The article mentioned this ad format showed up in Waze first.

Save WHAT? The gas station takes their bit so I can get to work. The grocery store takes their bit so I can eat to have energy to work, and so I can feed my child. The phone company takes their bit so my boss can keep in touch with me when they want to. The insurance companies take their bits so I can say that I’m insured and have the right to drive, and to put myself deeper in medical debt if anything goes wrong. The landlord takes his bit so I can have a roof over my head. Disney takes their bit so my kid can have her favorite movies and shows on demand because that’s one thing I can give her. And now my coin purse is empty until my employer gives me my bit again. Where do the savings come from, oh wise one?

My Spotify “family” is all over the place. They just all put in my address when they join and don’t have any problems. Just fyi for yourself or anyone else experiencing the same problem.

I wonder if they’re prepared for Microsoft’s lawyers to come knocking when they find out their screen space is being highjacked by another company for profit…

I know I’ll get downvotes for this but I switched from Android to iPhone after years and years of using Android while knowing I wouldn’t be able to use iMessage features texting Android users. While knowing I couldn’t and would likely never be easily able to sideload apps, heck even after they had already taken the headphone jack away. I literally do not care about any of that for the purpose for which I use my phone. I just want it to work, without having to endlessly tweak and customize and modify. I like that it does what it says it does out of the box and does so smoothly and reliably.

I like that it integrates well with other apple products. I have exactly 3 contacts I use the native messaging app for. The rest have all been communicating with me through Messenger or Telegram or WhatsApp for years anyway — I’d MUCH rather see governments prioritize making those services talk to each other so I could uninstall two of them but I don’t ever see anyone talking about that even though Apple haters love to bash Apple over iMessage - while ignoring that the RCS protocol Google uses has proprietary bullshit built on top of it meaning that even if Apple adopted the protocol itself the interaction between iPhone and android messages would still be messy.

As I said I know I’ll get downvotes for this but I also know I’m far from alone and this is exactly why Apple has the power it does: it gives its users what they want, even if non-Apple users don’t see it that way. I see so many arguments against Apple that fail to take that into account.

It’s not even about being on top or being worried about losing status - I’d be fine with giving up what little I have to see a better world. The problem is that a pivot away from capitalism isn’t going to happen without violent revolution, because it would absolutely be met with violent resistance.

I wouldn’t support something that would be guaranteed to thrust my children and grandchildren into a world of chaos, uncertainty, and tragedy that would unavoidably arise during and potentially after a revolution of that scale. And someone has to be holding the levers of power in the end, and how do we guarantee that we don’t just end up shuffling the deck around but playing the exact same game?

It’s easy to be idealistic and say “this isn’t working” but it’s a whole lot harder to convince enough people to dismantle it and deal with the consequences rather than attempt to effect incremental change over a long term.