‘The tyranny of apps’: those without smartphones are unfairly penalised, say campaigners
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/feb/22/the-tyranny-of-apps-those-without-smartphones-are-unfairly-penalised-say-campaignersOpen linkView original on feddit.org1112
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There should be a warning label on any establishment or product that requires a smartphone to use.
How about this:
At the apartments I recently moved out of, there were no quarter slots on the washing machines. They were an app that required a bluetooth connection to pay.
So if you lived there and didn't have a smartphone? Go fuck yourself, you don't get to do laundry.
Unless you bothered to check the laundry room when you were looking at the apartment, you wouldn't know. No warnings.
That...
Is that not illegal where you live?
America has next to no protections for tenants, only landlords.
It’s not even required that apartment buildings have laundry services at all. There are commercial storefront laundromats in the US which serve as the ground floor for where people do their laundry. Until landlords are required to provide laundry, it will be hard to legislate what payment forms they must accept.
Tbf, my building also uses an app for laundry. However they also have a machine in the laundry rooms where you can purchase an NFC payment card and put money on it. So you can use it without the app. Is that not the case with yours? If not, that's 100% fucked
Thank god they decided to keep these free where I live
That depends a bit on if it was advertised or not to have a laundry room. At least here in NL it is more common to have your own washing machine than to use a shared one so having a laundry room would be an extra to start with.
Still sucks though
It's actually incredibly common in US apartments for laundry to be a common area.
Having a unit in your apartment means you're at least well-to-do. Poor people can mostly go fuck themselves.
US hates poor people. I'm poor, I know from experience. They hold homelessness over us as a threat to keep in line.
We went from during the pandemic, treating "essential workers" as "heroes" while not increasing their pay for risking their lives, to now, straight back to how it used to be, screaming at overworked underpaid people "You're lucky to have a job!" as they break our bodies and then discard us once our bodies are broken. I know caregivers who have broken backs because they have to lift 350lb people without the proper equipment and they don't get paid enough to afford to live in an apartment alone.
The number of people trapped in outright dangerous relationships just to afford a place to live is too damn high. It's a massive human rights issue, and the US will never address it under current leadership. They treat poverty as something that happens to bad people. They believe that their wealth proves that they are good people. They are myopic fools.
They fucking hate us. Anything to make us feel low, they will do.
I understand its probably the norm where you are but why aren't they just free to use? You pay rent...
There was a food truck I went to one time that required you to download some app to look at their menu and order your food. They refused to accept a credit card or cash. I walked. So fucking stupid. I don't know why people allow shit like that to exist.
Any time I'm required to use an app for something that could be a website, I leave the app a one star review.
Phone apps are nothing more than modern toolbars. And in case you forgot or missed this phase of the internet...
Click to win a FREE LOBSTER Dinner 🦀🦞🦐
Man I miss this era of the internet. It truly felt like a new frontier.
I clicked, but all I got was a dancing stripper and something called Conficker.
Peak internet wdym
No argument there, especially with Bonzi Buddy lol
"2020 search"
Bruh someone's grandma needs help, we need to fix this computer, it looks like it's about to get stuck on zombo.com.
Or Jen hahaha
Nothing wrong with getting stuck on zombo.com. After all you can do anything there.
I want a re-made Bonzi buddy with AI.
I don't vouch for these, as I have not used them. But, I found this rewritten one and this one with LLM.
I remember toolbar days.... I used to lov--- sorry i admit this ... Installing them .... shivers for my sins
needs more sheep
Yeah, Bonzi Buddy!
I missed that phase because I was using Netscape.
Then you didn't miss it. You glossed over it, like a boss
Then you could agree with any barely computer-savvy person that such things should be killed with fire.
Now a lot of very competent person will try to persuade you how you are a luddite and wrong, except 5-10 years ago they'd also promise some bright tech future in addition to that, and now you're just wrong because they can exist in that environment and like it, and you can't.
Can, but refuse. Big distinction for me. I've lived through these arguments once already, and have watched their computers keel over and die several time from the viruses these toolbars often bring, and I will now watch as their phones do the same.
Could you expand on that thought a bit more? How is an app like the internet tool bars of old?
Genuinely curious. I'm a little too young to have experienced internet toolbars like the ones in your image.
Every service and site had their own malicious toolbar they'd ask you to install and / or* sneak it into the install for other software. They also came loaded with malware and or siphoned data from you. Older/more tech illiterate people would have browsers looking like the picture above and come to you wondering why their computer is so slow or why they keep getting viruses.
Plus the even simpler: apps are like browser “toolbars” because they’re just a veneer to collect more data, add more tracking, appear to be useful without actually benefitting the user over a simple web page
Ohh, I see. That makes a lot of sense. I understand the comparison now, ty 🙏
@alekwithak @techforwhat Norton Antivirus is still at it
Hooboy
No Virtua Girl?
I flat-out refuse to do business with any that requires I use an app. I won't even scan a QR code for a restaurant menu; that's my cue to go eat elsewhere.
I don't mind the whole online menu thing. It's probably an environmental net positive, but it's bs if they don't have ANY physical copies for those who can't or don't want to for whatever reason.
If they wanted me to install something, though, that'd be a 100% instant nope.
I mean I simply refuse to as QR code phishing is a thing
You might enjoy SecScannerQR then. It makes it easier to vet QR codes by giving an option to search for the URL instead of going there directly.
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.t_dankworth.secscanqr/
Isn't that standard behavior though? I've never seen anything that opens a URL directly instead of just showing it to you with an option to access it.
Ooh. Now do iOS.
Ew
No, you stop doing iOS.
I mean you just need to audit the URL before going there.
An online menu requires power to be used (on people's phones and the server). Is that really a minor contribution in comparison to printing paper and maybe laminating it?
Considering your average printer is a piece of shit that needs to be replaced quite often, yes, using a website is probably more energy efficient.
That and those servers are going to be running anyway. Powering a simple restaurant website is a grain of sand on the beach of internet usage.
Yeah, exactly. If you're worried about the power draw to host a few hundred KB PDF file, you probably shouldn't be using Lemmy, because scrolling through your feed probably uses 100x that in energy costs.
You have to remember that the shared hosting or aws, or wherever is going to be cheapest to host a simple website is also going to be very power efficient. Wasting power is just throwing away free money, and if there's one thing corporations don't do, it's throw away free money.
Generally companies use service contracts to keep those things working so mo they wouldn’t be replaced often. They are just a piece of shit
This person has never seen the power bill for running a high-availability server with several failovers once in their lives.
In fairness neither have I - though I suspect it's not as insignificant as others have claimed.
It's not insignificant at all. Servers are beefy and take more power than a standard PC... a lot more. Further, failover servers mean you have to have exact copies of the same server up and available, which means you're doubling, tripling, quadrupling power demands. Finally, you also have to have Uninterruptible Power Supplies, those take an amount of power as well.
It's a huge power draw. I know because I have a bunch of low-power devices runnig 24/7 as microservices and it still increase my power bill and use by a lot. I regularly get letters from the power company about how I'm using like 3x the power of the average person in my type of unit.
I'm also using a lot of self hosted things but have never received any of those.
Where do you reside generally where they're sending them because it ain't a thing here in the UK?
You can host a webserver on a Raspberry Pi. I don't know what you're doing with your setup but you absolutely do not need hundreds of watts to serve a few hundred KB worth of static webpage or PDF file. This website is powered by a 30 watt solar panel attached to a car battery on some guy's apartment balcony. As of writing its at 71% charge.
An Ampere Altra Max CPU has 128 ARM cores (the same architecture that a raspberry pi uses), with a 250 watt max TDP. That works out to about 2 watts per core. Each of those cores is more than enough to serve a little static webpage on its own, but in reality since a lot of these sites get less than 200 hits per day the power cost can be amortized over thousands of them, and the individual cores can go to sleep if there's still not enough work to do. Go ahead and multiply that number by 4 for failover if you want, its still not a lot. (Not that the restaurant knows or cares about any of this, all this would be decided by a team of people at a massive IT company that the restaurant bought webpage hosting from).
I had not considered that an uninterruptible power supply would be consuming power after charging. I suppose no electronics are 100% efficient at what they do.
I've been playing with a Proxmox server on an ITX system for local services and rare game hosting for friends. I'd love something low power I could have on all the time.
Scan QR code. Order on your phone. Pay on your phone. Asks for a tip.
So uh, what exactly am I tipping you here for dawg?
that stuff is nice as an option. There's a bar I go to that I can order my food and drink to the table my friends are at, while I'm walking to the place, and everything just arrives shortly after I sit down. Other people get offended about how fast I get served, it's always amusing. I also enjoy not interacting with the staff, nothing against them, brain just doesn't brain sometimes.
But what if I didn't have a phone? or if I left home without it? 24/7 pocket rectangle is not natural.
Losing your phone now is like losing not just your wallet but simple access to everything.
Can confirm. Brother had his phone stuck in LA for 2 weeks.
There's probably more but those affected him the most. Genuinely weird that in 2025 alarm clocks are stuck in 1985.
The funny thing about qr codes for restaurant menus to me, as someone that studied menu design. Is that actual menus are designed specific ways make the restaurant more profit and make it easier for people to find what they want. Whereas qr codes often bring one to a hastily designed list of categories which are not only less intuitive but also less manipulative. So people will end up taking longer to order less profitable dishes.
Hell yeah, consumer win. I like selecting an item and it offers me changes or addition options that I never would have considered!
But really, it means they can hire less people so they gain profit anyway.
I've been to some that try to upsell you during the checkout process. Big pop up comes up "Add x to your order for $y.99!" Shut the fuck up!
One of these seems to be one of the best ways to order pizza from Papa John's.
They usually have a special for a Large Pizza for pickup, and at the checkout, you can ignore the add-ons and choose "make it extra large" and it's the best deal I've seen for papa johns XL pizza.
Worst thing about qr menus for me is that when I finally order, I have to give my phone number and address. Bro, I'm sitting across from the kitchen and just want dumplings. Why I gotta dox myself for that?
Like when ordering bubble tea
Dennis Takes a Mental Health Day is probably the most accurate portrayal of me ever written.
I literally had to switch bank accounts because I couldn't reset my password "on the web" and required me to use Virgin Money's app.
Customer service agent(s) on the phone after prolonged discussions why their app wouldn't work on three Android phones right in front of me surfaced, and I shit you not
That day I found out about this
https://www.currentaccountswitch.co.uk/
Begin by just getting a house already.
Maybe I could try buying and scalping an iPhone on eBay
:thinky face:
See that's the thing, I work far too hard and after a night shift and then getting onto a "customer support" agent reveals the cracks in our society.
Maybe you could work harder too!
It was the sheer arrogance of that "supervisor" I escalated it to and I hate to think how someone like a pensioner would've dealt with them that day wanting to access their bank account, especially since all the local branches have been closed 👺
RIP Yorkshire Bank
I also had to switch accounts because after an update, the banking app didn't work any longer on my rooted phone and I couldn't log in. Thankfully, I've been keeping two accounts since forever, with the main motivation being that banks really like changing their TOS and introducing all sorts of fees, which I don't want.
Everything by Virgin is shit. I don't understand why they're so big
Dude that comment would make my blood boil, like holy shit.
also those who dont want to install that spyware shit on their phones. Even if you dont care about the data collection it still consumes battery faster as more and more data is being transferred
McDonald’s (in Germany at least) needs your location to “see when you arrive at the restaurant”. What the hell?! That doesn’t even work properly and they force it on me! I uninstalled the app and now I am actually happy, because without the promotion and discount stuff, I don’t eat McDanks that often anymore.
I use an app for OTR (petrol chain in Aus) and they've removed the requirement for location which is... Unexpected, to say the least. Anything except using the pumps on the app no longer needs it when all orders previously needed it.
Thats actually pretty nice. And on the subject of cars: I don't get why (some) people with E-Cars say they are so much "greener" and then use like 10 different apps for the car, recharging, etc. Those servers produce so much, really, so god damn much CO2... (Not saying combustion engines are better, but...)
My Kia Sportage PHEV came with a "Kia Connect" app. There is a monthly charge but I get first 3 years for free. It's got some sort of useful things but I don't really use it much anymore. More likely than not I won't bother to pay for it when the free years are up.
Understandable. In Germany it isn’t customary to have an AC, but I got one. It’s from Mitsubishi and has some cloud remote control app thing. I mean, ok, controlling the temperature from not home is maybe useful, but I haven’t and will never use it. I just set the Temperature and go on Auto mode…
McDonald's wants your IQ too. Seriously, it's in their privacy policy.
Hello McDonalds. My IQ is 500, so do I get like, free stuff or something?
Ok, that is crazy.
Yeah, I couldn't be arsed to install that shit. I'm also not taking out my phone for this kind of bullshit. I'm sick and tired of smartphones.
If you don't have a smart phone in the US, even temporally, your almost a second class citizen.
Then if you don't install corporate apps on your phone, there are even more problems for you.
I remember this being true almost as soon as smart phones and QR codes were invented. There were so many things you just couldn't do as easily if you didn't have one. Even in 2006.
Social Friendly Browser can usualky get around this
I use GraphineOS on my Pixel 7 and even I feel penalized for caring about my privacy. Its absolutely nonsense, not everything needs an app.
Yeah. My bank is one of the few UK banks whose app won't work with Graphene, which is irritating. Also, the lack of Wallet access for payment cards is annoying.
But all in all everything else works fine.
Lloyds? they're closing my local branch as well really need to go in and close the accounts tbh.
Yep, Lloyds.
They were absolute bellends when I tried to get it sorted to transfer the money to another bank as well, sat there insisting my "phone had been hacked/had a virus" and only actually moved my bloody money after I threatened a official complaint.
These useless apps make Linux phone adoption harder, fuck them!
I still miss firefox os and feel sad for them not succeeding. Their app system could have become a multiplatform standard and allow us to have much more options in the smartphone market, as well as better desktop integration and interoperability :(
that is your takeaway? You're part of a cult if that's really how you think.
Part of a cult for wanting more options...
Ill be part of that cult
Not more options, you want your option to win.
And? Apple and Google are too big and influential as they’re. Why go attacking the little guys?
Linux is awesome, what are you crying about?
You're an idiot or you're trolling, I honestly can't tell.
I'm never trolling about Linux. On Lemmy there are so many cultists that you can say the most innocuous things and it will be downvoted to oblivion or deleted for "trolling". Maybe you don't like calling it a cult but I get more downvoted for negative comments about Linux than other people do when they literally say Nazi things.
And then you get people like this....I mean what kind of broken prejudiced brain do you have to have to think this comparison is ok?
https://lemmy.world/comment/15265938
"You're a cultist!" screamed the cultist, angry at people for using something other than what the cultist prefers.
Calling people "cultists" doesn't sound very "innocuous".
Because a Linux phone is objectively superior, duh
We want other options to be allowed to exist. This is "you just want everyone to be gay/trans/whatever" all over again.
Oof you're comparing government suppression of entire classes of people to linux' failure to attract developers to the platform...... How do you not realize you're in a cult???
Plenty of developers use Linux every day -- the problem is it's not a viable choice for users because of anti - competitive practices by Google and Apple and probably others
What does that even mean?
Most people here would be satisfied with a working website they can access from any browser or OS, mobile or desktop.
everyone wants to force you to use apps instead of websites, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of apps are just websites..in a app wrapper, because normal websites and normal browsers have inbuilt protections for you.
Apps don't.
Idiots install apps, give them the 400,000 permissions they ask for, then go on their merry way..ignorant to the fact that they just installed a data vacuum on their phone thats siphoning everything off of it to be used and sold and resold for marketing purposes.. Even the phone itself its not safe, cause its sitting there, listening to your conversations, even when not on a call, to more "Accurately" spam you with bullshit.
Ding ding ding.
Yep, 100%. That digital coupon is you getting paid $0.33 for the data they collected from you.
This is why I install such shit only if i have to, and only on vm
Phones are not listening and if you have proof post it. No security researcher has ever posted this.
[https://youtu.be/0dGqR4ue8dg?si=tA1s-S3jdz2SwEoo](Idk i trust Snowden's take on this over yours)
yeah yeah, people said the same thing about google home and amazon alexa for years.. until data leaks proved that was a lie, too.
It's called "Active Listening"
https://www.404media.co/heres-the-pitch-deck-for-active-listening-ad-targeting/
I for one cheer and root for my flip phone friends.
I'd never do it, but we have one at work and he's singlehandedly causing so much grief at work. Because none of the engineers wanna use a security app for login. They want a fob.
IT refuses to pay for fobs and wants us to use an app, but they also don't want to pay for a phone for anyone in engineering just to use the security app because it opens a floodgate of people with company phones.
It's just wonderful to watch this fight from the sidelines sipping tea.
I have no smartphone and am unable to access any of my college resources or email from home because you need a security app for remote login. I've got in trouble a few times for it but idk what I'm supposed to do. I wasn't able to access my Exam Timetable because of this and had to ask some friends when the exams were because my teachers didn't know (somehow). It's very annoying.
Edit:
It also took a few weeks of difficulty to get the free bus pass the college gives out as they only gave it out on the bus pass app, I have a card that you scan, I've never had any issues with the card and yet EVERY day people complain about the app not working as you need an internet connection (in an area with dodgy internet) for the app and the app is apparently not very good in other areas. I think people are starting to get jealous of my bus pass card.
You could install an android emulator on your personal computer then run the authenticator from there.
@toynbee @DeaDvey aren't there authenticators that run on desktop browsers? Or does it have to be a specific one
The OC said in a different comment that you must be on the college network to set it up.
You don't need to tag me, by the way; I get a notification if someone responds to me directly.
sorry, I'm viewing this from mastodon so the setup's different.
All good. Hope you have a great day!
Yes, it's a specific one. App only.
The authenticator requires you to be in the college's network to set it up for the first time and I don't have a laptop.
Ah, that does complicate matters. Good luck.
BRB pulling up to a QR code scanner with my 15 inch thinkpad w520 running on 92whr of battery consuming literal watts of power because it's from 2012.
Hopefully i'm not an inconvenience.
what's the rationale for IT not wanting to pay for the fobs?
Presumably they’re expensive and someone needs to manage them.
My company’s approach is “we’ll pay your phone bill if you use an Authenticator app on your phone.” Cheaper for them, plus they don’t need to buy company phones or fobs, and who’s going to complain about their phone bill getting paid?
A previous company tried similar but required putting your phone under enterprise management. A lot of us disagreed with that
They're not expensive at all.
Well, my old company sure made a ridiculous profit selling them. You may be looking at the cost per fob hardware, but not including the management cost. They are much more expensive than an authentication app, plus authentication apps are mostly managed by someone else, and you don’t have distribution overhead
In my experience, the only thing that really made them more difficult than managing end users who were using an authentication app instead was having to facilitate getting the fob to the users and replacing them occasionally and they were dirt cheap... Like less than $5 apiece.
what exactly is the management cost here?
at my old company they simply ordered a yubikey for you amd forgot about it. nobody kept track of it. i didn't even need to return mine when i was leaving. the part they manage is the user account. the hardware you get once and use for added security...
This may be relevant
Managers probably sold apps as a cost cutting measure
My job does this too. It’s literally just cost cutting. The fobs expire and need to be replaced every so often but the app lasts “forever”.
IMO the fobs pay for themselves because what they are spending on fobs is the same as what they’re spending on IT members answering calls all day for employees that are having login issues with the app.
I worked a job where I had to have an app that tracked me wherever I went. I finally had to tell my boss I couldn't use it anymore because it was killing my battery in like 3 hours.
If I was still working and a job wanted me to put an app on my personal phone I'd tell them to go fuck themselves.
Just another way capitalists thieve money from its workers.
tell him the funny internet man that replied to you told him that he was based and that we collectively appreciate his efforts of basedness.
Why are you cheering for a lack of self-control?
Smartphones are great. You just need to be smart enough to not let them use you.
It should put into perspective who is a useful idiot, and who is not.
Perhaps his friends do not have smart phones, because they do not want smart phones.
Yes, but why don't they want smartphones?
As I've been making an effort to replace apps with the browser version of the service. It's so abundantly clear that companies don't want you using their website.
Even if they don't outright cripple functionality, they'll hound you endlessly to install the app.
It's infuriating to say the least.
Still don't understand the logic of doing that.
It's like saying,
"Our website is nigh unusable, please install our app instead. We pinky promise our app works".
It's because you have control over your browser, but they control their app and all its trackers, ads, etc
Yep. They want you to use apps, cause all the permissions you give the app makes it much easier for them to harvest all your data for marketing and selling purposes.
That's exactly it. Easy to block ads and trackers on a website, but more difficult or impossible on some apps.
One of the banking apps won't show the total balance of the account unless I'm using the app. How ridiculous.
They know that a lot of people would rather have it work a little better by getting an app, if they keep reminding people it's an option.
Even if "better" is just lack of nags.
It's sad. We need a digital privacy law so that an app can't be more invasive than the website.
Well, they just swap nags from "download our app" to "rate our app" no matter what you do, you'll be nagged...
This affects me a lot day to day. I have a phone, but it runs postmarketOS, not iOS or Android. It really shows me the importance of open standards. I feel that every business should be required to support open standards for each of the services they offer.
For me, buying train tickets used to be ok, but is getting harder now. Some train operators are really pushing you to use their app now, and getting rid of the option to download a PDF. It really frustrates me: it's not like it costs them more to offer PDF download - if anything, it's much cheaper to offer that functionality than to build and maintain an app for iOS and Android.
Back when I had an Android phone, I used Monzo, and it was so easy to send money to friends, set up standing orders etc. I wish they offered a proper web interface. Now, I use Natwest's online banking, and it's a real pain - I use the card reader to authenticate, then the website logs me out seemingly every 2 mins of inactivity. Some features, like pre-notifying that you'll be travelling abroad, are only available on the app. I only see this trend continuing.
The concert tickets example in the article is insane to me. I can't think of a use case that is better suited for PDFs, and that's what we've been doing for the last 10+ years without any issues. It really is user hostile and excludes people on the edges of society who don't fit, for whatever reason, with what the 80-90% do.
apps allow user tracking and advertising though. Much more valuable to the corpos than a few lost customers.
Also mich More valuable to Google, as they are the biggest Advertising company. I looked it up and according to this source they have ~70% of the pay-per-click market.
The reason venues don't allow PDFs is so that you're forced to use their own platform for resale where they take a commission.
It’s also a gigantic information harvesting ploy.
The whole using your phone for everything from grocery shopping to just doing whatever Like getting deals or whatever?, Can it please go away?
They're collecting our data anyways.
For some things it's more convenient for customers. For others, it's more convenient for businesses.
We, as customers, need to promote what's convenient for us while ignoring what's convenient for businesses.
Keep in mind: we are not on the same side as the people taking our money.
THIS IS ACTUALLY SO REAL FUCKING SMARTPHONES I HATE STEVE JOBS FUCK YOU WHY DID YOU RUIN TECHNOLOGY.
ok rant over, but seriously though, it's so fucked how you basically just need a smartphone to do ANYTHING these days. I don't want a phone, i have no use for one.
A mobile app requirement is an easy excuse for me to nope the fuck out.
My old apartment had gates that could only be opened with an app. They took out the card reader and made it app only. Should have gotten out of there much earlier than I did.
Yeah, that's a nope from me. I'm trying to eliminate as many apps from my life as I can.
the gates that slide over using a chain, they often have a removable link at the end. If you unhook the chain on the opener side, it will open one more time, then spit all the chain out trying to close it. I used to take that link out when living in complexes with those gates. Made life easier for most. Would take months for it to get fixed. They are just standard 1/2in x1/8in bike chain.
I don't live there anymore, but if I did this would be useful information.
I think I forgot to mention that they had cameras pointed at the gates, and I have an extremely identifiable appearance.
Even if I was willing to download all of those apps I don't have room for them. They chew up 50-300mb each (why!?) and if I installed all of them I'd run out of memory. Since most phones now don't support memory expansion I have to be picky about which ones I use.
I have THREE separate parking apps because I travel.
The reason they're so huge is
Mobile apps are also loaded with third party ad and spyware frameworks which bloats up the size.
Same thing with rendering/layout/functionality frameworks. And each app has their own.
My favorite Android app, Trail Sense, which has the ability to know when sunrise and sunset are without Internet, is like 10MB
Well of course not. If phones supported memory expansion you would just buy more memory, instead of buying an entirely new phone Don't even get me started on how bloated these apps have become. I used Paperclip word processor on a Commodore-64; you can not convince me that your app needs to be 50+ Megs in size.
You can't compare (what is arguably) the peak of human computing to modern phones.
...I miss the c64
Edit: fixed pique to peak. Sorry. Autocorrect got me again
I actually wrote my own text editor for the C-64
And that's one of the benefits from open source apps. I have a very low end and dated phone, and yet I have more apps installed and hardware functionality than the average person, because I grab everything I can from f-droid. It's amazing how much smaller and performant everything is.
Have you looked at Obtainium? It pulls apps directly from their release page, or f-droid repos.
I see people mentioning obtainium, but never tried it. Will it give some relevant benefits over fdroid for low end devices?
No benefits regarding performance. But you get faster updates and more apps than on f-droid.
Every app is a bundle of a full website and spyware.
I am still on a flip phone. It is usually silent, and I don't spend much time with it at all. While I am missing out on discounts and such, I simply hate the idea of constantly using a phone. Email is my telecommunication of choice, but receptionists don't understand the idea, unfortunately.
My household bought a Rinnai water heater, and the bastard needed a phone to set the temperature. Thing is, it couldn't communicate with the two or three phones that were used on it. Fortunately, there was an old-school modification for a physical keypad, but that had to be bought separately.
Phones are just not my thing.
I used a flip phone for a month to help curb my screen time addiction. The number of restaurants, stores, etc. that simply expect it of you to have a smart phone was eye opening.
Have you tried... self-control?
Smartphones are objectively better than flip phones.
The flip phone praise comes from useful idiots looking up to children who lack self-control.
It's all bass-ackwards, but that's how far we've strayed from the truth.
The powers that be are happy, though. We're just not one of them.
That is what I noticed. Everything these days require app to get shopping vouchers, book tickets, go in to your local gym, pay in store (we are being weaned off from using cash) etc.
I can't even go to a high school football game without having an app.
Yep, the homeless pay more!
Remember the meltdown over “Obamaphones”?
Not having a phone really sucks in this day and age. Imagine getting out of jail for something stupid like marijuana possession and then a parole violation due to a missed appointment. No one will hire you with your rap sheet. You live in a halfway house with a bunch of petty BS every day. And you can't keep up with your parole demands because of how much your lack of a phone gets in your way. At the end of the day, there IS a way to succeed if you make the right choices, but shit, it's just so much harder for some people to make the right choices when every day is crisis mode. And all because of WHAT?
I'm young and I fucking hate apps. I have android phone without a google account which works well for the most part. I'm too dumb to install LineageOS. and Linux phones aren't really an option in the US.
they make older phones become useless after ditching their support
My S21 is on the verge of losing regular security updates, and I hate it. The battery is fine, the camera is more than adequate, I do not want to upgrade.
Mine decided to randomly start rebooting about a year ago. :( Tried everything I could think of to get it to work normally, but nothing helped. I couldn't rely on it, so I had to replace it. Like you, I hadn't planned to replace it any time soon.
I have an S10e in service, it's perfectly fine.
I saw whoever has the Nokia name now is selling smart phones designed to be end user disassembled and repairable, but they're really mum about how long their software support is.
I'm rocking an S8 as long as I can, but no updates in 5 years is starting to cause compatability issues. I'll have to look into /e/OS soon I think.
I'd still be using my S8, but I got a free phone sent to me from Visible because I refused to upgrade.
So would you not recommend me getting a refurbished s20? That's the most recent model that still has microSD slots and I've seen them for 200. But I'm not sure about security...
How about you get some courage and drop your brand loyalty?
That's what you get, honestly.
Hopefully you can learn from this and not waste your money on garbage.
k
The same goes for customer loyalty cards. All market tracking schemes should be rightfully banned.
What ticks my off is that I have the stupid Safeway card and the stupid Kroger card. But now there's more deals, better deals if I do a digital coupon requiring the app on my phone, too. It's not enough to know about all the regular items in my home, from celery to toilet paper, but they also must need to hoover up all my digital into as well? Dude, just buy it from Meta or whichever jerks have it all. Half-price grapes ain't the right price.
Yeah multiple layers of s***; I'll be honest I never figured out how to use the digital coupons for the second layer of discount; seems like it's not in the Kroger app but some other scammy telemetry scamming 3rs party. I paid the $2.99 for the ice cream I stead of 1.99
Man, I hate when people like you come out with "justifications" like these.
No. They should be banned. Trying to "justify" their existence with "well umm, sometimes you can just talk to other customers for theirs!" is fucking stupid.
Why are we so eager to do the work of our oppressors for them?
I'm in California where we have a grocery chain, Safeway. They've had a loyalty card for decades, which works great, gets you good deals, can be scanned by the checkout clerk or at self checkout. It also racks up points which can be used for discounts.
About 2 years ago I started seeing signs in the store offering even greater savings through the app. There will sometimes be 2 signs side by side for the loyalty card vs the app. The app is always a better deal.
So I downloaded the app and learned
It's the dumbest thing ever. Why not just offer the better savings to the loyalty card? Isn't that the whole point behind loyalty? I literally shop at Safeway less often now.
Loyalty cards werent a great thing either.
They werent to reward your loyalty, they were to tie your purchase history to an individual, So that information can be used and sold for marketing purposes.
It was basically the prototype for the invasive, information stealing apps we have today.
Can't your purchases be tied to you via credit/debit card number? I mean obviously you can use cash, but I don't see a lot of people using cash
yes, that still doesnt give the store your home address, phone number, etc etc like signing up for a rewards card does.
Does the supermarket sell the data, or use it for their own purposes
yes
it's not a flaw. it's a feature.
My GF laughs because I have no loyalty cards or apps and I laugh that she has one for everything.
Loyalty rewards are bullshit.
In the US, if you don't have the loyalty card, you're paying more for groceries. For the stores we use, any sale prices are contingent upon using the loyalty card. This can add up to $5-$10 per order.
We used to be free from such bullshit, but some companies have started trying to bring similar systems here in Brazil, especially drugstore brands that would ask for our id number in every order to give "discounts". Fortunately, this practice is now being investigated, and I hope the companies lose the case.
Oh the same bullshit is done here with Loblaws. I don't care. They have my info every time I use my credit card at their store that's all they need and it's all they get.
If I have to pay more because they're greedy little fuckpigs so be it.
(Local Area Code)-867-5309
Works every time.
Food Lion (East coast, not sure if they're national) has a fairly good loyalty program. Your loyalty card number on the physical card or in the app are the same, you can load coupons to it so they're applied at checkout if they're relevant, you can use their ordinary website if you don't have/want to use a smart phone app...it's non-cancerous.
I am still using a flip phone. My new goal is to make it to 2027 marking two decades of rejecting the smartphone era. Each time I consider compromising something gets even more awful about smartphones and I double down on saying no.
Don't lose hope, lead the resistance!
Out of curiosity, how many flip phones have you used since 2007?
As best as I can remember, I'm on my 6th.
Well... I expected better longevity, to be honest.
My current phone is a flip phone. A Samsung Galaxy Flip 5
Well, you're technically correct lol
I hope you can see that, as an owner of a Android flip phone, it is annoying to see people use "flip phone" as a synonym for "dumb phone". BTW not all dumb phones were flip phones, only the final wave of dumb phones generally were.
@btaf45 @nossaquesapao thank god someone had pointed this out because I'm old and I've been getting confused. Nokia 3310 all the way
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Risky click of the day.
Dang it!
I fell for it.
Dear reader,
The link is, indeed, a redirect to Never Gonna Give You Up
So, my comment was removed without even a warning? What rule did I break? The rules clearly state that memes are allowed in comments.
YES full support! I have and am sending this from my smartphone but I'll stop going to your store before I download your stupid fucking app for a free mcflurry or whatever the fuck pisspoor excuse you have for installing malware on my devices.
Even if you did want apps the majority only offer it from 1 of the 2 popular repositories (" stores "). It's a shame they do not have a way to track that lost sale/interaction.
Cloudalist's and their technofuedalism
You don't need an app to use a loyalty card...
But yes I am against supermarkets that only provide discounts if you use their loyalty program, which in turn allows them to track your purchases. Especially since many items are priced with the discount as the "fair" price and the full price is really just a money grab.
This kinda shit is why I go to Aldi instead. They give everyone the same low prices. Tesco have their clubcard and seeing how much more they want to charge me for not having one puts me off ever going there on a regular basis.
Also under 18s can't get these loyalty cards here so fuck you I guess you have to pay a load more.
Contributing to that Kinderficker changes my opinion of Publix.
Same. We have two grocery stores nearby, both with loyalty programs. One requires using the program to get discounts, while the other doesn't (you just miss out on points). Guess which I shop at...
If I need to go to the other one (Kroger family), I'll use my parents' number so they get the points. I go maybe once/year if there's a particularly good deal.
Last time I went to a new-to-me grocery store that I didn't have a loyalty card for, I just used [local area code]-867-5309. Jenny hasn't failed me yet.
If you do the calculation, the discount you get in the end is often just 1%. I don't really care about that 1%. You can get more, but the time you have to invest to get a better deal makes less money than just work an extra hour.
And some of those loyalty programs have expiring points, that happen to expire just before you get to the tier when things get interesting. And when you do save up to the food stuff you find out the app is a lot better at collecting loyalty points and doesn't work so great at exchanging them.
The main thing this article is talking about is supermarkets in the UK that lock all their sale offers behind the loyalty card. Until about a year or two ago, you could go in and buy things on sale or buy one get one free or whatever offer, and then use (or don't use) your loyalty card on top (to collect/spend points), but now you don't get any discounts if you don't have a loyalty card.
The article/campaigners are spinning this up into something about smartphones, because that's how most people use these loyalty schemes now, but they still have the old style cards so that's a bit of a red herring. The real issue is the way they're tying their standard offers to the loyalty program, and making it more difficult for consumers not to get caught out paying full price.
I wouldn't mind these apps if there was actually a technical need for them beyond just being a Chromium component, but with added data slurping and pointless notifications.
If I have to use an app to use your product/store, I won't use your product/store, with a side helping of go fuck yourself on top.
I use a dumbphone. I'm not buying a smartphone just so I can play these stupid games, and I'm not installing an app for every fucking business I interact with. I realize there will one day be a point where I won't be able to do things I need to do without one, but until then I have no desire for one. Fortunately they haven't made the parking meters here require a smartphone yet.
My grocery store still uses loyalty cards for most discounts (which is irritating enough), but also has "digital coupons" that require an app so I can't get that. Theoretically I could go to their website and print them off but that's not worth the effort. I have to pay close attention to the price signs they put up because some of them say "with digital coupon" in small print, meaning "not for you, bitch". You know who doesn't pull this kind of shit? Walmart. So I wind up getting a lot of my groceries there so as not to be discriminated against.
Early 2000 wants its internet back
Eh. The internet was always shit because of scammers and useful idiots.
Really the only way to make it not-shit is to have governments step in and protect us from what useful idiots have been conditioned to accept as normal.
Governments only serve rich people though, so we're SOL.
It's a cultural problem.
i don't have one. i don't want one, either.
I'm open to hear if you guys disagree with me, but that is not simply about not having a smartphone as much as it is about not having cell service, not using data service. If a person uses a libre VoIP app, there is no need for cell service, and people actually can live happy lives disconnected from internet when they are outside or in public.
Society must revert their mentality and not expect constant immediate access to everything. Absolutely nothing happens on the internet for personal activity that can't wait a few hours or the next day.
I use phone only for direct communication, zero multimedia, zero social media on phone. Everything else is done on computer. Especially banking, that is on computer website only for security, never on phone. I despise and resent using a phone for websites
It is more about being able to constantly spy on everyone. Funny how this exact sentence would have labeled one as a conspiracy nut not too long ago.
Constantly online means constant (more or less) analytics, means constant data to throw in the big computer to make you buy more shit or vote for the shit party.
I don't follow. Don't you need internet for VoIP? Unless the point is to have a phone that gets zero connection while outside a wifi, which sounds kinda pointless?
Correct, use VoIP with wi-fi service instead of cell and data. It also makes the calls untraceable for location for best privacy practices. There's no way to trace where in the world a phone is if using wi-fi to call standard phone numbers. For personal calling, not a work phone, some people don't care about messages and calling when they are out walking, shopping, attending events. They want to focus on the real world around them, not phone stuff.
yeah ok so, counterpoint, you pull up to an EV charging station (it's tesla because of course it's tesla) please show me where the card reader is. I'll wait.
oh but what about the non tesla charging stations you might say. those are still iffy right now, i'm hopeful they'll improve in the future, but a lot of them have readers (that may or may not work) and a phone app (that may or may not work) also whose to say they don't just fucking disappear.
Bad example. Tesla chargers don’t use an app, they assume you have an account set up with a credit card on file. Most people do that through the app but I don’t think you have to. Once it’s set up, it just works with no further interaction.
Or are you doing this as a non-Tesla customer? Yeah that’s not as smooth yet
what are you going to do setup android emulation so you can install the tesla app (which might not work in emulation because that's sus, but maybe they dont have good security anyway lmao) sure, you can set it up once, but like, what do you do if your credit card is cancelled, or the app suddenly stops accepting purchases because "you haven't been online in a week" and it's for "security purposes" or some other stupid shit like that. This is the entire reason card based payment exists lmao. Why are we just reinventing it.
i guess theoretically if it's a webapp you could do it on the browser, but then like, how is it going to link information back to you personally? Unless you own a tesla, where you basically just save your payment info on the car directly at that point. Maybe they will invent credit card 2 electric boogaloo. Are they going to start installing NFC/RFID into charging ports for payment link info? Seems silly to me.
If you own a non tesla, this is as you mentioned, a huge issue, considering that NACS is the charging standard for all of north america now.
Worst case scenario, call support to put a credit card on file with your account. This is what I did when I ran into problems with the app (turns out I was too eager trying to use it before they were done setting me up).
When you use a supercharger, at least as a Tesla, there is a handshake where your car identifies what account to use, then it just works
You definitely lose a lot of convenience features if you don’t use the app, but I believe you can do it, if you want it enough
Edit: just use a web browser. I verified I can login through my web browser to manage my account, my products, my payment method. Not the car features though. I have no idea if this is new, but just use any web browser
i'm really not sure how the non tesla super charger experience looks, that concerns me. Though i assume that must be a somewhat solve problem, if people are using it so.
that's good, there should definitely be some available features for the card, but you can at least handle payment. Though i would still prefer not needing to provide my payment info to a third party anywhere except for time of transaction. Just opens me up to more bullshit.
For sure. Most of my objection is when the purpose is automatic renewal of subscriptions (which ought to be treated as a type of theft because it’s non consensual stealing my money), and at least it’s not that.
My credit card does rotate the numbers a bit but I keep meaning to find one that can generate different virtual cards per service so I can turn a virtual card off when they get abusive with it or when they leak it
![email protected]
It's true in many ways. If I buy McDonald's without the app I pay more for it. If I fill up my gas tank without an app like upside, I pay more for it. There are services that aren't even available to people without modern phones (I refuse to call them smart phones). Maybe we need legislation to ensure all available discounts, services and benefits are available to customers equally regardless of how they engage services.
"Continue reading this on the reddit/instagram/tik tok/blablah app" No, I didn't need to see it that badly.
especially if you don't have an iphone. I have seen so many accessories and apps that were made for use on iphones which would also be useful for android devices as well. my transplant clinic has a patient portal that has an app for iphones but nothing for android so you have to use their website.
I switched thermostats due to the old one failing, and getting a basic smart thermostat was required for a hefty rebate that basically made it free.. and the one I have now, the app thought my not-major-brand phone was a tablet. I couldn’t hit the button to turn down the heat, only up, because it was cut off due to scaling.
So yeah, requiring apps for interface is bad. Even if you are willing to use it there’s so freakin many various versions of android that it’s guaranteed to not work properly for a whole swath of people, mostly those on budget devices.
I'm shocked.
Right off the top of my head, I can mention an entire finacial institution that only exists through an app. No website, no physical locations, no nothing. It's one app and that is it.
No way would I use that app.
We're talking of what is, technically a bank (Moey), that entered my country through another bank. What is even stranger is that you can't even go to one of those banks and make a deposit on you account.
I use the services of what you can consider the most de-materialized bank in my country, which has less than twenty physical locations in the entire country, but they have a very robust help line and you can use the locations of another bank in the same group to deposit money to your account.
But Moey? Either the money is wired in or your stuck.
I mean I use Cashapp, but I could also not use it and my life wouldn't be much harder
I don't know what Cashapp is but I'm going to take the risk and say it's a fintech that handles direct money services. How off am I?
But I'm talking about a bank. The institution only exists through an app. Let's say you do a odd job and you get paid cash. You can't deposit that money: there is no place or way to do so.
A perfect description
Cashapp is also sort of an entirely online pseudo bank. There are places that let you deposit and withdraw cash, but they're like two steps above Bitcoin ATMs
I do know people who have these fully online banks though. On its own, it's a lot less convenient then just having an account with a local credit union where you can withdraw cash for free, and I really don't like that services like Venmo and Cashapp and Zelle are overtaking just handing physical dollar bills to each other
the problem is also apple's slow adoption (or outright refusal) to open up various web apis to make web apps more prevalent.
I recently shared a meal with a female friend. Imagine how I'd look if I wasn't able to get money transferred from her, because of not having a mobile banking app.
Y'all not heard of cash?
Hey, I usually like to have about 50 PLN (~$12.50) in my wallet, but you can't expect everyone to keep loads of cash on them.
In this thread we ask: Can we expect everyone to use a banking app either? How is that more reasonable, if one of them is democratically controlled and the other is corporate controlled?
I have an app for that.
I keep seeing this headline and thinking it's a slur
Even the homeless in my city have smartphones.
Get $50.
Get out of the stone age.
I was raised in the boondocks. You couldn't get reception there back in the 90's, and there weren't any kids or neighbors that I could visit without having to be driven. My parents didn't have any community at all, so I in turn never learned how to socialize properly. To say the least, I never became comfortable with phones, even after moving into civilization. It just wasn't part of me.
Isolation from people is a huge disadvantage in life, you don't get to make friends, network, or learn what it means to be part of society. Here's hoping that cellphones and whatnot become rights, as you have said.
However, some states might provide SSI recipients a LifeConnect program. You get a free smartphone and low-end plan.
Someone make a smartphone that isn't a steaming pile of shit then. The pinephone was so close but struggled with SMS when I tried it.
this comment makes me wish for a Carrington Event in the 21st century