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. ↩︎

  • @[email protected]English
    12•4 days 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.

    • @[email protected]English
      11•4 days ago

      A: “You should switch to Matrix.”

      B: “I’m used to this. I don’t want to learn a new thing.”

      A: “Well it’s very similar, so there wouldn’t really be much of a change.”

      B: “Well if it’s the exact same thing, why should I switch? I might as well just stay on Discord.”

       

      ^ THIS shit pisses me off. It’s like MAKE UP YOUR MIND. DO YOU WANT DIFFERENT OR SAME?

    • @[email protected]
      8•4 days ago

      The two people they talk to on Discord would have to change over as well. I would love to use matrix for more things.But literally no one I know IRL Or otherwise communicate with regularly would switch with me so what’s the point. And honestly I don’t even really talk to people on here who do you have matrix so I do have an account but I don’t talk to anyone on it.