There’s a lot of empirical claims surrounding this topic, and I’m unaware who really has good evidence for them. The Substack guy e.g. is claiming that banning or demonetising would not “solve the problem” – how do we really know? At the very least, you’d think that demonetising helps to some extent, because if it’s not profitable to spread certain racist ideas, that’s simply less of an incentive. On the other hand, plenty of people on this thread are suggesting it does help address the problem, pointing to Reddit and other cases – but I don’t think anyone really has a grip on the empirical relationship between banning/demonetising, shifting ideologues to darker corners of the internet and what impact their ideas ultimately have. And you’d think the relationship wouldn’t be straightforward either – there might be some general patterns but it could vary according to so many contingent and contextual factors.

So before you can message anyone you have to download whatsapp?

I love how this seems like a near insurmountable hurdle. Install an app?? On a phone?!

I have a relative who is ~85 years old; he uses WhatsApp. It’s really not that hard.

The elephant in the room, of course, is that this is literally only a problem in the United States. Everywhere else in the world, folks are totally fine using messaging apps. WhatsApp is pretty popular worldwide, and there are regional favorites too. But, the point is, it’s only in the States that people seem to be against this idea. The answer for why is very much up for debate, but the conversation is, at this point, just getting exhausting.

Can confirm, as a Brit. We probably would have a sardonic explanation for why only people in the States are against using other messengers too…

The app “Island” sort of does this already.

For as long as Magisk has been going, that’s been my root strategy. I’m new to hearing about KernelSU though. Any advantages?

now i’m comfortable with openboard, and keeping an eye on florisboard

Sadly, the swiping options on these ones are useless or nonexistent. I find only gboard tolerable for this form of text input now, which is really crap. Swype was king. Long live Swype.

It’s like people standing in line at the supermarket instead of using the scan-it-yourself-and-self-checkout app. Why???

Some people like the human connection. Some are lonely. Some find the machines stressful.

Look, I’m a consummate checkout-machine-user and always go for that option, much as I always swipe my keyboard, but still, I get it. I actually think it’s a shame that ordinary parts of our human experience that used to be mediated by humans are increasingly dwindling.

The real issue here is that people in the US are tied to using SMS for real-time chat groups when so many better (and private, and well known) alternatives exist. Thankfully, in Europe, nobody so far as I know ever really uses SMS anymore – whether for single or group chats.

Thanks for that, interesting stuff.

I see. But in the limit case where just everybody decided BTC is nonsense and stopped transacting entirely, while mining could continue, eventually it would die out, right?

So in a sense, do transactions not drive the need for mining? If that’s the case, the connection isn’t directly casual so much as one of complicity. Does that make sense or am I still barking up the wrong tree with this way of thinking?

Thanks for clarifying that!

However, the amount of mining is not dependent on the amount of transactions.

Entertain my ignorance on this for a second, but isn’t there some sort of dependence here? Like not a strictly casual dependence, but if transactions were, say, to magically halve for a few days, would that not affect the mining required and thus the total energy expenditure of the mining?

(Obviously the limit case would show this to be true, in that in the absence of any transactions at all, mining would cease. But I’m after something a bit more clearly casually related, somewhat like supply and demand in the marketplace – consumption of beef driving more supply and more methane, e.g.)

(If I can pay with mobile)

Correct me if I’m wrong, but so long as you root with Magisk and configure the denylist, installing the SafetyNet Fix and changing the Props if you need to spoof a device ID, then you’ll always be able to use Google Pay/contactless, regardless of whether on Lineage or another custom ROM.

It’s a strange post in general. Someone’s substack, written in some generic faux-journalist style, with one source for the main claim (“a Redditor”), who isn’t linked to. Don’t know why it’s being shared here.

This is my problem with every keyboard (FOSS or otherwise) since Swype finished. Gboard is the best of the bunch now but I’m loath to use it. I have tried Floris and Open (a fork of it which has swiping) and others, and they are all painful on this front.

Somewhat stretching the analogy there

Your analogy is looking a bit leggy at this point.

But I suppose if you’re buying Apple you’re probably going to buy a new device every year anyway. Never understood the mentality personally.

My cousin gets the new iPhone every single year, and he was up for it at midnight as well, I don’t understand why because it’s not better in any noticeable sense then it was last year, it’s got a good screen and a nice camera but so did the model 3 years ago. Apple customers are just weird.

I think you’re basing your general estimation of the Apple customer on the iPhone customer a bit too heavily. E.g., I have never had an iPhone and wouldn’t ever consider buying one, considering how locked down and overpriced it is, and how competitive Android is as an alternative OS.

Meanwhile, I’ve been on MacOS for something like 7 or so years and cannot look back, for everyday computing needs. I have to use Windows occasionally on work machines and I cannot emphasise enough how much of an absolute chore it is. Endless errors, inconsistent UX, slow (even on good hardware), etc. It is by contrast just a painful experience at this point.

And one of the reasons people buy MacBooks, myself included, is to have longevity, not to refresh it after a year (that’s insane). It’s a false economy buying a Windows laptop for most people, because you absolutely do need to upgrade sooner rather than later. My partner has a MacBook bought in 2014 and it still handles everyday tasks very well.

True by the letter but not really by practice. PC is synonymous with a computer running Windows, or Linux at a push. I don’t know whether that’s because of Microsoft’s early market dominance or because Apple enjoys marketing itself as a totally different entity, or some combination of the two. But yeah, usage determines meaning more than what the individual words mean in a more literal sense.

Not the method of a narcissist or manipulator at all, that.

This is snobbish and elitist. The evidence of this thread alone is that people who interact with this instance or use Lemmy generally also use Whatsapp. For many, it is convenient, relatively secure and private, and free. It engrained itself as the default communications platform in many countries, and Meta ownership doesn’t have any tangible impact on its use for anybody, so far as I can tell. The “people are stupid” line is just ignorant bollocks.