away from capitalism.
Spamming, scams, and many forms of white collar crime are a result of people either getting desperate for a decent living or being greedy and wanting infinitely more than others have.
If you take out these two possibilities guess what gets almost entirely extinct.
Is that really true though? Like there’s no reason I could be president except for the massive amount of connections and funding is need that effectively means it is not possible for me to be effective. (Nussbaum or Sen would say this is not about actual capability.)
I certainly think we could grow a new internet, but there is so much culture and forces pushing against this, that it may not be actually possible with addressing the systemic forces first.
Not to say we should do nothing (similar to recycling — we should do what we can as individuals, but it’s somewhat moot as long as industrial processes continue as they are now). We should do what we can and work toward a better vision.
(Edit: I think I was responding to only the first part of your comment because when I re-read it, I think I’m actually saying something similar to you)
Just use open source software with open protocols.
We should have a GPL update that disallows using the software within closed sourced eco systems."this software is only allowed to be run on open source operating systems" for example.
AGPL sort of requires this and I've started to use it in projects that run on networks. The problem I've seen is that so many cloud providers use software with permissive licenses like MIT.
Honestly, more projects need to switch to licenses that require contributions back to the source if you publicly built upon it.
My company, for example, has a FOSS scanner and rejects any library that has copyleft provisions. I imagine most companies do. The corporate world would become absolutely fucked if every package decided to use GPL.
And just a reminder how one developer fucked over companies by removing his library from npm.
That is my point yes. Open Source projects must stop using these permissive licenses, it's allowed companies to enrich themselves by screwing over all internet users and it cost them nothing because of these licenses.
At least invest in your own damned software, assholes
Making more walled gardens would probably only polarize society more, not help it. But the emotion is understandable.
No, I want LESS walled gardens. Whenever a company gets involved you get walled gardens.
Let companies no longer be able to just profit from all of our work for free
That just sounds like you don't want the majority of people to use it. You still only have 4% of desktop users on Linux.
Everyone can use it, use it all they want however they want
Having said that: Large corporations shouldn't be able to profit endlessly off of my work for free, fuck that shit
Too bad this doesn't really mention the Fediverse or open-source software. Seems a next logical step
fediverse
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
