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cryware: I think I get your point but consider this: -your suggested formula- is not the universal solution. At least not to this fool (me)
We have enough doom happening and a very few being aware of it, discouraging them is not an option.
I don't know your demographic, but my strategy was aimed at a broader layperson audience, which can also be applied to more intermediate and advanced audiences too. Fundamentals apply here in recruiting actors for more effective campaigns since they would put enough pressure on corporations to comply.

OP is complaining about the lack of consumer vigilantism. So how do you recruit others onboard with your idea? Copy what investigative journalists do. Explain the issue, why it's important, and suggestible actions. Each argument supported by strong evidence preferably from recreating the issue through reproducible experiments, citing various unbiased sources and interviews with leading experts to help enhance the credibility of your message. If it's informative and valuable, someone will disseminate this video with the relevant communities and those experts and influences will mobilize action with multiple actors.

Take for example the technical issue with NZXT's H1 cases being a fire risk. GamersNexus demonstrated the issue, explained why the issue happens, and advised what NZXT should do. Initially dismissed by NZXT about the fire risks they found, the result ended up being formal responses, formal US and Canadian government recalls, refunds, and a newer superior riser cable replacement kit. Though NZXT cheaped out by quick-fixing the initial riser cables with consumer cables and created further distrust with the brand. As you can see, you went from a very rare issue affecting a small percentage of 32k H1 users to over 800k+ PC users and their inner networks becoming aware and distrustful of NZXT.

The inherent assumption here is OP thinks most of the forum users are already very sensitive to anti-telemetry, anti-corporate, and DRM-free ideologies. So there are three possible reasons why people don't care enough:

1. They haven't done a good enough job explaining to others why it's an important issue.
2. There's not enough people badly affected enough to be an issue, so #1 to convince those unaffected to become sympathetic to your cause.
3. OP and others are too sensitive and are overblowing the issue.

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We're all here because of DRM-free. I am still under the impression of #3 that doomsayers are overblowing the issues of DRM-creep and operating entirely on slippery slope fallacies and on principles alone. Cosmetic content hidden behind Galaxy isn't essential to finishing any of the games last time I checked. I honestly can't see any reasonability in losing out on a jacket, two t-shirts, an overpowered weapon that kills the difficulty of the game, and a plushie in CP2077 to go on a crusade about it. But I will complain if a paid single player game suddenly required Galaxy to play and beat.
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kohlrak: The irony being that they're not owned by Hitatchi, which is what showed me this is a corporate thing.
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ssling: Sorry, what? What not being owned by Hitachi has to do with anything?
Sorry, typoed. They are owned by Hitachi. A corporation now owns it.
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MeowCanuck: If you want to persuade laypeople, you should be using palatable, audience-targeted content backed by data to help support your opinions. Set up educational websites or a Youtube channel to encourage specific consumer activism. People are too busy in their daily lives to sit down and learn coding, data harvesting, privacy laws, and software changes to understand corporate maliciousness. I'm sure most people know it's bad, but they don't understand the extent of how bad it is.
Except this is also precisely what they don't want. It's well known your average consumer of articles never reads beyond the headline. My arguments for having someone learn coding and such has little to do with this, though, but more from a usability standpoint. If you really like a knife, and want to keep using it, you need to learn how to sharpen it. People don't really care for preachy videos on issues, and usaully your views will come from those whom agree and then send it to someone else whom probably won't bother clicking your link.
Take a page from fitness channels. Before, there weren't a lot of people at gyms and now there are tons of people at them working out more effectively and efficiently because info is a lot more accessible and disseminated these days.
Where the hell these people working out at? And i get the impression, due to the economics of gym equipment, that unless you only see cardio (which is really unwise), the information clearly isn't correct. Economically speaking, gyms are cheaper, especially the ones not aiming to make a profit, like the one I go to. What i see is a bunch of channels that make things look palatable, but their palatability has an effect on the effectivity. WiiFit ended up having some notariety for this.
Another example is social media. Once I learned how much it was damaging my mental health through news articles (and later scientific papers), understanding its exploitative techniques, I effectively quit all social media.
Well, that's a good example, because twitter's still alive and kicking, as is facebook and others. As you said, people are too busy with their personal lives for this stuff.

I've heard some sources say that news sources are damaging in similar ways to social media, too. But that's a whole other topic.
And no, walls of text involving self-inserted quasi-politics and philosophies won't work either. Neither will memes, except for those who were leaning towards that viewpoint in the first place. But you can't just expect people to dedicate hours upon hours of their free time sitting down to relearn everything you did to increase the aggregate of consumer vigilantism. It contradicts the division of labour and disregards people's value of their free time. Condense your reasonable message into a 20-40 minute video essay, upload it to Youtube, take the time to respond to criticism to clarify, and you're all set.
Actually, memes have been shown to be pretty effective. And i'll tell you, anyone i've sent any video longer than 5 minutes to has told me they don't have time for it. I don't know what kind of people you're dealing with, but with all the people i regularly meet I just don't find people with that level of willingness. I don't necessarily blame them, either. The thing is, i noticed most people just try to avoid issues, and even if you can get them talking about why X is a problem, like to the degree that they themselves will tell you why X is even a problem in their lives, in ways that you have not specified, they will not abandon X. Social media is a classic example.

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cryware: Sorry MeowCanuck, you forgot to include the youtube link to your reasonable video essay using palatable, audience-targeted content backed by data.
Could you add it please?
I am a lay & too busy person and cannot dedicate hours upon hours of my free time sitting down to read and understand your wall of text in your post involving -maybe- self-inserted quasi-politics and philosophies.
A meme would have been a great helper!
-Watch you later- Gotta go to the gym to save my life

**ironic mode off**

I think I get your point but consider this: -your suggested formula- is not the universal solution. At least not to this fool (me)
We have enough doom happening and a very few being aware of it, discouraging them is not an option.
For some reason i don't catch this sort of thing enough. Kudos to you.
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kohlrak: I wish that were more of an option. I'm looking into pinephone, lately. Part of me thinks it'd be smarter to go full pi with a GSM addon.
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Arcadius-8606: There are a TON of ROMS, I just picked the ones that work best for my personal life. UBTouch is my fall back HOME PHONE as it's just for phone, text and reading books. I use it like a traditional phone and it's installed on my wall for when ppl call the house using a free phone service.

My Lineage OS phone is for watching movies, shows, playing games, web browsing, reading books and doing some lite work on it. It's the phone that travels with me when I'm out and about.
While I haven't tried looking at my device specifically, i highly doubt there's a good selection for it. I noticed android in particular is getting tighter and tigher on control. My favorite app is more or less abandoning all hope, recently (Termux).

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cryware: I think I get your point but consider this: -your suggested formula- is not the universal solution. At least not to this fool (me)
We have enough doom happening and a very few being aware of it, discouraging them is not an option.
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MeowCanuck: I don't know your demographic, but my strategy was aimed at a broader layperson audience, which can also be applied to more intermediate and advanced audiences too. Fundamentals apply here in recruiting actors for more effective campaigns since they would put enough pressure on corporations to comply.
Doesn't appear to be that viable. And it's not like there aren't people trying this already. This needs something a little more... societal. The problem, ultimately, is that corporations don't have the right incentives. Unlike where capitalist companies are beholden to the customers, corporations will benefit from hurting their own sales in order to create profits by their loss of profit (shorting stocks). Usually this has to be done in fancy ways that aren't viewed as violations of fiduciary responsibility. Given the fundamental issue at play, i'm not confident that there is any sort of reform that would fix the problem. The whole corporate model seems to be precisely the problem, and solving that needs to come from society as a whole, which requires a majority, not some name-and-buzzword activism.
OP is complaining about the lack of consumer vigilantism. So how do you recruit others onboard with your idea? Copy what investigative journalists do. Explain the issue, why it's important, and suggestible actions. Each argument supported by strong evidence preferably from recreating the issue through reproducible experiments, citing various unbiased sources and interviews with leading experts to help enhance the credibility of your message. If it's informative and valuable, someone will disseminate this video with the relevant communities and those experts and influences will mobilize action with multiple actors.
Have you been sleeping the past year? There is no credibility among journalists and "experts" right now. Oddly enough, that seems to be pretty helpful, because these are precisely the people that have the incentives to keep the problem going.
Take for example the technical issue with NZXT's H1 cases being a fire risk. GamersNexus demonstrated the issue, explained why the issue happens, and advised what NZXT should do. Initially dismissed by NZXT about the fire risks they found, the result ended up being formal responses, formal US and Canadian government recalls, refunds, and a newer superior riser cable replacement kit. Though NZXT cheaped out by quick-fixing the initial riser cables with consumer cables and created further distrust with the brand. As you can see, you went from a very rare issue affecting a small percentage of 32k H1 users to over 800k+ PC users and their inner networks becoming aware and distrustful of NZXT.
That's a small problem by comparison, even if it's obviously a big deal.
The inherent assumption here is OP thinks most of the forum users are already very sensitive to anti-telemetry, anti-corporate, and DRM-free ideologies.
Less anti-corporate: as i've noticed some parts of the forum are very, very pro-corporate. GOG users also seem to be more responsive on average to telemetry than other crowds, but not really strong. DRM-free, however, is moderately strong, here.
So there are three possible reasons why people don't care enough:

1. They haven't done a good enough job explaining to others why it's an important issue.
I have no problem actually getting people to agree when a dialog opens up. I'm sure if i pressed hard enough i wouldn't even need a dialog, because my experience shows me that everyone is aware of the problems with these things.
2. There's not enough people badly affected enough to be an issue, so #1 to convince those unaffected to become sympathetic to your cause.
This is a bit more on point, but not quite. Often not hard, especially if you know someone personally, how to show them how the problem has been affecting them, as well as making a convincing argument of how it's going to get a lot worse. It's not unusual to also get them to agree. Commitment seems to be the issue.
3. OP and others are too sensitive and are overblowing the issue.
Not when there are demonstrable issues. Apathy seems to be the name of the game. A few individuals i've approached directly, i've also known unrelated issues in their lives, where you'll see a similar response. I'll pull out my own girlfriend in this issue. She works in the healthcare industry, and shortly after starting working where she works now, there was an incident where a patient attacked several nurses (which she is) with scissors. One of the things you'll learn quickly if you get to know any nurses, is that they regularly have to deal with violent poeple, and they somehow don't have the right to defend themselves (i can understand, you don't go around kicking people dementia in the genitals, because they refuse their medication). Now, I can demonstrate that there are things that I have learned in martial arts that can be applied to defending oneself that does not require actually violating the rights of any patient, but also I think we can agree that when someone starts running around with knives, scissors, guns, etc, that maybe different standards apply (especially, 'cause, well, they're also a threat to other patients as well, and there are some things more important than company policy, like your life and the lives of those around you). Suddenly, there was some shallow interest in my suggestion when my dear girlfriend showed up to work one day, only to realize that someone whom she gave report to every day would not be showing up for work ever again, because her fiance stabbed her to death. It was enough of a threat, that my girlfriend who knew me for years suddenly was half afraid of even me, but it wasn't enough of a threat commit to taking some time to learn some basic self-defense skills. It's not like it's a truly one-off thing, either. Saturday evening, there was another murder in my area. My dear girlfriend has expressed concern for her own safety, as she found out some of the younger patients have criminal records for violent crime. She still isn't learning anything, though, despite the staff of this facility, during her shift, being fewer than 10 people, all of which are women, and some of which are fairly old. It's safe to say that something's going to happen within the next year that's going to result in me saying "i told you so." And, if she's not the vicim, she'll have some renewed interst in self-defense, that never manifests, before it turns back into apathy.
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We're all here because of DRM-free. I am still under the impression of #3 that doomsayers are overblowing the issues of DRM-creep and operating entirely on slippery slope fallacies and on principles alone. Cosmetic content hidden behind Galaxy isn't essential to finishing any of the games last time I checked. I honestly can't see any reasonability in losing out on a jacket, two t-shirts, an overpowered weapon that kills the difficulty of the game, and a plushie in CP2077 to go on a crusade about it. But I will complain if a paid single player game suddenly required Galaxy to play and beat.
Gwent.... But it's not single player. The thing about fallacies is that something can fit a fallacy and still be correct. The fallacy just isn't a viable argument. If someone can demonstrate why the slippery slope is the case, or is a reasonable assumption, it's not really slippery slope fallacy, anymore, because we're not arguing that something must go that way 'cause it leaned that way. The question is whether or not we have a demonstrable pattern of behavior where lines have been crossed, and new lines have beend drawn only to end up crossed. The answer to that, of course, is yes. ALthough it has been "fixed," No Man's Sky has had single-player content linked to online features in a very meaningful way. The fact that the parent company made a game that only works online and was pushing it so hard with their DRM-free store (we're talking about GWENT) is an obvious red flag (and the irony with it being the only game with full DRM in GOG's catalogue is worth looking at). One could argue that this is not necessarily a problem, beacuse the idea needs DRM to work, more or less, but one would expect the idea to be thrown out on those grounds at the proposal level, because they would've known. Clearly, it's not a principle, which means under enough pressure, GOG will crack, because that's hat unprincipled means.
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kohlrak: While I haven't tried looking at my device specifically, i highly doubt there's a good selection for it. I noticed android in particular is getting tighter and tigher on control. My favorite app is more or less abandoning all hope, recently (Termux).
If it was made after 2011, then you have a wealth of ROMs to select from. https://fossbytes.com/android-custom-roms/

If it's made from 2009 to 2011, then your selection is very slim.
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kohlrak: While I haven't tried looking at my device specifically, i highly doubt there's a good selection for it. I noticed android in particular is getting tighter and tigher on control. My favorite app is more or less abandoning all hope, recently (Termux).
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Arcadius-8606: If it was made after 2011, then you have a wealth of ROMs to select from. https://fossbytes.com/android-custom-roms/

If it's made from 2009 to 2011, then your selection is very slim.
I remember my tablet not having many possible ROMs available and it was released in 2015. seems to have gotten al ittle better, but that looks a bit... Not good in my experience.

Not to say that things aren't nice, but i'm not exactly seeing the kind of thing that i've come to know and expect, like a whole new kernel. These seem to be less accessible (in the original sense of the word). This is why i'm leaning towards something that I can write my own OS for.
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ssling: Sorry, what? What not being owned by Hitachi has to do with anything?
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kohlrak: Sorry, typoed. They are owned by Hitachi. A corporation now owns it.
Videolan is non profit organization not owned by anything. Where did you get this?

Only thing I found is this VLC Photonics which indeed Hitachi owns but that would be rather silly mistake.
Post edited July 14, 2021 by ssling
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kohlrak: Sorry, typoed. They are owned by Hitachi. A corporation now owns it.
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ssling: Videolan is non profit organization not owned by anything. Where did you get this?

Only thing I found is this VLC Photonics which indeed Hitachi owns but that would be rather silly mistake.
so i could just take the code ,wrap it and sell the product?
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kohlrak: Sorry, typoed. They are owned by Hitachi. A corporation now owns it.
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ssling: Videolan is non profit organization not owned by anything. Where did you get this?

Only thing I found is this VLC Photonics which indeed Hitachi owns but that would be rather silly mistake.
Would be a silly mistake, but i overlooked the nuance when i was searching due to the nearby relevant links and i was more in a hurry at the time i read it to actually solve the problem i was dealing with. I'll stand corrected (i'm also taking this at face value, since i'm rushing around with IDA Pro in another window). I will say it's been a long time since i fucked up this badly. Good to know there's still hope for VLC, at least. As an interesting side note, they had a really interesting April Fool's joke in 2010.

That, then, begs the question why VLC has moved in this direction. The saving of a password without request, and even with explicit removal, is a known issue, and obvious security risk.

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ssling: Videolan is non profit organization not owned by anything. Where did you get this?

Only thing I found is this VLC Photonics which indeed Hitachi owns but that would be rather silly mistake.
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Orkhepaj: so i could just take the code ,wrap it and sell the product?
No, because the whole being owned by no one doesn't mean the parts are owned by no one.
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Orkhepaj: so i could just take the code ,wrap it and sell the product?
VLC is released under GPLv2. Which means, yes, you could very much do that. But only under condition that your software would be also GPLv2 compliant with full source code provided and rights to redistribute it and modify by anyone.