Pretty much because my smartphone is basically my digital Swiss army knife. Like even if I got a separate digital camera and MP3 Player, I also use it for navigation and to communicate with my parents and friends over signal, and like hell I am gonna give up signal. Add to that it’s also my portable wifi hotspot when I’m out, my train tickets, and how I pay for things when I’m sans-purse, I don’t know if I can give up my smartphone.

Would it be good for me to get off social media and to stop doomscrolling the news? Yes, but I can do that by going out and touching grass.

Yeah, and again: the thing with mass shooters is that they don’t give a fuck what the law says.

They’re not going to go through the phone checkpoint, they’re just gonna open fire. This would not stop a mass shooting.

Yeah but the thing with mass shooters is that they don’t give a fuck what the law says.

Yes. Yes please. If this fucker goes to prison that’s one less thing off my mind. I do not want the return of Feudalism.

Oh boy do I have news about how actual cash currencies work in reality!

Utopia maybe impossible, but improvement is always better.

Also, almost? Right now I’m accessing this through a VPN because my government has mandated that every single social media website or website with a search feature put up an age gate for anything pornographic or has “sensitve content” for the “protection of children”, meaning to operate in the UK, every social media company has to higher a third party to scan a picture of your face or your passport or ID.

Also, This same government actively wants to strip away basic rights like access to public toilets, hospital treatment, support services, and even things like sports, and believe I and others like me are such a threat they’re gonna bring back Section 28.

So yeah, Dystopia is here.

The company making money from technology that allows people to work from home is telling people to return to the office.

These people have nukes.

Oh look, it’s the main villain in a Cyberpunk novel.

As a queer trans woman, I’m glad I switched to Fedora.

Wanna know what’s weird? The Far right seem to support this. Like I remember when the war started and you had people waving Israeli flags yelling “Jüdische Ratten” at Religious Jews holding placards saying “Not in our name” and “thou shalt not kill”.

I’ll repeat that, we had people flying Israeli flags yelling Nazi slogans at Jews who were protesting against Israel.

What.

It’s either:

1. Someone bollox’d up and pressed the “block” button.
2. They wanted to show it off to people as a “fuck you, obey us”.
3. They were just testing it.

Either one is worrying.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)

Signal is an open-source, encrypted messaging service for instant messaging, voice calls, and video calls.

https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android

You were saying?

That exists. It’s called Signal.

Yeah but it’s a little bit like finding out that the Taliban banned Opium production: the reason they’re doing it is because they want the price to shoot up and they wanna move the country onto making Meth.

some people do want to use AI

Scam artists, tech bros, grifters, CEOs who don’t know shit about fuck…

It doesn’t need to make money, it just needs to be a “Problem”.

I mean, I would describe myself as more of an anarchist: I don’t trust the state or capitalism. When I said “Call me a Paranoid Communist” I was referring to the fact that capitalism is gonna fuck us.

Hey…we already have that without needing to use GPS. No really, we have that, without needing to use GPS. No. Really. We have two systems in fact.

We have m-tickets. Most major train, tram and bus companies in the UK have that. You can go onto your phone and buy a ticket without the need for GPS tracking. There’s also Contactless on your phone. My city has something called TapTapCap/ToTo. On the buses, you can pay for your fare by tapping on a contactless terminal and it tracks how many journeys you make and caps the fare at the price of a day ticket if you make more than three Journeys. The Trams here have ToTo which is the same deal, but you have to tap on at the smart card terminal and tap off at your destination, as long as you do that and don’t go to the Airport: you get the same deal.

That can easily be implemented. Fuck, mTickets have been implimented in Scotland. All you’d need to do is adapt the smartcard terminals, which use the technology as the bus passes, to do something like taptapcap. And before you say “oooh, we couldn’t possibly put Smartcard totems on remote stations or Parliamentary stations”, there are smart card terminals on every station on the West Highland Line. Yes, including the Fort William to Malaig section. There are Smartcard terminals on the Far North and Kyle of Lochalsh Lines. If Scotrail can do that at places like Dunrobin Castle, GBR can put Smartcard Terminals at Drigg, no GPS surveillance required.

OK so three things:

1. How are they going to ban Mastodon. Like they cannot ban every mastodon instance.
2. From what I know about people in regimes like this: VPN usage is basically normal because of things like this. I live in the UK and I’m using a VPN.
3. Hamro Patro, if you don’t know, is the Nepali “everything” app. It’s officially a calendar app, but it also does News, Horoscopes (something that’s important to Nepalis I guess), Exchange Rates, Radio and Podcasts. It is one of the most popular apps in the country and the most popular Nepali developed app period. This is like if the US banned the CNN app or if the British Government banned the Sky News app.