In China, you can’t exist without a smartphone, because for all existential things you have to do (paying bills, buying tickets etc.) , you are forced to use the almighty wechat app. Smartphones are a tool to manipulate and to spy on the population. It is a tool utilized by the ruling class, to control the masses. I hate the future and I hate “progress”.
My go to answer is to say that I don’t have a mobile phone. Actually, I have one, but it’s only for personal contacts, not for institutions. When a clerk asks me for my phone number, I answer: sure, give me your phone number, I’ll text you my contact.
Same for administrations and my employer: my boss has my phone numbers but not HR in my company.
The only institution that has my phone number is my bank, and i’m seriously considering using an alternate authentication method for 2FA at my bank.
If enough of us do that, it won’t happen.
My kid’s school just implemented an app-based pickup process this year.
You have to download an app and register your phone and email and child, then when you get in the line to pickup your child you have to press a button in the app.
I literally cannot retrieve my child from school without a smartphone.
I literally cannot retrieve my child from school without a smartphone.
I’m positive there is a backup method; did you ask about one, or did you simply install the app?
I would not be so positive. Schools aren’t well known for thinking policies through completely. Good chance this person lives in an area that has high enough income that they would just tell poor people to not be poor and get the app.
There are reasons besides “being poor” for not have smart phone access at pickup time. I assure you the answer won’t be “I guess this kid is spending the night here”.
There is a backup method.
Edit: minor rewording for clarity.
Obviously they will figure out how to get a kid to their parents are not going to kidnap a child. I’m also aware that there are reasons other than being poor to not have a cellphone. Again, you are thinking logically and not like a school administration. It is my experience that school administrators can be quite illogical. If you don’t want to use a phone, you are 100% going to end up fighting with school staff. They’re not going to like exceptions to their processes for any reason. They will fight you to get you to conform. It’s a school after all.
To be fair, I’d say that’s a fight worth fighting
You seem to be under the impression that school administration are an exception and not the rule.
They will fight you to get you to conform.
Stripping out the somewhat bizarre manipulative language, yes, of course any organization is going to want you to use their systems to streamline their processes; it’s far more efficient to have everyone using the same the system than for it to be a hodgepodge of different methods to achieve the same goal. Does that really strike you as odd?
No it is not odd. I’m not even sure why you are disagreeing with me at this point. I made an off the cuff comment you felt compelled to “correct.” I picked one population potentially impacted by a stupid policy. I did not say it was the only population potentially impacted by a policy. I’m simply speaking colloquially more than anything. Why you feel compelled to read so much into that, I do not know.
It is my experience that school administrators can be quite illogical.
This is the part of your comment I should have quoted, sorry. This gives the impression that school administrators are somehow set apart from the general population’s propensity to being illogical.
Yeah, realistically what happens here is car pulls up to person with walkie, shows ID, kid gets sent down for pickup. Or person maybe has to go into the office for sign out depending on staffing. Idk what everyone else is on about but clearly they’ve never worked in school, lol. Staff just want to go home and can’t do that until kids are safely dismissed.
Are you familiar with unthinking unfeeling unseeing american school administrators?
You didn’t add anything new to the discussion. I understand that sometimes bureaucracies-- like the public school system-- can implement poorly thought out policies, but again, I assure you that there will be a way to pick up that hypothetical kid without an app or smart phone. Because, again, the alternative is that the kid doesn’t get picked up and… what? Stays at the school?
There will be a backup method. The guy I initially responded to probably just did like most of us would do and installed the app without question.
Push for mobile phones that have open source operating systems like GrapheneOS. It’ll probably be the most secure and private device you’ll ever own. Then the issue is making these proprietary systems like WeChat, Google Services, whatever China uses. These should be accessible, and if it’s required for day-to-day life then you’re entitled to know every line of code you’re forced to rely on.
You’re not forced to use smartphones. I happen to live in China, and there are people without them.
You can buy tickets at the counter or vending machines, you can text or call instead of sending wechat messages, you can pay bills by card or direct debit, and supermarkets all accept cards (Chinese ones, that is) or cash.
People use wechat or alipay out of convenience. Just like people in the West use whatsapp, signal, fb messenger, telegram or whatever else there is. And some of those are testing payment service integrations (whatsapp pay for example is live in India since a few months ago).
You don’t like it - don’t use it. Nobody will force you. But if it takes me 7 seconds on my phone to finish a task vs. 2h in person, guess which one I’m choosing.
Edit: Typo
“Nobody will force you.” RemindMe 1 Year.
I’ve been here for 6+ years, and nobody forces me. Which point are you trying to prove?
Yea I also lived in China for 3 years while doing my masters and OP clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Everywhere takes cards and cash in addition to the digital payments. And no service I used was digital only.
Edit: The only requirement I encountered was a local phone number. Not a smartphone.
I honestly think the US is at that point. I need a phone to clock in, you can’t find price checkers anymore, physically paying bills just doesn’t happen anymore, checks are becoming obsolete. Stores are downsizing in favor of online markets, banks are closing lobbies in favor of digital. We love in a digital world and while it’s technically possible without it still, very difficult to do so.
yeah and the problem here would be that it all would happen in one app? Seriously? It would only be a problem if google or Microsoft owned and controlled it and ran it rampantly for their own profit, not if it’s handled as a public utility as such things should. That’s why WeChat-like apps are progress and the future.
No, centralized applications should never be the future. Of course technology that connects us is the future. But I’d prefer to see a federated system for that, similar to lemmy
In some applications centralisation is the only feasible solution. Decentralisation and cynical fear of centralisation is never the excuse to create and accept shit.
We live in the age of information. Data is power. So centralization of data is centralization of power. I prefer the power to be distributed a bit more equally than it is nowadays.
I agree that sometimes centralization is the only feasible solution. But those cases should be kept to a minimum, regulated and closely monitored
My grandmother doesn’t have a cell phone or computer and gets around just fine. The US definitely accommodates people without those abilities or who have disabilities. Yes it’s way slower and inconvenient but always possible
I mean, you already do. Everything is digital, and most stuff is centralised anyhow (payment is controlled by a duopoly, Visa and Mastercard, and you gotta pay almost everything with them)
Yes and no. I can still pay with cash and live a normal live without owning a smartphone. I can still buy paper train tickets etc.
UK & EU loves this stuff though, so they won’t mandate you have to use a single phone app for everything, but they will slowly remove your ability to do anything without your phone. You’ll just end up with a shittier version of China’s system with a billion shitty apps.
I was visiting Berlin last week. So many pubs are cashless now. And so many more cafés have this infuriating QR code menu-card. Meanwhile in Stuttgart, many reataurants are cash-only, which is almost as annoying.
Do you hate all progress or just smartphone progress?
Because I could rattle off a list that would take a day to get through with all the progress that I love.
No good progress is wiped clean by bad progress, and no bad progress is wiped clean by good progress. We can appreciate good progress without accepting bad progress.
I hate the future and I hate “progress”.
Cool, so get off the internet and quit annoying the rest of us.
lol. this guy thinks the internet is “the future” and “progress” it was both of these things 30 years ago. now it’s just a heap of old shit.
Google and Meta walled gardens are the cancer of the internet, not the internet itself.
Average people are actually the cancer of the internet for giving them too much power & being ignorant
Sorry, but the scientific truth about smartphones and AI manipulation is free to read for everybody. Stop denying reality.
That’s exactly the same language transphobes use to justify their bigotry. Doesn’t exactly make you sound credible.
Adding the word “scientific” to your point doesn’t make it more believable.
In fact, it detracts from your point by making you sound like you don’t know how to use the word.
You mean ‘objective’ m8. And stop hyperfocusing on one issue, and start seeing the forest for the trees. Technological advancement is good except for the humans that use it to control the majority - this literally the basic message in Dune, and is proven by reality.
More science deniers who love to be slaves. Doesn’t make sense to talk with you.
Free to read? Where? Without links your arguments are just as good as a flat earther’s “do your own research”.
Just scroll through my post history, if you are truly interested in links. Its not that hard.
This will happen and marginalized groups like illegal immigrants, the homeless, and the disabled will be effectively excluded. Poor people are going to have their finances controlled even more. This will cause deaths.
You can’t even open a bank account without a smartphone in China
It’s unironically good that there is further centralisation, integration and efficiency in payments, reservations, bills. What China is doing is It’s progress and future. You just can’t imagine that anything big and centralised can even in principle work for the people. WELL IT CAN AND IT SHOULD. No need to be a Luddite or dogmatic libertarian about it. What you are really worried that government or big corporation would control it. And if you are one of those that can’t process the idea that government could ever be trusted in anything, because of bad experience (and probably partly because of propaganda) then it gets to be understandable position, but it isn’t in reality like that and doesn’t have to be like that.
OK corpocuck.
Yeah, you can totally trust government and big corporation, just like in Canada. /s
web.archive.org/web/20220317115211/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/22/world/americas/canada-protest-finances.html
Canada banks froze hundreds of accounts during trucker protests, some of them were just some random supporters which sent some bucks to support… So its not propaganda, and its enough to read history, there are plenty of examples, how governments struck down on its own people, why do you think there is a second amendment in US constitution ?
I want regulation and preferably nationalisation and putting them under democratic control to work towards social ends and not profit. Not corporate power, not fragmentation.
that impulse came from the socialistic Canadian government mainly, so tying them even more with state doesnt come with more freedom, but just more restrictions and control… Without their approval and suggestions, that would absolutely not happen.
We basically need fragmentation - to small local counties, instead of a multinational hegemony.
We basically need fragmentation - to small local counties, instead of a multinational hegemony.
That’s unbelievably reactionary and impossible. Is this just one of those takes that is founded on the belief that governments are shit and they will be shit no matter what and we the people cannon change anything or hope for anything better? So the solution is that we all go back to the “peasant commune” where we will each build our treehouses with people like to live and see life like us? Will work fine until one realises that supply chains enabling modern western lifestyle and technology are global and dismantling central states will both take down the infrastructure and bureaucracy that makes everything run. Plus if one doesn’t have the same or greater violence monopoly of centralised state there is no way to force outsiders or the neighbouring country just rolling over you.
People have tried this “going back to the simple, communal and smaller scale” many times and every time they failed, as if for example the transition from feudalism to modern states and towards higher centralisation wasn’t the next stage in the evolution of human condition and just some singular shit choice made by evil, ignorant or bad leaders of the past that we can just walk back on any time we wish. Genie is already out of the bottle as we say and now the only way is forward.
Its actually pretty simple, the same blanket rules which most governments try to push doesnt work, just for a simple fact, that the diversity of environments and needs coming from that cant be captured and decided by centralized point of control. Lets just take guns - most city ppl try to ban them and reduce, because in crowded environments, even if a cop trying to stop someone, he can often put others in to danger just due to how crowded those places are. But on the other hand, if you live on a remote location, where all kind of wild life threatens you, and any help hour away, not having a gun is basically a death sentence. Yet, governments trying to push a blanket policy for both - and that simply shows how ignorant that centralization can become. And this is true in basically all aspects of life, which more and more the government try to regulate.
There can be some level of centralized coordination, but it always have to be tied to the needs of those smaller local units and they have to have the last say in it and it must be a hierarchy of this control coming from the bottom…
That is not an argument against central government, it’s an argumenta against bad governance. Many things have clauses for special events and circumstances.
Who doesn’t own a smart phone tho?
People who care about privacy and mental self-determination don’t own smartphones.
But pc is acceptable??? Hahaha so self righteous getting second hand cringe here
“do you people not have phones?!?!?”
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The idea is that it should be a choice, not required simply by virtue of existing in a particular country.
Cash and other physical payment methods (Gold, silver, Goldbacks) are important. Same goes with email instead of phone numbers since email can essentially be free while phone numbers cost money to be registered and email is easily accessible on a computer and does not require a phone.
False.
Smartphones are not a tool to manipulate and spy on tge population. Nor are they a tool utilized by the ruling class to control the masses.
Dont assume that what happens in China will happen elsewhere.
You might appreciate the work done by purism to give us more control over our devices.
Good bit m8.
You might appreciate the work done by purism to give us more control over our devices.
Based off this line I’m pretty sure you’re trolling, Purism barely manages to ship a product in 5 years.
They had issues, but theyve been shipping phones this year and they run Linux.
We dont have to just use ios or android, and I think that’s a great thing!
Alternatively use graphene OS, or Calyx OS.
Some sexy confidently incorrect material here
False.
Oh god yes baby keep it coming
yawn
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Do you feel responding to tone represents something meaningful?
This comment has big Dwight Shrute vibes. What is the best bear?
Was it the “false” part? Because DUH.
Is it their intended purpose? No. Is it absolutely a function they’re used for? Yes. It’s a phone, the government absolutely spies on you with it
Adtech spies on you with it. The gov piggybacks on adtech.
Not just adtech. Wireless communication protocols too. The stuff Snowden leaked never stopped
Meh. Still nothing next to what CCP does in China.
Smartphones are not a tool to manipulate and spy on tge population.
Oh boy, wait until you learn about Google-Analytics on Android phones, or how they predict (or lets say know) where traffic jams are. Does the Section 702 of the USA ring a bell?
They certainly started as a good idea, but they evolved into a widely used surveillance tool for companies and governments across the world.
You barely have a clue if you think you’re informing me by mentioning 702.
Try and access your US tax records online without a contract cell phone and see how far you get.
