You can do almost anything with a website that you could do with an app. The only reason they are pushing the apps so hard is because they can collect a lot more data than a website can.
The cloud is many things, but most of all, it’s a trap. When software is delivered as a service, when your data and the programs you use to read and write it live on computers that you don’t control, your switching costs skyrocket. Think of Adobe, which no longer lets you buy programs at all, but instead insists that you run its software via the cloud. Adobe used the fact that you no longer own the tools you rely upon to cancel its Pantone color-matching license. One day, every Adobe customer in the world woke up to discover that the colors in their career-spanning file collections had all turned black, and would remain black until they paid an upcharge:
The cloud allows the companies whose products you rely on to alter the functioning and cost of those products unilaterally. Like mobile apps – which can’t be reverse-engineered and modified without risking legal liability – cloud apps are built for enshittification. They are designed to shift power away from users to software companies. An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to add an ad-blocker to it. A cloud app is some Javascript wrapped in enough terms of service clickthroughs to make it a felony to restore old features that the company now wants to upcharge you for.
I legitimately want to scream sometimes as I feel the continual death of local computing and actual software, and it depresses me to no end how few businesses or users see it for what it is.
And it’s exactly this: a trap. A trap users people are racing into, and they have no idea, at all, how bad it’s going to get when the doors close behind them.
The rest of us are left with little recourse. Looking at the difference between Outlook and New Outlook is genuinely depressing because that’s the future we’re all being shepherded into against our will. I swear, in like 10 years, Windows will mostly just be a kiosk for Edge.
I’m with you 100% up to the “little recourse,” I think there’s more options now than there have ever been. Open source (including linux and self hosting) are about the only tech-future things I’m genuinely excited about.
There’s still a learning curve and progress to be made, for sure. However, anecdotally, I’ve seen programming and hosting become vastly more accessible in the last 15 years. Also, not everyone needs to self host, people just need to know someone who is willing and able to set them up.
Not saying it’s a guarantee, but it’s a possible way out, at least. And being here on lemmy, reading and writing about these issues is a good sign there’s movement in the right direction.
This is the main reason why I seldom install anyone’s “app”.
Most of these apps aren’t true apps anyway, they’re just customized browsers that lead you to a website and are free to collect as much data from you and your phone as they want.
I’ll go on your website first if I have to and 9 / 10 I get what I want. Besides, I’ll only ever visit the service once or twice so I don’t need to install a permanent app on my phone for that.
Around here, Target (department store chain) will let you order stuff through their app and pick it up in the store parking lot. If you order through the web you have to wait around inside the store to get it. I still won’t install the app but this issue annoys me.
And then there’s guys like me. I don’t announce when I’m coming. I grab the items myself, and then I pay in cash. Nonsequential bills. I’m like a ninja! I can’t be traced! Shashasha!!! Pocket sand!
Then on the way home, if I see someone following me home, I make 3 left turns. If they’re STILL following me? I turn around, and I shoot them…a dirty look!
What? I’m not a psychopath. I just don’t like being followed.
I wish. Every fucking bank has their own shitty app for 2FA instead of just using standardized and proven TOTP, no way around that.
Same about school apps the article mentioned since it’s connecting to their (one of many) proprietary system, no website for that.
And recently got into the home automation rabbit hole. Lots of devices that require their fucking app, sometimes with mandatory cloud account, just to connect! And people in reviews even praise how easy it is, it’s infuriating! I don’t need light bulbs connecting to the internet, thank you very much.
Ha, sucker, you think your non-Internet-connected lightbulbs make you safe? My Internet-connected lightbulbs have sent my online-car to wardrive your neighbourhood and sniff your Zigbee network!
…if you see my car please tell it to come back to me, I need to go to the shops…
I get emails from school, with a link that opens a 3rd party app, which only displays a link that opens in the default browser. I’ve asked the school to just send me direct links to the announcements, but they say they can’t. The site doesn’t require authentication, but the URLs have UUIDs so I can’t just guess what the link would be. The app is quite literally just a data exfiltration layer that does everything it can to make sure you can’t bypass it. Good luck getting any other parents to give a shit though.
They need to switch to Webauthn. SMS-based 2FA should’ve been big 10+ years ago, not today. I don’t really understand why this old style 2FA has been just now becoming popular lately.
You can do almost anything with a website that you could do with an app. The only reason they are pushing the apps so hard is because they can collect a lot more data than a website can.
As Cory Doctorow put it, “An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to add an ad-blocker to it.”
I legitimately want to scream sometimes as I feel the continual death of local computing and actual software, and it depresses me to no end how few businesses or users see it for what it is.
And it’s exactly this: a trap. A trap users people are racing into, and they have no idea, at all, how bad it’s going to get when the doors close behind them.
The rest of us are left with little recourse. Looking at the difference between Outlook and New Outlook is genuinely depressing because that’s the future we’re all being shepherded into against our will. I swear, in like 10 years, Windows will mostly just be a kiosk for Edge.
I think for the vast majority of average users this has been true for a long time.
I’m with you 100% up to the “little recourse,” I think there’s more options now than there have ever been. Open source (including linux and self hosting) are about the only tech-future things I’m genuinely excited about.
There’s still a learning curve and progress to be made, for sure. However, anecdotally, I’ve seen programming and hosting become vastly more accessible in the last 15 years. Also, not everyone needs to self host, people just need to know someone who is willing and able to set them up.
Not saying it’s a guarantee, but it’s a possible way out, at least. And being here on lemmy, reading and writing about these issues is a good sign there’s movement in the right direction.
I agree with you on everything, other than
…it seems to me that it’s never been better, there’s free software for everything, osm data for mapping, it’s just that our expectations have shifted.
This is the main reason why I seldom install anyone’s “app”.
Most of these apps aren’t true apps anyway, they’re just customized browsers that lead you to a website and are free to collect as much data from you and your phone as they want.
I’ll go on your website first if I have to and 9 / 10 I get what I want. Besides, I’ll only ever visit the service once or twice so I don’t need to install a permanent app on my phone for that.
Also desktop mode to circumvent those phone detection systems and trying to force an app.
Desktop mode plus zoom out on iOS, sometimes… then over to a desktop browser app when that falls. Sigh
Around here, Target (department store chain) will let you order stuff through their app and pick it up in the store parking lot. If you order through the web you have to wait around inside the store to get it. I still won’t install the app but this issue annoys me.
And then there’s guys like me. I don’t announce when I’m coming. I grab the items myself, and then I pay in cash. Nonsequential bills. I’m like a ninja! I can’t be traced! Shashasha!!! Pocket sand!
Then on the way home, if I see someone following me home, I make 3 left turns. If they’re STILL following me? I turn around, and I shoot them…a dirty look!
What? I’m not a psychopath. I just don’t like being followed.
I wish. Every fucking bank has their own shitty app for 2FA instead of just using standardized and proven TOTP, no way around that.
Same about school apps the article mentioned since it’s connecting to their (one of many) proprietary system, no website for that.
And recently got into the home automation rabbit hole. Lots of devices that require their fucking app, sometimes with mandatory cloud account, just to connect! And people in reviews even praise how easy it is, it’s infuriating! I don’t need light bulbs connecting to the internet, thank you very much.
Ha, sucker, you think your non-Internet-connected lightbulbs make you safe? My Internet-connected lightbulbs have sent my online-car to wardrive your neighbourhood and sniff your Zigbee network!
…if you see my car please tell it to come back to me, I need to go to the shops…
I get emails from school, with a link that opens a 3rd party app, which only displays a link that opens in the default browser. I’ve asked the school to just send me direct links to the announcements, but they say they can’t. The site doesn’t require authentication, but the URLs have UUIDs so I can’t just guess what the link would be. The app is quite literally just a data exfiltration layer that does everything it can to make sure you can’t bypass it. Good luck getting any other parents to give a shit though.
That’s the big one, sadly.
All of the banks I’ve used in the past utilize email or SMS for 2FA, which isn’t the must secure, but doesn’t require an app.
They need to switch to Webauthn. SMS-based 2FA should’ve been big 10+ years ago, not today. I don’t really understand why this old style 2FA has been just now becoming popular lately.