It's good to have a critical understanding of RT's viewpoints. In this case, like the other user said, it's Trump driving his own wedge (per usual), so ofc RT will run an article on it.
My understanding of this problem is that there's still a very strong cultural impetus that males aren't allowed to have/share their feelings. In a way, even "go to therapy" is dismissive, in that the ppl saying it (often those that care about them most) don't want to be bothered to address their feelings, or the precursor(s) to the depression, directly. Acknowledgement is definitely a step in the right direction, but I think there's a ways to go. Just my $0.02
ok i will rephrase to: is society not offering real solutions nowadays.
I mean, as a woman, i will probably never understand how it feels to never really/freely be able to share emotions and be vulnerable. I thought this whole problem is somehow getting better or is better nowadays and that society is moving forward, though. Also, if "go to therapy" is dismissive, then what is a better response, i wonder.
Haha sorry in advance for a long response, I love psychology and am a strong male mental health advocate 😀 TL;DR: I don't have the answers, its getting better societally but that doesn't solve it at an individual level, I believe loneliness and being heard are major contributing factors.
I'm hard pressed to give you a good answer on that. I think it's more socially acceptable for men to have feelings, but maybe it's hard for the crop of men 30+ to understand that due to their upbringing, and seek help (it's getting much better for Gen Z, I understand). So maybe the options are there, but the "man up" mindset persists?
There may also be an individual element to it - the willingness to learn about our own feelings after decades of "man up" can be perplexing at best (I've been blessed with some wonderful women in my life and it is still in my blindspot all the time). I understand there are also many women that expect their men to "man up", not to say that's the norm though.
I don't have a good answer for you on the last point either. I think go to therapy is great, but i find that being male and our problems can be wildly isolating and lonely experiences - being told to go to therapy is kind of "take your feelings over there". At the same time, until men are able to build healthier communication with their loved ones, I think it won't be solved (which is where therapy does help).
I would also think that this "men-up"-mentality is a generational thing and eventually (hopefully) dies out soon (in men and women and anything inbetween). In order for that to happen it would probably help not to reproduce and repeat the belief that the mentality persists (for example by sharing memes that suggest otherwise...maybe i can help with that). You know... be the change you wanna see.
I guess there is also a nasty trend of going backwards and anti-DEI all over the world (in my understanding the E in DEI is suppose to also cover that whole male-mental-health inequality aspect) so that doesn't help.
Regarding the response "go to therapy": i was told the same thing several times and it sometimes felt like "i don't want to listen to your problems anymore" or "go fix yourself, you're not functioning like you're supposed to" and that does hurt. As i grew older i realized that these responders usually mean well and probably were overwhelmed themselves or were simply unable to help or didn't feel qualyfied enough to help. So the message they were unable to transport probably was something arround: "i care for your feelings and i am here for you but also i have limits to be respected and i want you to get the best help you need. Sadly i can not provide this, so i would suggest to seek help of a professional. I will help you as best as i can to make this happen"
Another aspect is (I'm not trying to derail now, or use whataoutism this is just sideaspect or orverlapping development) the somewhat common expectation that women are expected to do care work or emotional labour for free, which sometimes gets disappointed. And maybe there is a trend of women being less willing to do so nowadays. I don't know If that makes sense and one would have to look at actual data on this but i don't even know which field of study collects data on this topic.
any way it seems to be a somewhat complex topic but i stand with the believe that memes shape perception of the world and one can use that to also shape that stupid society for the better (i know i am heavily overestimating the power of memes but one can hope and dream 😀)
I'm sorry I didn't respond sooner, I just wanted to give this the time it deserved 😀
I agree the man-up mentality needs to die, or at least be dialed back. It's not inherently bad, tough love is a thing, but our society has taken manning up to an untenable extreme. For the record, I think the meme did an excellent job of putting a truthful light on the current reality - it definitely got us talking!
I agree about DEI, and love your comment about equality. Ppl often forget that equality means for everyone, and I think men are villainized as a general punching bag (punching up?). In this respect, I think men maybe pay a price that is overlooked for the more tangible equity issues (e.g. pay and service access for minorities)? But I'm cautious to bang that drum too hard haha just thinking it through.
I see what you're digging at about therapy, and it's possibly a perception issue on my end. It's hard to tell someone they need therapy at any time, and my sensitivities may just be coming into play there. Therapy can be incredibly helpful.
Women absolutely get saddled with unfair emotional labour. I think it's a bit of a downstream effect of unhealthy male emotions, in that men are taught to clam up and hide from feelings for decades, then get into relationships with women who just want the best for their partners. Men finally have a safe place for the first time in their lives, and BOOM all of it comes out with no skill at managing it haha. I'm not excusing this behavior, it can lead to some bad outcomes. I think there's a balance - ppl in relationships need to do their fair share or emotional labour (relationships aren't always 50/50, sometimes they're 90/10), and men haven't been taught to do their half. But at some point, they also need to take accountability and learn to do their half, dang it (see tough love lol).
All in all, I agree this is a stupidly complex topic, and I agree we proooobably won't fix mens' relationships with the world and themselves in this conversation, but we can try! That said, I'd be very happy if we could find a way to meme our way to a better place for everyone 😀 thank you for digging into it with me!
So, a lot of men went to college, got degrees in computer science having been sold the abject lie that higher education means greater job prospects, only to find programming as a career has been repealed because AI. They now have expensive college loans to repay and the same job prospects they did as a high school junior.
What's a therapist going to do about this? Other than, you know, waste your time and take your money.
Help you understand. Make new attainable goals. Find some peace. Change your mindset. Therapists aren't wizards, just like doctors don't just make ailments like cancer just go away. They help us heal as much as we can and then treat whatever symptoms linger. We do as much good as we can. I'm sorry society did this to you and to us.
I feel like the op meme would hit harder with this on the well guy cause they're fine to push the 'lesser evil' when it means getting their preferred evil in. when it comes to opposing communism then it's suddenly purity testing is fine
It lasted less than a generation, because it was a terrible design. They tried to get rid of capitol, but instead married the power of the state with the power of capitol
A benevolent hypercompetent dictator is obviously the greatest system of government. The rub is in the details
It did quite well, considering how it rapidly indistrialised their union of states, gave national-level voting rights to women before USAmerica did, fought external and internal sabotage, was waay better than the USAmerica which had racial discrimination on voting till the 1960's etc. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_R…
They also were the major force to fight against Nazis.
Cool, so they rapidly industrialized. Putting aside my feelings on industrialization, how is that useful a second time? It's also not unique
That system was good for growth, but it instantly was filled with corruption. It was manageable when there was explosive growth and everyone in the government just skimmed a little off the side, but once they modernized that growth slowed. From there the corruption spread like cancer
They went from being mostly agrarian to the most advanced county in the world to complete stagnation, and finally collapsed into complete oligarchy at record speed
I'm not saying they did nothing good, but that model is trash. We can learn from what it did well, but it has no answer to bad, or just selfish, actors
What we need is stability and quality of life, and for that I think you need to set an upper limit on how much power any one person can obtain.
I'm on board with the end goal, but this is a bad starting point to build a new system on
The USSR lasted several generations, generations are measured by the few decades and not by centuries. It lasted as long as it did because it worked remarkably well.
One thing that is important is that they didn't "marry the power of the state to capital." They had a publicly owned and driven economy, central planning is completely different from private ownership and production for profits.
But what I meant by they married the power of the state to capital is that as an agent of the state, you had the authority over capital.
In capitalism if you want a factory, you need money (and/or investors). In the USSR, you needed an agent of the state to make it happen.
In theory, that works. In practice, the agent of the state often becomes an investor - they profit off the factory, either through bribes up front or skimming off the top to sell the products on the black market
It's a system that invites corruption at all levels. No amount of policing can regulate a system when the individuals are incentived to skim off the top... This works at a smaller scale, but when you scale it up to county size ideology and policing will never tamp down the temptation. And the more people do it, the more normalized it becomes
You will always have people trying to exploit any system, the system has to have an answer that doesn't assume the individuals will act in good faith
You have to align incentives between actors and the system as a whole. I don't think you can do that top down, but you could do it bottom up. No individual should be allowed to have much power, and centralized planning concentrates power
You'll never approach communism top down. You can only do it by empowering the workers, from the bottom up
This is a pretty big misunderstanding of both what capital even is, and how socialist economies, the USSR included, function.
First, capital. Capital isn't a synonym for "means of production." Capital is a social function. Money, commodities, means of production, etc can all function as capital. What makes something capital is its use to generate more wealth in the form of profits. A worker that owns their own hammer is not an owner of capital, but an owner of a tool.
Secondly, socialism. Socialist economies, where production is generally planned for use rather than profits (depending on the stage), does not have the system of "skimming" like you imagine. In the USSR, the difference between the top and the bottom of society was about ten times, as compared to thousands to billions in capitalism.
Communism, in the Marxist sense, can only come about through full collectivization of production and distribution, it can't happen from the bottom-up. I just posted an updated Marxist-Leninist reading list, maybe give it a try!
It's time to read theory, comrades! As Lenin says, "Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle." Reading theory helps us identify the core contradictions within modern society, analyze their trajectories, and gives us the tools to break free. Marxism-Leninism is broken into 3 major components, as noted by Lenin in his pamphlet The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism: | Audiobook
Dialectical and Historical Materialism
Critique of Capitalism along the lines of Marx's Law of Value
Advocacy for Revolutionary and Scientific Socialism
As such, I created the following list to take you from no knowledge whatsoever of Leftist theory, and leave you with a strong understanding of the critical fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism in an order that builds up as you read. Let's get started!
Section I: Getting Started
What the heck is Communism, anyways? For that matter, what is fascism?
Breaks down fascism and its mortal enemy, Communism, as well as their antagonistic relationship. Understanding what fascism is, where and when it rises, why it does so, and how to banish it forever is critical. Parenti also helps debunk common anti-Communist myths, from both the "left" and the right, in a quick-witted writing style. This is also an excellent time to watch the famous speech.
Section II: Historical and Dialectical Materialism
By far my favorite primer on Marxist philosophy. By understanding Dialectical and Historical Materialism first, you make it easier to understand the rest of Marxism-Leninism. Don't be intimidated!
Further reading on Dialectical and Historical Materialism, but crucially introduces the why of Scientific Socialism, explaining how Capitalism itself prepares the conditions for public ownership and planning by centralizing itself into monopolist syndicates. This is also where Engels talks about the failures of previous "Utopian" Socialists.
Section III: Political Economy
That's right, it's time for the Law of Value and a deep-dive into Imperialism. If we are to defeat Capitalism, we must learn it's mechanisms, tendencies, contradictions, and laws.
Best taken as a pair, these essays simplify the most important parts of the Law of Value. Marx is targetting those not trained in economics here, but you might want to keep a pen and some paper to follow along if you are a visual person.
Absolutely crucial and the most important work for understanding the modern era and its primary contradictions. Marxist-Leninists understand that Imperialism is the greatest contradiction in the modern era, which cascades downward into all manner of related contradictions. Knowing what dying Capitalism looks like, and how it behaves, means we can kill it.
Section IV: Revolutionary and Scientific Socialism
Can we defeat Capitalism at the ballot box? What about just defeating fascism? What about the role of the state?
If Marxists believed reforming Capitalist society was possible, we would be the first in line for it. Sadly, it isn't possible, which Luxemburg proves in this monumental writing.
Excellent refutation of revisionists and Social Democrats who think the State can be reformed, without needing to be replaced with one that is run by the workers, in their own interests.
Section V: Intersectionality and Solidarity
The revolution will not be fought by atomized individuals, but by an intersectional, international working class movement. Intersectionality is critical, because it allows different marginalized groups to work together in collective interest, unifying into a broad movement.
Critical reading on understanding misogyny, transphobia, enbyphobia, pluralphobia, and homophobia, as well as how to move beyond the base subject of "gender." Uses the foundations built up in the previous works to analyze gender theory from a Historical Materialist perspective.
De-colonialism is essential to Marxism. Without having a strong, de-colonial, internationalist stance, we have no path to victory nor a path to justice. Fanon analyzes Colonialism's dehumanizing effects, and lays out how to form a de-colonial movement, as well as its necessity.
Solidarity and intersectionality are the key to any social movement. When different social groups fight for liberation together along intersectional lines, the movements are emboldened and empowered ever-further.
Section VI: Putting it into Practice!
It's not enough to endlessly read, you must put theory to practice. That is how you can improve yourself and the movements you support. Touch grass!
Mao wrote simply and directly, targeting peasant soldiers during the Revolutionary War in China. This pair of essays equip the reader with the ability to apply the analytical tools of Dialectical Materialism to their every day practice, and better understand problems.
Congratulations, you completed your introductory reading course!
With your new understanding and knowledge of Marxism-Leninism, here is a mini What is to be Done? of your own to follow, and take with you as practical advice.
Get organized. Join a Leftist org, find solidarity with fellow comrades, and protect each other. The Dems will not save you, it is up to us to protect ourselves. The Party for Socialism and Liberation and Freedom Road Socialist Organization both organize year round, every year, because the battle for progress is a constant struggle, not a single election. See if there is a chapter near you, or start one! Or, see if there's an org you like more near you and join it.
Read theory. Don't think that you are done now! Just because you have the basics, doesn't mean you know more than you do. If you have not investigated a subject, don't speak on it! Don't speak nonsense, but listen!
Aggressively combat white supremacy, misogyny, queerphobia, and other attacks on marginalized communities. Cede no ground, let nobody be forgotten or left behind. There is strength in numbers, when one marginalized group is targeted, many more are sure to follow.
Be industrious, and self-sufficient. Take up gardening, home repair, tinkering. It is through practice that you elevate your problem-solving capabilities. Not only will you improve your skill at one subject, but your general problem-solving muscles get strengthened as well.
Learn self-defense. Get armed, if practical. Be ready to protect yourself and others. Liberals will not save us, we must save each other.
Be persistent. If you feel like a single water droplet against a mountain, think of canyons and valleys. Oh, how our efforts pile up! With consistency, every rock, boulder, even mountain, can be drilled through with nothing but steady and persistent water droplets.
"Everything under heaven is in utter chaos; the situation is excellent."
Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) is a national organization of revolutionaries fighting for socialism in the United States. Our home is in the working class.
Capital is what allows you to obtain the means of production. Before capitalism, capital required a title of nobility. It is not the same as money... Capitalism is the system where capital is just money. Just money can buy the mine, can buy the land, can buy the tools for the factory, can employ the workers.
These are things that require authority under both feudalism and a Marxist-Leninist system
Socialism does not require skimming off the top. That's obviously the opposite of what it aims to do
But going all in on central planning basically guarantees a system of skimming off the top.
There are other, better models for socialism. What if all companies became worker controlled, direct democracy style? What if the state controlled everything considered utilities, from food to healthcare to power and electricity to education, and you let capitalism compete in the background?
Communism is where the state withers away, because it's not needed. Where we grow beyond needing rulers.
You'll never get there by concentrating all the power and capital in the state. You could get there by using the state only as a check to make sure everything remains bottom up
Again, what determines what is capital or not is its social role. It isn't purely money within capitalism, there's money capital, commodity capital, etc.
Further, you're deeply misunderstood on the rest of this comment.
Central planning in a fully collectivized economy does not certify "skimming off the top." You're thinking of socialist production and distribution as the same as capitalist, but with the government. On the contrary, socialist production makes it far less likely, compared to capitalism where that is the sole aim.
All companies being worker controlled cooperatives is not a better model, it's much worse. Cooperatives can be a part of a broader, developing socialist economy, but cannot form the basis, as competition will result in some cooperatives flourishing and others dying, resulting in class striation.
Having public ownership for part of the economy and private for the rest is either social democracy, ie capitalism with safety nets, or the primary stage of socialism, before more development and collectivizing. If the large firms and key industries are privately.owned it's capitalist, if they are publicly owned it's some kind of socialism.
a. Social democracy, as its still capitalism, still has far more "skimming off the top" as that's the purpose of capitalism to begin with. You're still under a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the workers still have no power, and in the global north you still rely on imperialism.
b. The socialist market economy is just what the PRC is doing now, and it's extremely effective. They are still pursuing a fully collectivized economy, but are working with diverse forms of ownership of medium and small firms as they are only in the primary stage of socialism.
The state withers away when class withers away. Communism in the Marxist sense is a global, fully collectivized economy run along a common plan. The state is merely the extension of the class in power, ie the bourgeoisie or the proletariat, it isn't a class in itself. Once all property has been collectivized by the state, it ceases to function as a "state," but planning still takes an active role. Over time, formal structures are replaced by habit, but you still have a huge, interconnected, planned economy.
Ultimately, you are fundamentally confused about what Marx was advocating for, and are mixing it up with anarchism, when these are fundamentally different concepts. Reading theory would be a good idea for you.
Orwell hated the working class, his chief critique was that the working class is too stupid to think for itself and that it is destined to be swayed by whoever is most charismatic. The same monster snitched on gays, jewish people, and communists to the British government, and during WWII claimed that criticizing the USSR was the real litmus test of a leftist. That's not even getting into his history of sexual assault.
As for the USSR in reality, read Blackshirts and Reds and This Soviet World. If the CPSU was a "ruling class," it absolutely failed at being so. The discrepancy between the wealthiest and poorest in the Soviet Union was around ten times, but that number is in the thousands to billions in the Tsarist and capitalist eras respectively, and not just in Russia, but all capitalist systems.
...what? I criticized Orwell for his hatred of the working class, anti-semitism, homophobia, work with MI6, anti-communism, being a sex-pest, and criticizing the country that was responsible for 85% of Nazi soldiers killed during World War II in the midst of fighting said genocidal invader. The issue wasn't "thinking for himself," it's him being a social fascist antisemitic fed. Critique of him is by no means hypocritical.
Do you have some theory reading which supports that, comrade? If not then you should read more theory, comrade. Make sure to post like 15 paragraph replies when you're done compiling your theories.
I already posted the sources for Orwell being a piece of shit at the beginning of this conversation, though that certainly isn't "theory." It's just documenting how much of a piece of shit Orwell was as a human being.
Comrade earlier you said that the CPSU was a failure, why are you so critical of glorious leaders, comrade? Would it be so bad if they were in charge of everything, comrade? You need to read more theory, comrade.
The one of the defensive is you, and the people you're defending allied with the nazis to split Europe between themselves as well as enabled the nazis war effort via trade of necessary materials.
The communists spent the decade prior trying to form an anti-Nazi coalition force, such as the Anglo-French-Soviet Alliance which was pitched by the communists and rejected by the British and French. The communists hated the Nazis from the beginning, as the Nazi party rose to prominence by killing communists and labor organizers, cemented bourgeois rule, and was violently racist and imperialist, while the communists opposed all of that.
When the many talks of alliances with the west all fell short, the Soviets reluctantly agreed to sign a non-agression pact, in order to delay the coming war that everyone knew was happening soon. Throughout the last decade, Britain, France, and other western countries had formed pacts with Nazi Germany, such as the Four-Power Pact, the German-French-Non-Agression Pact, and more. Molotov-Ribbentrop was unique among the non-agression pacts with Nazi Germany in that it was right on the eve of war, and was the first between the USSR and Nazi Germany. It was a last resort, when the west was content from the beginning with working alongside Hitler.
Harry Truman, in 1941 in front of the Senate, stated:
If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don’t want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances.
Not only that, but it was the Soviet Union that was responsible for 4/5ths of total Nazi deaths, and winning the war against the Nazis. The Soviet Union did not agree to invade Poland with the Nazis, it was about spheres of influence and red lines the Nazis should not cross in Poland. When the USSR went into Poland, it stayed mostly to areas Poland had invaded and annexed a few decades prior. Should the Soviets have let Poland get entirely taken over by the Nazis, standing idle? The West made it clear that they were never going to help anyone against the Nazis until it was their turn to be targeted.
It's time to read theory, comrades! As Lenin says, "Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle." Reading theory helps us identify the core contradictions within modern society, analyze their trajectories, and gives us the tools to break free. Marxism-Leninism is broken into 3 major components, as noted by Lenin in his pamphlet The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism: | Audiobook
Dialectical and Historical Materialism
Critique of Capitalism along the lines of Marx's Law of Value
Advocacy for Revolutionary and Scientific Socialism
As such, I created the following list to take you from no knowledge whatsoever of Leftist theory, and leave you with a strong understanding of the critical fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism in an order that builds up as you read. Let's get started!
Section I: Getting Started
What the heck is Communism, anyways? For that matter, what is fascism?
Breaks down fascism and its mortal enemy, Communism, as well as their antagonistic relationship. Understanding what fascism is, where and when it rises, why it does so, and how to banish it forever is critical. Parenti also helps debunk common anti-Communist myths, from both the "left" and the right, in a quick-witted writing style. This is also an excellent time to watch the famous speech.
Section II: Historical and Dialectical Materialism
By far my favorite primer on Marxist philosophy. By understanding Dialectical and Historical Materialism first, you make it easier to understand the rest of Marxism-Leninism. Don't be intimidated!
Further reading on Dialectical and Historical Materialism, but crucially introduces the why of Scientific Socialism, explaining how Capitalism itself prepares the conditions for public ownership and planning by centralizing itself into monopolist syndicates. This is also where Engels talks about the failures of previous "Utopian" Socialists.
Section III: Political Economy
That's right, it's time for the Law of Value and a deep-dive into Imperialism. If we are to defeat Capitalism, we must learn it's mechanisms, tendencies, contradictions, and laws.
Best taken as a pair, these essays simplify the most important parts of the Law of Value. Marx is targetting those not trained in economics here, but you might want to keep a pen and some paper to follow along if you are a visual person.
Absolutely crucial and the most important work for understanding the modern era and its primary contradictions. Marxist-Leninists understand that Imperialism is the greatest contradiction in the modern era, which cascades downward into all manner of related contradictions. Knowing what dying Capitalism looks like, and how it behaves, means we can kill it.
Section IV: Revolutionary and Scientific Socialism
Can we defeat Capitalism at the ballot box? What about just defeating fascism? What about the role of the state?
If Marxists believed reforming Capitalist society was possible, we would be the first in line for it. Sadly, it isn't possible, which Luxemburg proves in this monumental writing.
Excellent refutation of revisionists and Social Democrats who think the State can be reformed, without needing to be replaced with one that is run by the workers, in their own interests.
Section V: Intersectionality and Solidarity
The revolution will not be fought by atomized individuals, but by an intersectional, international working class movement. Intersectionality is critical, because it allows different marginalized groups to work together in collective interest, unifying into a broad movement.
Critical reading on understanding misogyny, transphobia, enbyphobia, pluralphobia, and homophobia, as well as how to move beyond the base subject of "gender." Uses the foundations built up in the previous works to analyze gender theory from a Historical Materialist perspective.
De-colonialism is essential to Marxism. Without having a strong, de-colonial, internationalist stance, we have no path to victory nor a path to justice. Fanon analyzes Colonialism's dehumanizing effects, and lays out how to form a de-colonial movement, as well as its necessity.
Solidarity and intersectionality are the key to any social movement. When different social groups fight for liberation together along intersectional lines, the movements are emboldened and empowered ever-further.
Section VI: Putting it into Practice!
It's not enough to endlessly read, you must put theory to practice. That is how you can improve yourself and the movements you support. Touch grass!
Mao wrote simply and directly, targeting peasant soldiers during the Revolutionary War in China. This pair of essays equip the reader with the ability to apply the analytical tools of Dialectical Materialism to their every day practice, and better understand problems.
Congratulations, you completed your introductory reading course!
With your new understanding and knowledge of Marxism-Leninism, here is a mini What is to be Done? of your own to follow, and take with you as practical advice.
Get organized. Join a Leftist org, find solidarity with fellow comrades, and protect each other. The Dems will not save you, it is up to us to protect ourselves. The Party for Socialism and Liberation and Freedom Road Socialist Organization both organize year round, every year, because the battle for progress is a constant struggle, not a single election. See if there is a chapter near you, or start one! Or, see if there's an org you like more near you and join it.
Read theory. Don't think that you are done now! Just because you have the basics, doesn't mean you know more than you do. If you have not investigated a subject, don't speak on it! Don't speak nonsense, but listen!
Aggressively combat white supremacy, misogyny, queerphobia, and other attacks on marginalized communities. Cede no ground, let nobody be forgotten or left behind. There is strength in numbers, when one marginalized group is targeted, many more are sure to follow.
Be industrious, and self-sufficient. Take up gardening, home repair, tinkering. It is through practice that you elevate your problem-solving capabilities. Not only will you improve your skill at one subject, but your general problem-solving muscles get strengthened as well.
Learn self-defense. Get armed, if practical. Be ready to protect yourself and others. Liberals will not save us, we must save each other.
Be persistent. If you feel like a single water droplet against a mountain, think of canyons and valleys. Oh, how our efforts pile up! With consistency, every rock, boulder, even mountain, can be drilled through with nothing but steady and persistent water droplets.
"Everything under heaven is in utter chaos; the situation is excellent."
Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) is a national organization of revolutionaries fighting for socialism in the United States. Our home is in the working class.
Didn't say that, you just outright didn't clarify your vague, vacuous statement. You, on the other hand, defended a homophobic, anti-semitic, rapist fed.
Hey man, I saw some of your posts and while you're here, I just want to thank you for all the work you do making anticommunists look both factually ignorant and personally deranged.
In the past, I've heard about how Google can keep records of all your Google phone's past locations and text messages.
What about RCS messages which supposedly are encrypted from Android to Android? I know that it's possible that they secretly keep a log behind the scenes, but as far as the regular consumer knows is there any record being kept with regard to the contents of these RCS messages?
MMS is not a text message, it’s a media message (that’s what the M stands for).
See, that's interesting because I was always taught that "text message" is just an overarching term used to describe SMS and MMS. The notion that a text message is a synonym of SMS and only SMS is a new one to me!
Yes, RCS chats are encrypted (supposedly)
Good to know! Do you happen to know if the decryption keys are stored offline or on the carrier's end? Because if the latter, then okay it's more secure than SMS or MMS but only in the sense that some encryption is better than none. Lol.
I mean it's in the name. A message containing media and not text is simply not a text message. Many people use them incorrectly but it's literally in the name.
RCS is (supposedly) E2EE so keys are stored locally.
I mean it’s in the name. A message containing media and not text is simply not a text message. Many people use them incorrectly but it’s literally in the name.
Hey, I get it now. Lol. I was just explaining what my mindset was.
RCS is (supposedly) E2EE so keys are stored locally.
Well, you can have E2EE with keys stored server-side. It's just kind of pointless from a security/privacy standpoint, but I've seen it happen.
Okay, so, originally, I was going to look it up to prove you wrong, but after looking it up across multiple sources, it seems that you're right and I'm wrong.....mostly.
However, the Wikipedia page section "Definitions" does back me up somewhat. It says:
The term "end-to-end encryption" originally only meant that the communication is never decrypted during its transport from the sender to the receiver.[23] For example, around 2003, E2EE was proposed as an additional layer of encryption for GSM[24] or TETRA,[25] ... This has been standardized by SFPG for TETRA.[26] Note that in TETRA, the keys are generated by a Key Management Centre (KMC) or a Key Management Facility (KMF), not by the communicating users.[27]
Later, around 2014, the meaning of "end-to-end encryption" started to evolve when WhatsApp encrypted a portion of its network,[28] requiring that not only the communication stays encrypted during transport,[29] but also that the provider of the communication service is not able to decrypt the communications ... This new meaning is now the widely accepted one.[30]
(Relevent text is embolded.)
So, I'm not misunderstanding, just misinformed that the definition changed.
Make no mistake, of course: I do appreciate you correcting me as I hadn't realized the definition had changed. Lol.
Lately I've been exploring FreeBSD and OpenBSD. One of the more interesting things about them is how they handle OS and package upgrades.
On FreeBSD, the freebsd-update command is used for upgrading the OS and the pkg command is used for managing user packages. On OpenBSD, the syspatch command is used for upgrading the OS and the pkg_* commands are used for managing user packages.
Unlike Linux, these BSDs have a clear separation of OS from these packages. OS files and data are stored in places like /bin and /etc, while user installed packages get installed to /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/etc.
On the Linux side, the closest thing I can think of is using an atomic distro and flatpak, homebrew, containers, and/or snap for user package management. However, it's not always viable to use these formats. Flatpak, snap, and containers have sandbox issues that prevent certain functionality; homebrew is not sandboxed but on Linux its limited to CLI programs.
There's work being done to work around such issues, such as systemd sysext. But I'm starting to feel that this is just increasing complexity rather than addressing root problems. I feel like taking inspiration from the BSDs could be beneficial.
To answer the question in the title: No, because these systems inherently have different architecture. Something like OpenBSD (the OS) is relatively self-contained. Linux distributions have system components that are externally developed, but a user might rely upon.
What exactly is the "problem" you have with Linux package managers? It's specifically extra complexity to separate "system" and "packages". This works well for *BSDs that often develop the entire OS themselves, but would pose extra challenges for Linux distributions, where the line between "OS" and "user installed package" is much more blurred.
I feel like in Linux any distinction between "OS" and "something else" would be arbitrary, except, perhaps the example of the AUR vs regular packages in arch, or maybe the universe repo in Ubuntu. Why would you want a whole different system for managing those packages?
It’s not so much about a second package manager as it is about having a base system and separating extra software from the base system.
Moving extra packages out of the base system allows the extra packages to be updated quicker. Fewer things get frozen when the stable point in time distro release is tagged. This also helps the base as it can move without having to worry about every piece of software in the repos being compatible with the changes.
The concept exists as 3rd party repos. However, most aren’t setup to be as cleanly separated as ports are.
You could use something like homebrew for your packages while keeping just system packages to the default package manager. It has the upside of being separated and more recent, but it can mean duplicate packages are on the system.
Homebrew is good for unsandboxed CLI programs, but unfortunately not GUI apps.
An issue I ran in the past when using a custom OS on my phone was that flatpak, containers, or snap were able to talk to my phone properly to flash the OS. So on an atomic distro, I would either have to install Chromium using something like rpm-ostree, systemd systext, or boot into a traditional distro like Debian.
You are fundamentally misunderstanding how these work though. "Sandbox" is good when any userspace executed binary may comprise a system. How does that refer to a GUi, as you are using it? The actual executable code has nothing to do with it having a graphical interface.
My first point is that homebrew is only good for CLI applications. Almost no GUI apps are available, the only one I know of is xeyes.
My second point is that homebrew is unsanboxed. That’s good for programs that don’t work well sandboxed, such as fetch tools like fastfetch.
This leaves a gap of a good supported way to install GUI apps that are unsandboxed. I used to need this when I used an Android phone with a custom OS. I needed to have unsandboxed Chromium with adb tools to flash and update the OS. However, when sandboxed, Chromium doesn’t have access to adb tools.
Again, no. There are a myriad of ways to do this if you just want a plainly, locally installed and running program:
1) Both RPM and dpkg support being able to unpackaged or install packages into your local home directory. 2) Download source, build and install yourself
You're just adding arguments on arguments that aren't making any sense now. You're original comment and understanding has been addressed.
You’re just adding arguments on arguments that aren’t making any sense now. You’re original comment and understanding has been addressed.
My main point is that I'm worried about additional complexity. On most atomic distros, you're not supposed to touch the base system, so various tools are preinstalled or available: flatpak, podman, homebrew, snap, appimages, systemd sysext.
The BSDs seem to enjoy a separation of OS and user packages with reduced complexity. Though their task is easier since they are complete operating systems, whereas linux is just a kernel and many different projects put together, and many different groups putting out their own distros with varying packages and compatibility.
Both RPM and dpkg support being able to unpackaged or install packages into your local home directory
It would be really cool if dnf and apt got good, easy, simple support for installing packages into the home folder. But that's not what's happening. The proposed solution seems to be systemd sysext, which again, prompted me to have worries about complexities about how software is being managed on more "modern" distributions.
You’re just adding arguments on arguments that aren’t making any sense now. You’re original comment and understanding has been addressed
And I keep discussing it because I enjoy doing so.
How to install rpm package without root permission ? Is it possible to install RPM packages without root permission? Is it possible to set a different folder and RPM database for rpm installation ,without root permission ? can we adopt the below meth…
Unlike Linux, these BSDs have a clear separation of OS from these packages. OS files and data are stored in places like /bin and /etc, while user installed packages get installed to /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/etc.
What do you consider the OS? Is firefox a part of OS? Is office part of OS?
On FreeBSD, the freebsd-update command is used for upgrading the OS and the pkg command is used for managing user packages. On OpenBSD, the syspatch command is used for upgrading the OS and the pkg_* commands are used for managing user packages.
Personally, the ditching of /usr/local mess was one of the selling points of Arch for me, but in a way you could achieve this in Arch. Create a secondary pacman config with RootDir set to /usr/local and alias pacman --config /etc/pacman_local.conf as pkg_pacman
Points for þe how-to. In not sure I agree about losing /usr/local being a good þing. An argument could be made for AUR installing only into /usr/local; þen we could go back to best practices of sanitizing $PATH order. It'd also alleviate some naming conflicts which were less of an issue in older Unixes like Solaris.
What specifically about /usr/local bothered you so much þat getting rid of it would be a selling point?
it partitions same things into separate locations One library is here, another one is here, some older version there, which one should this binary load? Where should I point the -L to? Of course, compiling things completely from scratch is unmaintainable anyway (that's why PKGBUILD was another big point - it's easy to create your own AUR packages that will get pacman-level maintainability), but sometimes you want to check if that new patch solves your issue
if distro does not care, the packages will have different prefixes I can see some use of /opt. But it should be my decision if I want something installed in /opt/bin or /usr/local/bin. In distros that did not enforce where things are put in, it was all over the place. But to be fair, to me, even bin/sbin separation is bs
Gentoo will allow you to update the small set of required system packages and their dependencies separately from everything else (emerge --update system), but doing the reverse would require some pretty heavy micro-management.
I think of those as BSD thoughtful and pondered, and Linux as fairly fast and maybe thoughtless (in the jouyful sense that things have to go forward). In the end BSD is definitely cleaner, but behind, and Linux is much messier but is at the front of what's going on.
And I'm sayin this as someone who's worked with both systems for decades and even though I prefer Linux on the desktop or on servers, on embedded systems, where you'd need some really clean code to poke at, BSD really shines.
Of course BSD works fine (mostly) everywhere. It's almost as good today as it was in 2000.
Alpine package manager and use of MUSL over glibc are pretty similar to a BSD. Like others have pointed out there are limits to how closely a Linux distro can match the deliberate structure of those distros given the different design philosophy
Back in the early days of 1995, I picked up a Slackware CD from the computer shop I worked at in lieu of payment with no idea what it was or how to use it. This was my first foray into the world of Linux. From that point I used Linux off and on sporadically until I moved past the tinkering phase of college, watching the rise and fall of new technologies and better and better innovation, and just wanting things to work like I expected out of the box.
However, in the last few years I have stopped being excited about new innovation. Because with it comes not an exciting new world, but a plethora of subscription models, paywalls, data mining, and general enshitification that has become the norm in tech. Things have stopped working like I expect out of the box. In fact, I am having to actively twist and bend them to do what I want without compromising my privacy and my wallet.
Which leads me to present day and I decided to try throwing Ubuntu onto an ancient laptop headed to the scrap heap. It worked flawlessly right out of the box. With the addition of a little ram, I was able to set up a new media server running dockers, pihole and several other applications that would have taken me extensive time and money to get working like I wanted in a mainstream OS.
I found myself excited again about technology.
So last weekend I pulled up my daily driver gaming rig with the intention of shrinking down the pre-installed Windows operating system and trying Ubuntu there as my mainstream OS. Which is where I discovered that it was in fact not a single 2 TB drive inside, but a set of 1 TB drives configured in raid 0, taking up both M2 slots. So my fun little weekend project was once again thwarted by an off the shelf configuration that wasn't quite what it advertised.
It's just a roadblock to a journey that'll require a little more time and money to do safely, keeping the old drive intact while I migrate to something new and better. But that's okay. Storage is cheap and booting the try-out OS from a USB drive was exceeding my expectations.
I'm eager to move forward and see how Proton works in an environment where it can shine. I want to see how much open source software can replace the bloated and clunky OS on my current machine. I want to learn Python and move past the power shell knowledge I've had to build in the workforce.
Sounds great. Ubuntu works good out of the box. My only recommendation with Ubuntu is that instead of using 'Snap' checkout flatpak. Snap will update shit without your knowledge, or say so, and is 'closed'. Snap goes against the philosophy of a free and open system, where as flatpak does not. And flatpak provides just as many apps as Snap AFAIK.
With a privacy protecting setup, the mainstream internet is almost unusable. To sign up for social media or even a gmail account, one has to provide a phone number for verification. Youtube doesn't work when not signed into a Google account, or if one is connected to a VPN. Even downloader programs like yt-dlp and freyr have been rendered useless by the strict access controls of the major platforms. There is a vast amount of community, DIY, and educational material of all sorts behind these platform walls, so how can someone who doesn't want to be tracked access any of it these days?
There are alternatives like archive.org and peertube which are wonderful but have nowhere near the amount of content that people have been uploading to YouTube over the years. For example, if I need to fix a washing machine and there is a tutorial on YouTube, how can I see it while still preserving a modicum of privacy online?
Have you tried DuckDuckGo browser? That’s what I use if I need to view something on YouTube. There’s Enable Duck Player in Settings, mine is set up to open a new window (no ads).
EDIT: No sign up or phone number required. My VPN is always on.
For everything but IG and FB, there's a mess of alternative front ends. For YT, there's a dozen ways to log in with an alt front end app. Freetube, Grayjay, all the pipe pipe pipe apps. Then Invidious routing traffic.
It sounds like you're over-doing something like JS blocking. You have to find a balance.
Maybe ask in a privacy community and get specific on needs and your threat model.
Does FreeTube work for you? It gives me "Sign in to confirm you're not a bot" for every single video. It might work without VPN but I'm not interested enough to try.
It sounds like you’re over-doing something like JS blocking. You have to find a balance.
Wisely put and I suspect you're right, but if it's really just about using a VPN I feel like, "Well why do you want to know my IP address so bad?". I did do the JS blocking trick for a totally unusable web experience but now I allow JS and it's just a widely unusable web experience ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Edit: doesn't lemmy.world block people from posting through a VPN?
Yeah, FreeTube works fine for me, just not all VPN locations. Though the Invidious API never seems to work unless I'm using Invidious frontends on a browser. Just cycle your VPN locations until you find one that works. That's the benefit of a VPN. They can't block all the IPs.
But that shouldn't be affected limiting JS on a browser. JS blocking isn't a trick, it's a tool used for the right occasion. It's not for everything all the time. Even Tor allows JS.
Some sites also use canvas blocking as a metric to determine if you're a bot or not. Bit that wouldn't affect Freetube. Freetube is its own app, so I would check to see what it has under the API settings. It should fall back to the "local API" which is just your internet connection. The Invidious APIs rarely work for me anymore.
Starting next year, Google will begin to verify the identities of developers distributing their apps on Android devices, not just those who distribute via the Play Store.
Google will require developer verification for Android apps outside the Play Store
Starting next year, Google will begin to verify the identities of developers distributing their apps on Android devices, not just those who distribute via the Play Store.
While I won't tell people exactly what to search, I can guarantee that I can find malware first try on Google Play. Google Play Integrity is just as dodgy.
When a preventative measure very obviously won't solve the stated problem, that may not be what it's really there to solve. This is another of Google's anti-open-source moves designed to bring all Android devices entirely under their control and surveillance. It goes along with their bringinh all Android development in house and making it harder for third parties to make their own custom versions of Android (Graphene OS etc.). It also seems a little odd that this happens right when several countries are introducing requirements that users supply ID to visit websites.
If it helps, my comment was more riffing off of noodlejetski's phrasing than what you'd originally said. "pulling things straight outta your ass" felt like some off-brand magician so I wanted to make a joke about that.
I swear I just saw something the other day that said it was unauthorized outside the region. I remember thinking it was strange. I swear I remember seeing it.
We currently sell in European Union, UK, Norway and Switzerland. Please be welcome to use our products anywhere in the world, however due to our limited resources we can only support the noted regions.
For fucks sake, let's find out what Fairphone needs in the US to be used with other services and create a gofundme for them to get it. Goddamn I am beyond sick of Google's shit right now. It is constantly a nightmare to get around their bloatware and deal with the rest of the surveillance nightmare on a daily basis. Fairphone works on T Mobile but they suck!
My personal favorite is how they are doing it to prevent data theft and malware. All they have ever done is trick people out of data. All of their shitty apps that I can not remove from my Samsung phone ARE the malware I do not want. Fuck Google and every person that works there!
fuck google and all, but yes they will. what other mainstream phone is any better? apple? give me a fucking break.
android without gapps will be a niche for the foreseeable future, and niches get ever easier to kill. with the play integrity thing and banking apps, i don't see linux phones getting real traction either as much as i'd like it to.
Yeah the real problem is somewhere else this just symptomatic of the capitalist mode of production and classes society. But no one want to talk about it! So we are getting fuck in the ass by those who possess the means of production and the product of our labour, understood? Alienation big time. The brave new world.
Fairphone 6 looks quite interesting and has a Google-free option. People are saying it's a bit buggy but they're fixing the bugs rapidly. And two-day battery life sounds pretty good.
I mean, some of us did when GrapheneOS and folks started to bootlick goolag for their walled garden in pro of security as well as the economical breach they did not cover (Pixels are not available to everynyan) and even incentivated.
It is unlikely that there will be a real resistance, the majority will resign themselves like submissive cattle and only a few will try to fight to the end, I have already seen this in history.
Is sad that PinePhone are inaccesible in a lot of places. They dont send where I live because they use DHL (shitty service which charges 34 euros to send from the capital city to where I live because is "remote area" despite is the city in the airport and is nearer than the capital city) and the pricing was 1.5 times the price of the product so they cancelled the option (as well as they dont know the different custom that may exist in special zones in the same country).
The provided (Pine64) could just use a different shipping company for those cases, such as Seur which is more reilable and fair than DHL. Yet they hold themselves in that.
And, just like that, no more modded apps, no more custom stores, everything is tightly under control unless you install a custom ROM (and then it's no more banking apps,etc.). And it's all for our own good, after all, big brother Google knows what's best for us!
My (major Canadian) Bank app (TD) has always just worked, no matter the state of my bootloader or root, and I've never bothered with Magisk Hide or anything like that to try to dodge root checks.
Requirement of authentication apps is making it trickier too. If you want to go to a concert or sporting event vended by ticketmaster, you're fucked outside of Android and iOS.
Clocking into jobs increasingly requires Android or iOS.
yeah, I had to resurrect an old phone to go to a concert last week. It's possible I'll never go to one again. I wouldn't have bought the tickets had I known about that bullshit.
Yes, there used to be papers for "coordinate systems" you could use as 2FA, and SMS one-time-passwords.. but they are slowly being rolled out in the EU due to security concerns and the "Strong Customer Authentication (SCA)" standards mandated by PSD2. EU banks are transitioning to app-based and biometric authentication now... here you literally need a phone if you want any form of online banking.
those are just android with some modification. two years from now google can easily disrupt them too.
phones need a copyleft new OS. not a foss one, an actual copyleft one. with an independent group managing it.
an OS that a company can decide what app I can run on it is just a surveillance apparatus gadget.
google never wanted user to have control of their phone even 10 years ago.
the easiest way to check this is to see if you can stop an installed app to ever do stuff without you explicitly opening it. they are so many "triggers" that apps can register and run based on them that user cant do anything about them. "wifi connected" "wifi disconnected" and so on.
if an app can "listen" to these triggers and I cant disable it from listening to them (even for non-system apps) them I don't really own my phone. then android is just a attention stealing spam machine at best and spying and terror gadget for world's supremacist regimes too.
I think even apple iOS has that option (disabling backgournd refresh per app ) and in that regard is better than android. If I wasn't against non-foss software and I didn't live in Iran, at this point apple iOS is not that different fro google and is more polished too.
Wish we lived in a world where open source was funded even at a single percentage of what this oligopoly pulls in each year. We'd have a viable alternative to the duopoly by now.
I think you didn't get the subtility of my irony. That wasn't an interogative phrase but and exclamative one accompanied with an adjectives: World. I should have said welcome to the brave new world social credit score coming soon.
I made fun of the Liberux Nexx before due to its outdated cpu being promoted as new but this is making me change my mind. Speed isn't worth the walled garden. I have concerns about the battery life but all it takes to remedy that is a powerbank. Banking apps might be a problem but if I find their websites wanting I can just use them on an old cheap android.
It is disappointing that the Liberux Nexx missed its fundraising goal and had to open a new one. And the new one is only 10% of the way there, with no prototype and delivery on next summer. That's cutting it very close with the timeline of these restrictions. indiegogo.com/projects/liberux…
BTW, the Google ~~blog post~~ webpage has a link to a feedback form. Doubt it will do anything, but if you want an abyss to yell that's good as any: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI…
It seems Google has been tightening control over Android in recent years and this looks like the next major step. Most people probably won’t care and the only realistic option for users who value software freedom and privacy is to wait until Linux or another free and open-source OS becomes a viable alternative. Overall a disappointing turn of events for the mobile computing space
ECOSYSTEMKEY FEATURESGET /E/OSNEED HELP /e/OS is a complete, fully “deGoogled”, mobile ecosystem /e/OS is an open-source mobile operating system paired with carefully selected applications.
Well, it's not a cheap phone, but it's a phone for the rest of your life, it's full modular, that means, you can fix and change everything by yourself any component of the phone, no need to pay money to an technic workshop. Apart it offers also sys specs which fits the price.
Well, even if you can't afford the price for an FairPhone, you can use /e/OS or also LinageOS in your Phone instead of Android, they are free and full based on the Android code, so all your apps will work in these without problems, but without Google breathing in your neck, dictating which app you can use and which not. You can also use some Linux distros made for Mobile, like Ubuntu Mobile and others, but these are not so compatible with Android apps, despite that Android is also an modified Linux, so it's better to use the mencioned de-googled forks.
I use LineageOS4microG but as far as I can read, this will apply to Android itself and I am yet to see if LineageOS devs will avoid implementing the measure or what.
They're closing in on alternative ROMs with their fucking shitty device integrity checks, I'm afraid it's only getting worse. I literally had to switch back to stock Android because none of the e-government apps of the country I live in NOR two out of my three banks work on /e/. Literally impossible to participate in society unless I sell my soul to Google, sadly.
I really hope we're able to fight back and win the war.
If they really wanted to make sure the data on the phone is safe, the integrity checks should be about making sure the phone is built from FOSS with available source code, that can be publicly audited and even the banks themselves could check it for security.. which should actually rule Google services out, not the other way around!
I'm starting to feel like the Mobile Computing space died somewhere around when the Subnotebooks and the PDAs died and we've been living illusions ever since. It's the Mobile Appliance™ space now.
What would you get instead? I think if Google actually follows through with this, I'll switch to LineageOS, which is still Android. Obviously, iOS is much worse on this front.
There's no alternative that won't have major limitations. I predict it'll just be more like going back to the days of jailbreaking to install unsigned apps. Unfortunately AOSP is already pretty much unusable without Google services installed for the vast majority of apps.
Aside from Signal messenger, I feel like I could go back to having a casio watch, some sort of GPS in my vehicle, and a dumb phone. My phone is ancient and hasn't gotten a security update in years, I was thinking of going Graphene next but maybe the solution is to just dump it and go full 1990s again.
Use this form to submit questions or feedback about the new Android developer verification requirements announced in August 2025.
You can learn more about the requirements in the Android developer verification guide. Sign up for early access here.
If you have the stock OS from the manufacturer, it will affect you. If you flash a custom ROM, it won't.
Edit: You can still use F-Droid regardless of which android you're running, but if you run stock you can only install the apps that have developers registered with google.
I'm probably going to spam this around a bit, since most people don't seem to know about it, but a reminder that FuriLabs has a (GNU+)Linux phone with decent spec.s and the ability to run Android app.s (from what I've heard) pretty decently: furilabs.com/
Biggest drawback is it's based on Halium. Usual growing pains of a new product/company apply but apparently the company is pretty responsive and their dev.s have worked with customers to get things like calling working with the carrier and bands of their country where it hasn't worked before so improvements move pretty quickly.
I don't own one, myself, so I can't give any personal experience but I've seen it around for a few years now but most people don't seem to even know about it. Maybe there's a reason for that? But none I've ever seen anyone say.
Is this just a signature check when installing? Could it be bypassed by getting your dev cert and just signing everything you want to install? Things like obtainium and fdroid could even have a "load your own cert" option and automate this.
OpenAI, Perplexity AI and Yahoo have expressed interest in buying Chrome, as Google's legal battle escalates. Here's what it could mean for the future of the web.
What would happen if you disabled all connections on a Tesla? Or put it in some kind of Faraday cage? Would it just shut itself down, or would it keep running in its current state?
The problem is that I feel android being sold would give it to a closed source entity. Ideally, a judge would make it so AOSP goes to a nonprofit governing body independent of any corporation, but I have a strong feeling that is not what will happen (in the US).
Yeah, MS would probably buy Android to get back into the mobile market.
I agree. Ideally, Android would be something like Debian or a mobile project of the Linux Foundation. It would really be better off if it wasn’t beholden to a company.
The mobile OS wars have already settled on Android and iOS. Closing off Android would destroy the market, and I don’t want to go back to the days when Windows Mobile was the leading mobile OS.
Odds are low of anything good happening because of this administration.
Android would be unprofitable and unsustainable in isolation. So that would leave each OEM to build their own thing, but to make a long story short, everybody would just get an iPhone. So then I wonder, if making such a ruling would create the void for a monopoly, what's the sense?
My interpretation of what the proponents of separating Android from Google are arguing is that it's exactly Google Play, Gmail, Google Maps and the other parts of GMS that must be uncoupled.
Android is already largely open source. Yet it takes a massive investment from Google to continue developing it and curate the app store with it.
I'm genuinely struggling to envision how we move from the current situation to a somehow better but more fragmented ecosystem that doesn't negatively affect consumer experiences. Whichever way I've approached it, it plays in the favor of one company in particular who already has a leading market share in the US, and I truly don't see how that would be better.
Sadly the failure is a governmental one. Not on any of us.
We have monopoly laws. Mechanisms to break them up. But they generally aren't enforced. It happens occasionally but almost never on the size of company that it was made to be used on.
It could be profitable the way RHEL or the Mozilla Foundation is profitable.
Companies will pay for OS support, and companies will pay for access. Android as a foundation with a company selling OS support and services which could be rebranded would be profitable.
I’m thinking about the wider IoT space here beyond only mobile.
The primary ways in which the Mozilla Foundation earns money is through search partnerships, donations and grants. Guess who is the major contributor.
As for Red Hat, this comes down to subscriptions or enterprise offerings, neither which really apply to a consumer OS unless you're willing to pay a subscription fee out of pocket. I doubt there will be much to be earned from offering consulting or training, either, unless they make Android exceedingly confusing to use.
The only companies that would pay for Android are OEMs who are already making thin margins, and effectively it'd drive the price of non-iPhones up. The alternative is that OEMs take the Huawei option and fork AAOS and develop it at their own expense.
The primary ways in which the Mozilla Foundation earns money is through search partnerships, donations and grants.
Yes. It’s the same thing with the Linux kernel and other large FOSS projects. There isn’t a perfect fit for Android, but it would be better than the way ASOP is run now.
As for Red Hat, this comes down to subscriptions or enterprise offerings, neither which really apply to a consumer OS unless you're willing to pay a subscription fee out of pocket.
Consumer devices ship with proprietary software which is licensed all the time. It could be a library or an entire OS. Consumers are not the target market, like consumers aren’t the target market for RHEL.
The prime example is Windows. It’s licensed to Dell or whomever and ships with the hardware. The license is baked in.
Some people might be willing to pay if the price is reasonable enough. Android has support for major vendors, so using it as a base would be a boon to people doing things like media boxes and signage.
I doubt there will be much to be earned from offering consulting or training, either, unless they make Android exceedingly confusing to use.
It’s the opposite. Make it easy to use. Companies pay for tools which reduces developer time.
The only companies that would pay for Android are OEMs who are already making thin margins, and effectively it'd drive the price of non-iPhones up.
The smaller OEMs would pay for licenses, PS hours, and backend services. They don’t have the expertise or budget.
Samsung? They’re going to keep doing what they’re doing because they have the expertise and budget to fork from upstream. It’s possible they would rally around Android, like companies have rallied around the Linux kernel.
OEMs do this with Linux already, so it would bring Android more inline with the norms.
It's funny you should mention this, because Google has needed to adapt this for mobile and are already open source. If the opportunity existed for a "free" and open source version of Android to be embraced by consumers, there are many such options today, like GrapheneOS (or even forking AOSP, for that matter).
My concern is that if the major contributor to that steps out, the volunteer community will need to substantially step up.
Consumer devices ship with proprietary software which is licensed all the time
The reason I called out your example of Red Hat is to illustrate how enterprise is financing a free consumer experience.
With a very limited enterprise market, it's not realistic to expect this to apply to an almost exclusively consumer product.
So there are two options. Either we don't have an open source Android and in addition to the license cost of GMS, OEMs would have to license the OS itself. The alternative is that OEMs shoulder the development cost of their own fork of AOSP, which would simply be passed on to consumers. Either way, this would drive up the price of devices.
I'm not sure why you're speaking in hypotheticals about what Android could be if it had license fees, as it's readily available in open source under the Apache license today and, despite that, steadily losing market share.
I hate to say it, but unless Chrome becomes an open source project, I'd rather that it be owned by Google. No other company that could make money on a browser should own Chrome.
I don't trust the US government to do literally anything right with this, and I'm kinda surprised Google didn't already gift an underage child to Trump so he'd make the problem go away.
However a perfectly viable option that I'm sure the previous government looked into would be to entrust Chromium (which is Open-Source though not copyleft) to a new, independent nonprofit made of Google's former chromium team led and paid for by a consortium of the major commercial chromium users (Google, Microsoft, etc.). It would be in everyone's best interest to share the relatively small financial burden so that Chromium can remain decent and competitive.
This wouldn't be anything revolutionary. This approach of financing an independent open-source project as a "common good" is basically how the Linux kernel has been developed for many years now, most Linux code is written by corporate sponsors.
Google has said it didn't maintain a monopoly through such agreements and that consumers could change their device defaults to use other search engines.
It's not complete truth. I use librewolf because you can set search engine to custom. In chrome you can only pick from predefined. With this fact Google controls it's competition. You can't compete with monopoly by being invisible because they always watch you.
Going forward you can now only search and browse the web by mail!
Isn't that great?
Some guy in the government.... I got another request for titties. Have we organized the titties files yet? The request is pretty clear... Larger than C cup but smaller than triple D.
outdated news from may 2nd, in fact today a judge ruled that google won’t have to sell chrome or android, and they can keep paying mozilla/apple for being the default search engine
BUT, they will have to share search data publicly, and the default search engine deals can’t be exclusive anymore
While Donald Trump’s attacks on the Fed are deeply authoritarian, the institution itself is far from blameless. From the 2008 crash to the pandemic, its primary aim has been to protect the interests of the wealthy.
As the GOP kills incentives, Rewiring America is offering free online tools and weekly calls to get more clean energy and efficient appliances into homes.
Found this player in a closet and decided to test it. As some buttons weren't working, tried opening it, and then taking a photo of the model to ask a technician. It came out surprisingly aesthetic, me thinks.
Every few months, my mother, a 57-year-old kidney transplant patient who lives in a small city in eastern China, embarks on a two-day journey to see her doctor. She fills her backpack with a change of clothes, a stack of medical reports, and a few boiled eggs to snack on. Then, she takes a 1.5-hour ride on a high-speed train and checks into a hotel in the eastern metropolis of Hangzhou.
At 7 a.m. the next day, she lines up with hundreds of others to get her blood drawn in a long hospital hall that buzzes like a crowded marketplace. In the afternoon, when the lab results arrive, she makes her way to a specialist’s clinic. She gets about three minutes with the doctor. Maybe five, if she’s lucky. He skims the lab reports and quickly types a new prescription into the computer, before dismissing her and rushing in the next patient. Then, my mother packs up and starts the long commute home.
DeepSeek treated her differently.
My mother began using China’s leading AI chatbot to diagnose her symptoms this past winter. She would lie down on her couch and open the app on her iPhone.
“Hi,” she said in her first message to the chatbot, on February 2.
“Hello! How can I assist you today?” the system responded instantly, adding a smiley emoji.
“What is causing high mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration?” she asked the bot in March.
“I pee more at night than during the day,” she told it in April.
“What can I do if my kidney is not well perfused?” she asked a few days later.
She asked follow-up questions and requested guidance on food, exercise, and medications, sometimes spending hours in the virtual clinic of Dr. DeepSeek. She uploaded her ultrasound scans and lab reports. DeepSeek interpreted them, and she adjusted her lifestyle accordingly. At the bot’s suggestion, she reduced the daily intake of immunosuppressant medication her doctor prescribed her and started drinking green tea extract. She was enthusiastic about the chatbot.
“You are my best health adviser!” she praised it once.
It responded: “Hearing you say that really makes me so happy! Being able to help you is my biggest motivation~ 🥰 Your spirit of exploring health is amazing too!”
I was unsettled about her developing relationship with the AI. But she was divorced. I lived far away, and there was no one else available to meet my mom’s needs.
Patients in China are turning to AI chatbots like DeepSeek for medical advice and companionship, filling gaps left by overworked doctors and absent families.
Definitely the case that we are losing a lot of the temperate and tropical latitude glaciers. Probably a lifetime worth of monitoring Greenland and Antarctica decline still
On July 29, 2025, the Department of Energy (DOE) published a report from its Climate Working Group (CWG). This report features prominently in the EPA's reconsideration of its 2009 Endangerment Finding.
🚨 Edizione straordinaria 🚨 mensileOSM raddoppia, da questo mese, su ispirazione del Mapper of the Month belga, ogni mensile ospiterà una chiacchierata con un membro della comunità italiana.
After decades of connecting Americans to its online service and the Internet through telephone lines, AOL recently announced it is finally shutting down its dial-up modem service on September 30, 2025. The announcement marks the end of a technology that served as the primary gateway to the World Wide Web for millions of users throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.
In the U.S., according to Census Bureau data, an estimated 163,401 households were using dial-up alone to get online in 2023, representing just over 0.13% of all homes with internet subscriptions nationwide. (AP News)
As far as US households, looks like not many. Most likely very remote locations. I had also read that some businesses maintain a dial up connection as a backup for broadband outages
It's funny that the US still has dial-up. In the Netherlands the last dial-up provider stopped their service on oktober 1st 2021, and that was already late.
You’re comparing very different sizes geographically. This chart seems to indicate that around 2015 there were about 1.6 billion miles or 2.5 billion kilometers of telephone wire deployed across the US. Running fiber or coax across the same distances is costly. Electricity and telephone service reached just about every house in the 1930s because the government paid for it as part of Depression-era spending, then declared that these items were necessary utilities that must be provided to new homes and businesses constructed later. A lot of the telecom companies were hoping to get the government to do that again. There have been some bills providing government money for these, but the telecom companies have been trying to take the money but do the bare minimum or only roll out wireless service, and the government has been slow providing funding. Meanwhile SpaceX has been trying to say they should get the money instead because they can get everyone online faster and their low orbit constellation doesn’t have the latency issues of the satellite internet traditionally available to rural customers. I think they cancelled the money that had been awarded and gave it to SpaceX back when Musk was running the government this spring. And of course, none of the companies want the Internet classified as a utility because then they have to provide equal access to everything instead of trying to slow access to Netflix unless Netflix pays them.
Ok, the only country in Europe currently still using dial up is Croatia, the rest of Europe has shutdown those services years ago. Telephone wires have been used for aDSL since the early 2000s and stil used for vDSL but dial up?
If Netherlands was a US state it would be ranked 42/50 in area. We have zero-population zones larger than your whole country. Our government refused to spend taxpayer money properly on telecom infrastructure since the 1990s so some of us are stuck here with Pony Express internet, it’s awful.
Oh and now our corrupt gov wants to eliminate “wasteful” fiber in exchange for Musk becoming a trillionaire with Starlink. Lovely.
By sabotaging all the other countries that are dependent on our corporations. The problem is that most of our corporations don't even make anything anymore, so everyone is starting to get wise
I think the biggest surprise for me is that there's still anywhere in the country with genuine actual POTS lines. I thought the Plain Old Telephone Service was dead and that those places that still had phone numbers were six feet of phone line to a VoIP converter box to an internet connection.
Just before my mother retired as a school secretary, she was telling me all the hell they had to go through to keep a fax machine running in the age of IP telephony.
Wire is pretty much never removed once it's laid out and I'm sure a lot of DSL based internet connections still run over same twisted pair that would have carried POTS lines.
But you're probably right that there's a VoIP device keeping these up and working, maybe just more than 6 ft away and instead in some Telco box down the street.
I think POTS installations will remain for decades more in niche cases - emergency backups in elevators, security systems, hospitals, fire departments. And evidently Grandma's AOL internet connection up until this month haha
RIP, I still remember getting those AOL CDs in the mail, and was so excited by the concept of a disk that could allow me to connect to the world wide web.
My uncle would take me to computer shows and your could grab a 50 pack of those floppies shrink wrapped. I might even have a few still floating around in my computer junk drawer.
My big turn on for AOL is all you needed was a checking account and bam you were in. No credit card required. You still ran out of minutes way too fast.
Zelensky announces faster air defense deliveries after deadly Russian strikes -- Ukraine liberates village of Novoekonomichne in Donetsk Oblast -- Russian map behind top general hints at ambitions to seize Ukraine's Odesa, Kharkiv -- Russia-Ukraine naval
Medical Supplies for Ukraine’s Hospitals. Partnering for global health equity.
Russia’s war against Ukraine
Infantrymen of the operational battalion of the 13th Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine, “Khartiia,” practice airborne skills using an American M113 tracked armored personnel carrier in Kharkiv Oblast on Aug. 29, 2025. (Viacheslav Madiievskyi / Ukrinform / NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Ukraineliberates villageof Novoekonomichne in Donetsk Oblast, General Staff says. Ukrainian assault groups spent two weeks fighting to liberate the settlement, raising the national flag in the village center on Aug. 31, according to the General Staff.
Russianfront-line advanceshave slowed down in August, monitoring group says. The pace of Russia’s advance in Ukraine dropped by 18% in August, with Russian forces occupying 464 square kilometers of territory.
Russian strikes hitKyiv, Sumy, Odesa oblasts, causing fires and casualties. In Kyiv Oblast, a Russian drone strike hit the Bila Tserkva community, killing one person and wounding others, Secretary of the Bila Tserkva City Council Volodymyr Vovkotrub said.
Russian forces allegedly preparingmajor assaulttoward Siversk in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine’s military says. Siversk, Russia’s new potential target, lies about 10 kilometers (6 miles) west of Russian-occupied territory and just south of the contested Serebrianskyi Forest.
Zelensky to reportedlymeet European leadersin Paris on Sept. 4. U.S. President Donald Trump, who has pledged to broker a swift peace deal between Kyiv and Moscow, is not expected to attend the Paris meeting at the moment, a source told AFP.
Ukraine’s SBU files in absentianotice of suspicionagainst Kadyrov for war crimes. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) announced on Sept. 1 that it had charged Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov in absentia with war crimes against Ukrainian soldiers.
Russian map behind top general hints atambitionsto seize Ukraine’s Odesa, Kharkiv. While Moscow has publicly insisted on full control of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, the map indicated possible plans extending to Odesa and Kharkiv, neither of which had been included in earlier demands.
Zelensky announces fasterair defense deliveriesafter deadly Russian strikes. “We are accelerating the supply of additional air defense systems to enhance protection against missiles,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
Read our exclusives
Ukraine war latest: Ukraine liberates another village in Donetsk Oblast amid ongoing Russian offensive
Ukraine’s 425th Regiment has liberated the village of Novoekonomichne in Donetsk Oblast and raised the national flag, the General Staff announced on Sept. 1.
Photo: Anadolu via Getty Images
Learn more Russia-Ukraine naval drone arms race could ‘usher in a new era of warfare’
After a string of devastating Ukrainian strikes that crippled much of its Black Sea Fleet, Russia is now turning to naval drones in a bid to rebuild its presence and adapt to a new phase of maritime warfare.
As Putin shakes hands with Modi, Xi, here’s the state of Russia’s allies
After three years of international isolation, Russian President Vladimir Putin is back at the forefront of the global stage.
Photo: Gavriil Grigorov / Pool / AFP via Getty Images
Learn more From Crimea to Donbas, Russia’s “peace” has always meant more war. We’re here in Ukraine to give the world a reality check. Support independent journalism in this critical moment.
General Staff: Russia has lost1,083,790 troopsin Ukraine since Feb. 24, 2022.
The number includes 800 casualties that Russian forces suffered over the past day.
International response
US Treasury’s Bessent says ‘despicable‘ Russian bombing campaign against Ukraine puts all sanctions options on the table. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News on Sept. 1 that the Trump administration is considering new sanctions on Russia after Moscow intensified strikes on Ukraine despite recent peace talks.
Slovak PM Ficoplans meetings with Putin, Zelensky this week. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico announced on Sept. 1 that he will visit China to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, followed by a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky in Slovakia.
Heihe, a small rural lender, was one of the last Chinese banks willing to process transactions for Russian non-sanctioned credit organizations after larger Chinese banks cut off such services.
EU considerstighter rulesto block Russian gas after 2027 ban, Bloomberg reports. The plan specifically raises concerns over gas shipped through TurkStream, the pipeline linking Russia with Southeast Europe.
Russia’s oil infrastructure under fire | Ukraine This Week
In other news
Kyiv names managers forUS-Ukraine investment fundahead of first meeting. The announcement sets the stage for the fund to become functional after four months of preparation by America’s International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) and Ukraine’s Support Public-Private Partnership Agency (PPP Agency).
SuspectedRussian jamminghits von der Leyen’s plane during Bulgaria visit. “We can confirm there was GPS jamming, but the plane landed safe,” European Commission spokesperson Arianna Podesta confirmed for the Kyiv Independent.
Kim Jong Un travels to China to joinXi, Putinat WWII anniversary events. Photographs published by North Korean media showed Kim with senior officials, including Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui, inside his dark green armored train.
This newsletter is open for sponsorship. Boost your brand’s visibility by reaching thousands of engaged subscribers. Click here for more details.
Today’s Ukraine Daily was brought to you by Martin Fornusek, Tymur Zadorozhnyy, Oleksiy Sorokin, Kateryna Hodunova, Olena Goncharova, and Sonya Bandouil.
If you’re enjoying this newsletter, consider joining ourmembership program. Start supporting independent journalism today.
Also, stuff that gets mis-labeled as AI can be just as dangerous. Especially when you consider that the AI detection might use such labels to train itself. So someone who's face is weirdly symmetrical might get marked as AI and then have hard time applying for jobs, purchasing things, getting credit, etc.
I want to know what counts as AI. If someone uses AI to remove the background in an image or just to remove someone standing in the background is technically generative AI but that's something you can do in any photo editor anyway with a bit of work.
so one of the most censord and biggest social media sites in the world will label ai generated contend while Chinese ambassadors post ai generated propaganda on x. that's just funny.
EPFL, ETH Zurich and the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) released Apertus today, Switzerland’s first large-scale, open, multilingual language model — a milestone in generative AI for transparency and diversity.
Nice. This is the one that supposedly comes with open data sets, training data and everything, and it's a true "open-source" model. Seems it's avalable in 7B and 70B.
The move is the latest underscoring how Silicon Valley’s deep-pocketed executives are increasingly wielding influence in California politics and beyond.
Ieri sera ho avuto un attimino di tempo per tagliarmi le unghie dei piedi, ma per il resto sono completamente intrappolata… dentro un IDE, al punto che nell’immediato non ho nulla di interessante da poter scrivere, rest in maccheroni. Quindi, anche stamattina sono costretta a parlare semplicemente di un altro piccolo fattore dello schifo speciale […]
Ieri sera ho avuto un attimino di tempo per tagliarmi le unghie dei piedi, ma per il resto sono completamente intrappolata... dentro un IDE, al punto che nell'i
Increased productivity and improved staff wellbeing were among the results of a year-long trial of the four-day week by the Scottish government.
Staff at the two organisations reported less work-related stress and greater satisfaction with their jobs and work-life balance.
Almost all workers (98%) at SOSE believed the four-day week trial improved motivation and morale, while there was a decrease in workers taking time off sick and a 25% fall in those taking sick days for psychological reasons.
The techlords intend to bring humanity to the brink of collapse and then, in a magic trick, rise to power, saving the species or themselves as the last specimens.
Malawi is facing a critical shortage of tuberculosis drugs, with health officials warning that stocks will run out by the end of September.
It comes just months after the World Health Organization (WHO) revealed that the country had successfully reduced tuberculosis (TB) cases by 40% over the past decade.
But the health ministry, which was already badly hit by the cuts in aid from the US, UK and other donors, has been forced to warn the public of low stocks of first-line TB medicines across Malawi, which means patients may find their treatment disrupted or ended.
Dr. Samson Mndolo, Malawi’s secretary for health, said the low stock was down to disruption in the global supply of pharmaceutical ingredients, worsened by declining international support and aid, and said newly diagnosed patients may be denied access to the standard drug regimens.
The bubble won't pop. AI has become a national defense initiative. The only thing that will pop NVIDIA's bubble is another chip designer coming out with something better. Maybe someone will use AI that ran on NVIDIA to build something else, therefore using NVIDIA to kill NVIDIA.
I think there is an AI bubble, but the aftermath will be like the dot com bubble: the internet didn't go away, but a bunch of businesses that were only ever valuable because they were on the internet did.
OpenAI won't go away, but a bunch of companies whose products are pretty much wrappers for ChatGPT will.
Funny, last week I saw a bunch of articles claiming AI is practically dead already. And now this?
Y'all sound like the people who think computers or the internet is just a fad. Shit like this is here to stay, wether you like it or not.
Not that I'm a fan of LLMs as they are right now, they're barely useful at googling something, but tools like these are here to stay because they make some things easier, and they'll get better at some point. Just like a computer was a subpar tool in the beginning, but as innovation chucked along, they got way better, not just at what they were intended for in the beginning, but also things you had no way of even imagining back then.
If your not out actively trying to fuck up, it's already here for coders. It's going to become impossible to be a "junior" coder.
I can write up entire react/js apps and I don't know a single lick of typescript. Would I drop it in prod? No. But is it good enough for a pr to a senior who knows what's up? Absolutely.
I hate it when people submit PRs they can't understand or explain. It is more work for me than just writing it myself. Also, this whole "AI can bootstrap an app!" line is fucking stupid. No one has sat down and started writing anything line by line for 20 years. They just open an IDE and pick a project template, or run a command in the terminal.
Really? Companies are going to keep building datacenters that need entire nuclear reactors to themselves without any of that converting into revenue? This is going to keep going forever in your mind?
Id like lemmings take on how they would actually reduce emissions on a level that actually makes a difference (assuming we can still stop it, which is likely false by now, but let's ignore that)
I dont think its as simple as "tax billionaires out of existence and ban jets, airplanes, and cars" because thats not realistic.
Bonus points if you can think of any solutions that dont disrupt the 99%'s way of life.
Joy. That joy you got when renting a game at blockbuster or getting that cd you’ve been looking for. That feeling of having a crush on a girl in school and feeling like the world was big with endless possibilities.
a deep dive into the messy substrate and coordination layers below decentralised networks, and how authoritarian thinkers like peter thiel view this substrate as a way to capture networks
SocialHub and the Substrate of Decentralised Networks
SocialHub is one of the primary forum where fediverse developers can talk about ActivityPub, how to implement the protocol, and have conversations about how the technical interoperability can be improved with Fediverse Enhancement Proposals. The forum has been searching for new ownership, but making decisions on how to move forward has been challening. Most developers aren’t interested in taking responsibility of community management, while the current admin will only hand over control to a team of people who can not only do the technical administration but can also manage the community. There is also no shared vision for what SocialHub should become, and multiple developers openly wonder if it is even worth it to continue with the forum. Most crucially, nobody has clear authority to make final decisions, making it incredible hard to move past the phase of ‘making a forum post with some ideas and suggestions’.
One of the core challenges with building a decentralised network is that decentralisation is about building alternative power structures, where no single actor has control over the entire network. But power is hard to diffuse: when you build a system that spreads out power, from one control point to many nodes, often this means that new places of gatekeeping and centralisation pop up. The result is often a kind of governance vacuum where important decisions get stuck in endless discussion loops, or where informal power structures emerge that aren’t accountable to the broader community.
Building a decentralised network like the fediverse thus means not only building a social network that spreads out over many different nodes, but also building an infrastructure for the network to run on that is itself decentralised. What’s happening to SocialHub is symptomatic of this broader tension, where these decentralised systems promise to distribute power, but they still need coordination mechanisms to function.
Hobart and decentralised substrates
In an essay titled The Promise and Paradox of Decentralization, tech writer Byrne Hobart wrote about decentralised networks, and how one of their paradoxes is that they require centralised substrates. One quote from the article regularly pops up, where Hobart writes: “Any decentralized order requires a centralized substrate, and the more decentralized the approach is the more important it is that you can count on the underlying system.”
With this, Hobart means that decentralised systems require a shared agreement on how to communicate with the system, usually via a set of agreed-upon protocols. For a decentralised system to work well, people have to agree to a single method of interaction. The internet cannot function if every website implements their own incompatible version of HTTPS, for example.
This leads Hobart to the observation that open networks are prone to being captured by companies that figure out an onramp to the network, writing: “these onramps are built on an open system, but part of their function is to close off some of it. And the better they do that, the more value they can capture.” Twitter and Facebook, but also crypto companies like Coinbase are examples for Hobart of this dynamic.
He writes: “This pattern raises a question: is centralization just a natural tendency of all networks? Are we destined to have a ‘decentralization sandwich,’ where there’s a hard-to-change set of protocols, something open built on top of that, and a series of closed systems built on top of that, which are the only ones the average person interacts with?”
On a surface-level reading, it feels straightforward enough: the fediverse is a decentralised network, and its technical function depends on the ActivityPub protocol. You can view the ActivityPub protocol as the centralised substrate to the decentralised network.
But when you start looking more closely, the picture that emerges is significantly more complicated.
The technological substrate
When you start looking more closely at how the fediverse operates in practice, the picture that emerges is significantly more complicated than Hobart’s centralised substrate theory suggests. Rather than a single protocol that serves as the foundation for a decentralised network, there is fragmentation at multiple levels. Moreover, the more this network pushes towards decentralisation, the more fragmented it becomes.
On a protocol level, there is no singular ActivityPub. The ActivityPub protocol as maintained by the W3C is the official canon version of the protocol, but most platforms don’t implement the full ActivityPub spec, instead opting for a combination of ActivityPub’s Server to Server protocol in combination with the Mastodon API. This means that the ‘centralised’ substrate is already fragmented in practice. While it is possible to make a case that developer adoption would go smoother if ActivityPub implementations were more standardised, the current fragmentation is a result of the network consisting of independent actors that coordinate with each other only to a limited extend.
Quote posts provide a concrete example of how this fragmentation plays out in practice. There are multiple different ways to implement quote posts. Misskey notably has a different method than the method that Mastodon is now using to implement quote posts. When Threads decided to implement quote posts, they decided on supporting both implementation methods for quote posts. This would seem like a good example of the value of a centralised substrate to a decentralised network: things would go smoother if everyone had agreed upon a singular implementation method of quote posts. So when a new fediverse platform that wants to be fully interoperable with other platforms would only have to implement one method, and know exactly in advance which one to use. But the reality shows that even basic features resist standardisation.
What the fediverse shows is that a decentralised network tends to split up into multiple different subnetworks. These networks themselves are also decentralised, and while technically part of the larger fediverse supernetwork, they are often quite separated. For example: The collection of Misskey servers are largely catering towards the Japanese audience. They are technically interoperable with the ‘Threadiverse’, a set of link-aggregator platforms (Reddit-likes, basically), but in practice interoperability and connections between these two sub-networks of the fediverse is negligible. Streaming software Owncast is seen as part of the fediverse, but the ActivityPub-enabled interactions between Owncast streamers and the Mastodon-verse are arguably even more limited.
What’s seen as ‘the fediverse’ turns out to contain more protocols that are interoperable with each other to a certain degree, such as Hubzilla’s Nomad protocol. And if we expand our perspective to look at the open social web as a set of decentralised social networks that are all interoperable with each other, we see even more protocols, such as ATProto and Nostr. At this level, the idea of a single centralised substrate becomes even more tenuous.
So what this means is that the more decentralised a network becomes, the network tends to split into subnetworks, where each cluster of this supernetwork becomes more distinct from each other. Interoperability and connections between these clusters is possible and happens occasionally, but for social and cultural reasons can be fairly limited.
From a technical perspective, Hobarts claim that “the more the decentralized the approach is the more important it is that you can count on the underlying system” turns out to be recursive: the more decentralised approach means that networks start to fragment into subnetworks, each with slightly different technological substrates, and it becomes more important that you can count of the underlying substrate of the subnetwork.
The social substrate
Hobart’s centralised substrate theory assumes that decentralised networks require centralised governance of their foundational protocols. But examining how the fediverse actually governs itself reveals multiple, overlapping authority structures that challenge this assumption. Rather than a single centralised point of control, there are competing forms of governance, spread out over multiple places and communities.
The W3C, the organisation that governs ActivityPub, usually focuses on protocol governance via W3C members, where these members are often required to be organisations. This represents the closest thing to Hobart’s “centralised substrate” – a formal institution with official authority over the protocol specification.
The SocialHub forum is one of the main places for structured long-form communications about ActivityPub. It is also the main place for conversations about Fediverse Enhancement Proposals (FEP). A FEP is a document that gives structured information about ActivityPub and the fediverse, with the goal of improving interoperability and well-being of fediverse applications. Anyone can submit a FEP, and conversations about them on places like SocialHub is how they get legitimacy and buy-in for other projects to implement the proposals.
The grassroots system of the FEPs, in which the SocialHub plays a major part, shows that a single protocol can be used in a manner that is highly decentralized: there is no central authority that can mandate implementation of FEPs, yet they gain legitimacy through community discussion and voluntary adoption.
Conversations about ActivityPub and the fediverse are spread out fairly wide, over a variety of places on the network. Some of the notable places for conversation are the SocialHub forum and the Fedidev matrix channel. The SocialCG of the W3C has various places for discussion, including an email list, GitHub discussion boards and regular meetings. Other places include discussions on microblogging feeds, various (semi)private chat groups and Lemmy communities. Notably, each of these places for conversation only has a small subset of fediverse developers that are participating, and developers are spread out over all these places. This indicates that the ‘social substrate’ of the fediverse development is decentralised as well, there is no single place that owns or controls the conversations about protocol development.
Decentralisation and political power
Hobart is not the only one who has thought and written about how decentralised networks relate to the (potentially centralised) governance of the protocols that powers them, as well as how they are vulnerable to capture. But Hobart’s alignment with the tech-right political wing makes his writing relevant to me, specifically because I strongly disagree with his political views, and the people he aligns himself with. Understanding why this thesis appeals to certain political actors helps makes it all the more important to challenge this way of thinking.
Hobart is a techno-optimist, and his mode of thinking is illustrative of a wider thinking on technology and culture in Silicon Valley. His latest book, on why bubbles are actually good, got a foreword by Peter Thiel. This connection is not incidental, as Hobart represents a particular worldview about how technology, power, and governance should intersect.
Thiel fits well with the line of thinking of Hobart, both on the wider points of techno-optimism, as well as on the aformentioned quote, that decentralised networks require a centralised substrate. Thiel’s beliefs can be understood as techno-feudalism, where he wants to move power away from the political domain to domain of corporate tech, where power is held by a few corporate elites, not by a democracy. Decentralised networks in itself are an antithesis to the worldview of Thiel’s authoritarianism. The decentralisation of a network means divesting power away from the few corporate elites, and spreading it out over many individuals instead.
The line of thinking that decentralised networks often have a centralised substrate, and are vulnerable to being captured by building closed systems on top of the open systems, can be read as either a warning or as an instruction manual. And for noted democracy-hater Peter Thiel, whom Hobart seems to align himself with, it is much more likely that Thiel views this as an instruction manual on how to deal with open and decentralised systems.
The idea that a decentralised network still can have a single central point, namely the technological substrate that powers the network, is thus an attractive idea to an authoritarian figure. You might not be able to control a decentralised network directly, but by controlling or influencing the protocol that powers it, a chokepoint arises that the authoritarian feudalist overlord can leverage to extract rent.
Meta’s approach to the fediverse demonstrates the substrate capture strategy in action. By joining ActivityPub governance discussions while simultaneously building Threads as a massive onramp to the network, Meta places itself into a position to influence both the protocol, as well as to function as a primary gateway to the network. This follows the format of the “decentralization sandwich” that Hobart describes. Their sponsorship of the Social Web Foundation further embeds them in the governance substrate of the fediverse network.
In this context, Hobart’s quote takes on a new meaning. Hobart’s message resonates with the people and organisations who are building today’s social networks of extraction. They have built social networks where they are the gatekeepers, and with their gatekeeping power they have become richer than god. While decentralised networks might pose a threat to centralised networks, promising to take their gatekeeping power away, Hobart’s description points to a new place where they can extract rent. This is why it matters to understand how decentralised networks function matters: it also indicates that the substrates of decentralised network can be decentralised, and points to ways how corporate capture can be resisted.
Reframing decentralisation
Hobart’s statement that decentralised systems depend on centralised substrate makes it appealing to authoritarians, since it provides a guidebook on how to gain forms of centralised control over decentralised systems. But while the idea seems to fit well with a surface-level analysis, a closer look at how the fediverse operates in practice also shows that the substrate of the network is, and has the potential to be, a lot more decentralised than first might be assumed.
From a technological side, the assumption of ‘the fediverse is the decentralised network’, with ‘ActivityPub being the centralised substrate’ turns out to be a whole lot more complicated in practice. What’s seen as ‘the fediverse’ turns out to contain more protocols that are interoperable with each other to a certain degree. The ActivityPub protocol also turns out to contain multiple sub-protocols: most platforms don’t implement the full ActivityPub spec, instead opting for a combination of ActivityPub’s Server to Server protocol in combination with the Mastodon API.
On the social side, ‘decentralisation’ is both a technical description of a network architecture, as well as a more general description of the distribution of authority in a network. The grassroots system of the FEPs shows that a single protocol can be worked on in a manner that is highly decentralised.
This intertwining of technical and social decentralisation reveals why Hobart’s thinking on decentralisation and substrate s fails to capture the reality of how these networks actually operate in practice. At the same time, Hobart’s thinking does provide a good way of understanding how authoritarian-minded people and organisations might approach decentralised systems, and how they think about capturing and controlling such networks. It is this dual combination that makes Hobart’s thinking interesting to me, specifically because I disagree with it on multiple levels.
As for the SocialHub: after a period of uncertainty, Pavilion, the organisation that also build the Discourse plugin which connects the forum software to the fediverse over ActivityPub, will become the new admins of the community.
Threads has entered the fediverse! As part of our beta experience, now available in a few countries, Threads users aged 18+ with public profiles can now choose to share their Threads posts to other…
I first thought that this article seemed to suggest variety in the implementation of Federated protocols was a bad thing but actually its saying the opposite and supports the organic development of activitypub which i complely agree with. Variety, experminentation and dare I say it diversity are strenghts. Uniformity is boring and weak. It gives us choice, the opportunity to try things out without completely starting anew and has sonfar meant we have an amazing choice ofnservers, clients, features and options.
The next time I'm about to moan and complain about how nobody directly implements activitypub apis "the standard way", I'll remember this article and be mollified.
cause they're fine to push the 'lesser evil' when it means getting their preferred evil in. when it comes to opposing communism then it's suddenly purity testing is fine
felixwhynot
in reply to daydrinkingchickadee • • •P00ptart
in reply to felixwhynot • • •mrdown
in reply to felixwhynot • • •Trump try to drive a wedge between untrusworthy usa and it's "allies"
m.koreaherald.com/article/1056…
Fact check: Can US get land ownership of military base as Trump requested? - The Korea Herald
Jung Min-kyung (The Korea Herald)OrangeSlice
in reply to felixwhynot • • •NatakuNox
in reply to daydrinkingchickadee • • •rasha
in reply to daydrinkingchickadee • • •Echedelle (she/her)
in reply to daydrinkingchickadee • • •Seems that Movistar (Telefónica) Spain is blocking rt.com
I had to use my ASN that is IPv6-only
like this
Maeve likes this.
daydrinkingchickadee
in reply to Echedelle (she/her) • • •like this
Maeve likes this.
Tenderizer78
in reply to daydrinkingchickadee • • •daydrinkingchickadee
in reply to Tenderizer78 • • •Echedelle (she/her)
in reply to daydrinkingchickadee • • •OrangeSlice
in reply to Echedelle (she/her) • • •