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When you're considering purchasing a new product or service and you have to think: do I stick with a company that already spies on every other aspect of my life and give them even more of my personal data, or do I go with a whole NEW company who can then spy on my life and get a bunch of my personal data?
Because you know they all will. Even if not now, they will eventually.
@JessTheUnstill The only winning move is not to "buy" a product that's actually a disguised subscription to a service.
@dalias @JessTheUnstill I have Philips Hue lights because you can manage them completely locally, as I don’t want a service.
Now the app is nagging me to make an account, saying it’ll be impossible to use the app without the account later on.
@jornane @JessTheUnstill I have light bulbs with no wifi or interfaces of any sort except conductive contacts and mechanical switches.
@JessTheUnstill @jornane I read the reply I replied to as saying "even if you try to avoid it you'll fail", but maybe that was a misinterpretation.
I think it was more an example of the sort of "hidden subscription" I was trying to get at.
@dalias @JessTheUnstill I meant it as using an app that only communicates locally still is a hidden subscription.
@jornane @dalias @JessTheUnstill What if the protocol used to communicate with the device was an open, widely-supported standard, and the device firmware was open source and user-upgradeable?
@alwayscurious @dalias @JessTheUnstill Hue is almost there, the Zigbee protocol it uses is either open or well documented, custom clients exist.
But if the only user friendly way of interacting is through the official app that can be updated to enshittification at any point, it still won’t matter but for the most technical people.
With Hue, I can choose between the official app that will soon require login, any of the paid third party apps, a few clunky open source ones or talk the protocol.
@jornane Out of curiosity, what is better about the Hue app vs something like Homeassistant? (I use Homeassistant and have no interest in switching to something proprietary, but I am interested to know in what ways other apps may be better.)
@jornane @dalias @JessTheUnstill Even if the firmware was closed source, I think that this might still be okay if the protocol spoken was open and the device was on an isolated network segment and could not talk to anything untrusted.
@dalias @JessTheUnstill My ISP will provide me with a landline if I pay enough and I can still buy a phone that plugs in RJ11, but I’d prefer being able to enjoy technology over becoming technological Amish.