Folks, let me share some random observations with you, because I can’t wrap my mind around those.

  1. People have Zoom, Teams, Slack, Discord, Messenger, Telegram, and Viber, all happily installed on their phones at the same time. When you then invite them to Matrix they are like “Is this necessary? Why install yet another one of those?”

  2. People who use Chrome by default without ad blockers, and you just hint there is a massive intelligence and surveillance operation are quick to respond that “I am getting this services for free, so it is fine to give something back” [1].

  3. People thinking that OSS is not secure enough for their devices. Surprise surprise, it is the exact same people who fall for obvious scams and their devices are ad-ridden, bloated horrors that have not been updated in a million years, but they think that Libre Office will break their computer and lose their emails.

  4. People thinking that privacy and anonymity enthusiasts are shady freaks who want to go live in the woods and possibly terrorists. There is a slightly insane take here that we are against technology because we refuse to “just” install an app to make our lives easier[2].

So they do not complain about being exploited and disrespected, while ripped off and offered crap services, as long it is a capitalist corporation shaking them down with vendor lock-in and network effects. They are grateful even. But just the idea of installing a single free/libre OSS app or extension to protect their privacy is a red flag and pushes their buttons big time, even for just suggesting it.

So, what are your own examples of anti-OSS stupidity, and how do you explain its prevalence in society?

  1. It is how quick they are in responding that way, which makes me think that the idea is already crystalized in their minds, by some “anti-OSS” discourse. ↩︎

  2. But just installing a Matrix client is a big deal. ↩︎

  • pineapple@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    So many people I’ve talked to about privacy are 100% believers in “if I have nothing to hide I don’t need to care about my privacy” and they think the only people that use things like tor are drug dealers trying to access the dark web.

  • IninewCrow@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    Most people are just not technically minded or have the patience to figure stuff out on their own. All most people understand is “buy thing, it works, I go on internet and play games” … then after a year or two their laptop, phone or device starts to run slow because they never maintained it … “thing slow, thing no good, throw away, buy new thing” … then start again.

    I have several intelligent, highly educated, professional friends who have bought expensive phones and laptops, never maintain them, complain about them, dump them and buy new ones within a year or two. Literally buying $1,000 phones every year or second year.

    Meanwhile I bought a galaxy S20FE a couple of years ago. I got it on special with my phone company and paid $100 for it over two years. I added it to my collection of just about every phone I’ve ever owned over the past 15 years, that are all still working, along with laptops I’ve upgraded to Linux and tablets I’m experimenting with.

  • Random_Character_A@lemmy.world
    1·
    3 months ago

    Libre Office will break their computer and lose their emails.

    Few buttons in a different place and they no longer instantly know how to use it == broken.

    People stagnate and tech savvy people don’t realise how tech savvy they are.

  • erotador@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    yeah i have a friend, they only play the same 3 games, web browse, and talk to a like 2 people on discord. they could easily move over to linux/matrix and never notice the difference, i have offered to help them several times, but they just dont wanna do something different. they know how their computer works already, why change it? i argue that there really isnt much of a change, but its enough to completely dissuade them.