I have recently started a new position and am required to use an app that has three Facebook trackers, one of them being a Facebook location tracker according to Exodus App Privacy in order to get your food when it would literally work perfectly fine ordering to a real cashier or shit even a website rather than having to download an app.
I have also read many stories of people that live in apartments that require them to use a mobile app for god damn LAUNDRY. All you need, is a card reader, and it will work perfectly fine like it has been for the longest time.
Privacy concerns aside, it is just annoying that you need this app and that app and this app and that app and it just clutters space on your phone. Security concerns too as now they have all of this additional info on you online, such as your phone number your email your real name, instead of just your credit card info like a card reader would have. And I am willing to guarantee that their security model is absolute horseshit because they have such a small team of engineers working on the app and the servers.
Literal enshitification
Magne
I’m sure we’ve all experienced this…
Go to example.com
“Ooops! It looks like you’re on a mobile device, which we for some asinine corporate reason don’t support on our desktop site! No “enable desktop site” won’t make this message go away because we make an unreasonable effort to deny you access to our site. Go to mobile.example.com instead.”
Goes to mobile.example.com
“Just kidding! What, you think we were actually going to let you access this without installing something? No, fuck you! This page is literally just a full screen ad for our app and has no access to any other part of platform, download it and agree to it’s fifty permissions before we’ll even give you a glimpse of our content!”
When you download the app, it’s just a web page packaged with all the tracking software.
If you try to read comments on reddit on their website it eventually forces you to use the app to continue.
use old.reddit and it works fine
Or, you know. Just stop using reddit.
True. I go there once a week
And then that ends up giving you another reason to switch to lemmy and screw reddit.
This won’t help in the above case so it’s a little off topic. But I got rid of Twitter on my phone and still use Twitter on my phone - Basically you just open twitter.com in Firefox, and go to the menu and click “Install”. Now you get a launcher icon to an “app” but it’s just the website hosted by the browser.
Instantly saves 150Mb, stops it doing evil shit and because it’s hosted in Firefox I get to block all the ads.
I would advise doing this with any app which has a desktop / mobile version and see what happens - Facebook, Reddit, LinkedIn etc. Some social media sites will nag you to install the app but some won’t or will be functional in spite of it.
Hey that’s interesting. I haven’t used Firefox on iphone for a while because I didn’t think it was possible to add a blocker. Is that now possible? If so, which one do you use?
I believe you can’t because Firefox on iOS is re-skinned Safari
Damn! Ok
On Android you have to setup sync and install the ad blocker of choice on desktop, then sign in on the phone and it will pull your plugins and sync them, worth also trying on IOS as even on Android it’s not as simple as going to plug in manager and installing.
what? no. you click […] menu, Add-ons and pick uBlock Origin. no need to login or anything
Did they update it? For the longest time, you had to use their account sync to get ublock on Android
No idea, this is how it was for me for the past 2 years
I only use Android so I don’t know. Check the menu and see if you have add-ons and you can install uBlock Origin. Edit - it looks like thanks to Apple being Apple, Firefox on iPhone is a wrapper around webkit and doesn’t support add-ons. Maybe you could still make a launcher though I don’t know.
Assuming ios has the same extensions as android, I recommend ublock origin. Used it for years on both PC and android with hardly any issues.
In order to add ad blocker on my phone I just setup my ad block on desktop, setup Firefox sync and then signed in on my phone. At that point it pulled ublock origin and installed it. Not sure if it’s the same process for IOS but it’s worth giving it a shot.
I’m using firefox on android as well, but i cannot find the “install” option anywhere, could you point me in the right direction?
in the Ellipsis. dropdown menu you should see an “Add to home screen” or “Install” button depending on what the website says in its metadata. The latter is for sites which have webapps.
I’m not positive but I think the option “Add to Home Screen” is the same thing as the above user mentioned. That’s what I have in my menu options, I don’t have an “Install” option there.
I’d still go a step further and use a more privacy respecting frontend where possible. Not all of them will allow the use of an account though, so if interacting with the content is important to you, then those are obviously not an option.
OMG fokng genius. Tqq mate for the tip. I’m using it for google news
The number of business that just expect that everyone has already downloaded and installed their app has become ridiculous.
Best Buy now demands an app be installed for order pick up. They are so sure you’ll have already done that there are no instructions in their parking lot for pick up that don’t include the app, no way to call them, and the lot employees say, “Just use the app and we’ll get your order.” It’s like the 20% tips programmed into just about every payment machine these days. No, I won’t leave you a 20% tip for handing me a receipt.
Even when going to Best Buy’s service desk the reps looked at me like I was crazy. “No, I won’t install your app to pick up an order” was met with confusion and open irritation. Fuck that.
And don’t get me started on ‘Reddit is better in our crappy Reddit app.’
Jesus, it’s like they want you to order online from a third party instead of paying them.
All the best buys I know of are shutting down. Doing the ol’ circuit city.
Weird. I can just go to the mobile Best Buy site, pull up my order from my account, and get the barcode they need to scan from there. No need for the app.
I can do the same with the desktop site.
IMO people should not have to know a company’s policies and go through their website to make a purchase. Anyway, it would have been nice if they put that information on the sign in their pickup area, or their pickup reps or desk clerks mentioned it when I told them I didn’t have the app. Instead they made it clear that everyone should either already have the app or install it because they said so.
Way, way too many companies and organizations (like the OP’s) are pulling this kind of crap.
Reddit is better in our crappy Reddit app.
Oh fuck reddit for doing that.
I ordered online and picked up in store at best buy without their app. I showed them the email they sent with the info. No problems at all.
Could it be there’s more than one Best Buy?
My goodness, you’re right! 😁
I thought all best buys had the same policies for everything? Or do they differ between Canada and the US?
Policies and practices are often very different things.
A while ago, I started keeping a personal library/journal/etc. using Logseq. I could fire up Logseq in any browser on the planet, connect to my notes, and jot down whatever idea I had in the moment, all in a FOSS journal that stored my notes in plaintext markdown.
Then … I don’t know what happened, but 100% of their effort went into building an app, which then required them to build a (paid, proprietary) sync service, all rather than just releasing a self-hosted build of the web interface so I could spin up my own note-taking server. (Please don’t suggest alternatives; I’ve probably tried them all.) To “preserve privacy” and promote “local first”, I had to download an app and rely on a closed-source backend to do something I could trivially accomplish on my own. If my platform doesn’t support the app, no notes, unless I rely on the increasingly unmaintained web “demo” that does exactly 100% of what I need from the service, despite dozens of features missing compared to the app version.
But the kicker is that I cannot install things on my work computer. At all. Not portable apps, nothing. I will get a phone call from infosec if I even try, because we are a heavily regulated company. So if I have a bright idea at work, a thought I want to preserve, find a good article, etc., I have to go to another device. I have to interrupt my workflow, change my focus completely, and, probably, lose half of what I wanted to capture.
The thing is, I don’t think they’re data farming. I think they’re running a really good project! Users were begging for an app. “When are you going to release an app?” was a common question forever, because a whole generation of dingleberries cannot be bothered to go to a website that does the same thing, faster, and better than any app.
I’m still going to mention Zettlr and you can’t stop me.
Though it doesn’t have mobile apps and you’d have to use your own method of syncing the files, so not really what you’d need anyway.
There really isn’t a lot of FOSS apps than can replace Obsidian, while also being local-first and usable without an account, is there?
Logseq is really, really close. It’s basically a page I can start writing on, forcing minimal organization through bullets but otherwise freeform. Backlinking, plugins (meh), plain markdown. It’s just so good. It doesn’t require me to do anything other than write. It used to be entirely browser-based, syncing through a github repository. They could have released a self-hostable version of that and I would have been over the moon. Or, alternately, a self-hostable version with non-local storage so I could store my notes on a notes server I control. But they went with the app + sync service route. Understandable but sad.
So I just rolled my own sync through a git server and it works fine (other than iOS, which requires a maddening setup, but that’s not logseq’s fault).
I looked at Zettlr once or twice (thank you for mentioning it). Obsidian makes me crazy with all the UI fiddly bits and configuration. I tried. Oh how I tried. But it just didn’t work with my brain. (It’s the exact same reaction I have to KDE – there’s just TOO MUCH and it sets me off in unproductive directions, and that’s not a criticism of either project as such.)
I tried Logseq after looking for an Obsidian alternative, but I already failed at understanding how to import my notes. Can’t you just point the app to a folder? The import function seemed to only work for single markdown files, but maybe I was just missing something obvious.
That was a lot more straightforward in Zettlr, so I just kept using that, since it already does everything I need
Sort of, but the notes aren’t organized in the filesystem. So you point to a location where the files will live and it creates, e.g., journals and pages folders into which journals and pages are dropped. Each is one flat directory (which seems like a scaling problem after a while, but I’m nowhere near that being an issue).
Because logseq doesn’t do freeform markdown by default, you cannot just open any arbitrary markdown file in it. Or, rather, it will give unpredictable results if you do. If you’re used to a free-form editor that organizes files hierarchically, that is going to seem very, very strange and may not be what you’re looking for. My preference is to spend zero time organizing files and organizing text, so logseq’s choice to make both a non-issue is an absolute godsend. Open the app, start typing. It’s great (for me).
Yeah okay, no wonder I couldn’t warm up to it. I need that order and hierarchy in my notes
Smart phones ruined the internet
i was looking for a new toothbrush yesterday… they have app enabled toothbrushes. bluetooth. why the fuck do i need an app to brush my fucking teeth?
So that your neighbors can keep track of your oral hygine, or even trigger an automation every time you brush your teeth.
Need? You don’t. I would suggest that the majority of people don’t brush their teeth properly and the app-based tooth brush can help people reach all their teeth, brush for the right length of time, etc…all that has the knock on effect of helping those who use the app-connected tooth brushes avoid painful and costly dentist visits.
Reminds me of the episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia where they pick up people in the “Paddy’s Wagon” and Dennis forces them to use a painfully overblown app just to buy a couple of beers. It seems to have cooled off a bit but the rush for every little business to have its own app reminds me how every pizzeria and dry cleaner felt the need to have a website and social media presence.
I have 3 goddamn parking apps I have to keep on my phone, each with its own account, just so I can park in various cities when I travel. I’m sure my data is 100% secure too…
The final episode of the latest season goes harder on this issue. This time the turns have tabled though.
no physical park meters in the streets?? can they even enforce parking fees then? like, I understand private companies doing such bullshit, but not public entities
Wait until you find out that some cities sold or leased parking rights to private companies.
that’s some backwards-ass capitalist dystopia, even if you account for car-centrism
I realize you may just be venting but consider complaining to your college administration either via your student council or by yourself.
It should not be the norm to have to tell a stranger where you are to eat food.
You are paying for your education even if you are doing so via a loan and that gives you the right to tell them how you feel about them invading your privacy. In college and in jobs authority figures routinely try to control you and it is worth learning to take a stand against such abuses.
They literally could not give one fuck less. They are probably being paid or otherwise are getting some other kind of kickback to push these apps. Colleges are…I hesitate to say greedy, but let’s call it “capitalistic”.
I agree with the sentiment, but if no one ever complains things are guaranteed to not change. At least this is, at the very least, an exercise in explaining your own viewpoints and understanding the workings of an institution. That is a skill and lesson that is valuable in the professional world.
via your student council or by yourself.
This is literally what the student council exists for! Also, OP could join student council! As a graduated student government nerd I highly recommend it!
Worth noting the college probably did it because they want to appear to be technologically advanced. As part of Student government I visited a campus that had no public water fountains but did have a gigantic touchscreen map about the size of a normal printed map that conveyed no extra information that a printed map would. It was very clear what motivations were behind those decisions
This idea actually turned me off using Sync for Lemmy or other apps that have their own ad injection capability, as you have to pay to turn off ads but the ad tracking payload is still baked into the app, so is it really off or is it on but not showing the ads that it is still tracking data for in the first place?
Same here. I ended up using C9nnect for Lemmy as it doesn’t collect any data.
Agree, but other options are punished. Back in the early days of Reddit Sync, he made a Reddit Sync Pro app that never had ads at all, but Google punishes duplicate apps. So there’s not really a good alternative option due to the ecosystem.
Is it otherwise free? People seem to hate ads but love using free stuff.
Does Lemmy.world have ads? Cuz thats the free stuff I’m using, a front end glorified RSS feeder is a stretch to allow even more ad tracking.
I’m about to suggest another app for you to install. :p
If you’re using an android phone (I don’t know if it exist on iOS) install the DuckDuckGo app. It has a feature called “App Tracking Protection”. It is supposed to block all trackers. I think it works as one of the games i have installed on my phone takes about a minute longer to load, compared to without the tracking protection. I think this is the next best course of action (apart from not installing / using the required apps).
To add to that, if you just want this form of tracking protection without the browser that comes with it, the app Tracker Control does exactly the same.
Good to know. I also make use of the free Duck.com redirecting email address so the DDG app is nice to have. Besides, you can never have too many browsers ;p
I am still learning lemmy. This is a test comment.
My response to this is that I refuse to use apps like that. For example, the only app I have on my phone is a OSM+ (maps). (As well as core basics: clock, contacts, camera, phone app, etc.).
I’ve never once scanned a QR code, I don’t have any phone apps that require an account for anything whatsoever.
…
And I can say that as time goes on, I feel more and more like I’m in the minority. I’m seeing restaurants where you are meant to order with a phone; and I’m seeing people paying for stuff with their phone; and during covid contract-tracing times, there were a lot of different things that assumed the use of a phone… I just hope that there are enough people in the world with values similar to mine such my life doesn’t get harder due to phone apps being required for more and more things.
The argument I keep seeing against fast food being too expensive is “use the app! It’s cheaper”. Fuck that. I bought frozen junk food and an air fryer. McDonald’s can keep their 15$ meals*
*Disclaimer that I don’t actually know how much a meal is these days, but I know it’s gone way up. Also, I do still buy from McD when I need to shit out a hangover. Sue me.
I’m old enough to remember when you could get a McD’s meal for £6. These days, on the rare occasions I go there for me and my wife, I’m looking at around £25. It’s shocking how much more expensive it is.
Seriously email your IT and/or privacy team at the university level. I work at a university and that would be removed ASAP for sharing PII. If you’re in the US or UK it’s a major violation of your privacy. Unfortunately most IT offices aren’t involved in many of the decisions and many of the people making those decisions are complete ignorant to the situation.
I work on the enterprise apps team at my university. We’d dump that so hard you’d think we were using it to get liftoff. Definitely complain. Also, it’s not inclusive to students without smart devices (they exist!).
If they do still have the option for manual use (with ID card scanners), there are a number of membership card / ID card wallets that are free on most platforms. You can just type the barcode into the app, and it’ll make a virtual card that can be scanned. Same convenience, no physical plastic. If you’re not offended by Google products, Google Wallet works pretty well. Or Stocard, but I’m not sure what level of tracking they implement. Granted, you’re still installing an app, but you get to pick your poison a bit, instead of being railroaded into Facebook shenanigans.
In which case, the only liftoff app that would be best for you to be getting is this one.
Need an account just to use my new gaming console. Another account to play Diablo IV. I bought the goddamned console and game. I had to sign into an app for the console. Why can’t I just play the game? The Samsung display that I got for the console (I have a projector, so I needed something for daytime use) is a “smart” display. That wanted me to create an account with an app on my phone. I just woke up, so if I rambled, oh well.
I think we’re at the point where everything will suck to the greatest degree from now on. There’s no room left for business not to suck (Amazon ads on Prime unless you pay more, as an example). Goodbye anything that isn’t terrible.
Tip on TVs: look for signage TVs. Much better possibility of them not being smart TVs.
If you do buy a smart TV, yanking the network connection and use a Pi to drive the TV connected to a media server. And use OTA antenna.
My issue is more because of the slow as piss operating systems since they are all an afterthought but one they force on you.
Buying a newer smart TV showed me this isn’t getting better. Same size model and price range as the TV from years ago - previous TV was damaged.
The software has more “features”. This removes the app and input feature to a dedicated screen, rather than a bottom scroll menu.
You can no longer switch to a chosen source. The TV analyses a source and only allows you to switch to that source if it has detected the input and guessed what it is. Now when you plug in a hdmi device you need to wait for the TV to decide if you can change to the new source. This is very frustrating when using a switch. Not a problem in older Samsung TVs.
Most of the bundled apps are terrible Samsung services or paid for apps with no uninstall ability.
The apps you may want like BBC iPlayer don’t work correctly. They can access the app, but often the app is unable to play the media without a reset of the TV.
The TV can’t be reset with the remote. Powering off, doesn’t power off the TV. You need to switch it off at the wall. Despite this you can’t cast media to the TV when the screen isn’t on.
Using external devices like a chromecast, firestick, raspberry pi etc. Seems like a good solution. Not really. Samsung breaks the ability for devices to control the TV over hdmi to switch to their source when the TV is in Samsung app menu or settings.
The colours on the newer TV are worse than the old TV.
The TV also has to boot up now.
TVs are getting worse. No one in the TV market actually cares about the experience of the customer. Dumb TV seem like a good idea, but they are harder to access and often cost more.
Someone new has to enter the TV space. Samsung, LG and Sony all make shitty software. They sell as having extra features but these features are half backed and don’t care about the overall experience. It’s the same with their smart phones. A TV should come with decent calibration. A dumb TV controller that handles volume, source input, brightness. Then a second computer to do apps and features, that doesn’t need to be working for base functions until called upon.
My piece of shit smart TV flashes the power light when it’s not connected to the network. 🙃
I’d add to that - never connect it in the first place so it doesn’t know your wifi credentials, and if it has ever connected block the tv in your firewall via hardware address.
In a functional society we would see the government regulate enshitification and protect consumers, but at least in the US, we are not seeing that. Only hope is that the EU can curb this trend somehow and the world follows suit
I went to Buffalo Wild Wings the other day and they tried to have me download an app to pay my bill. I almost had my first Karen moment when I saw that.
deleted by creator
I can understand refusing to accept cash (to an extent) but holy shit that’s insane.
Yeah I was flabbergasted. They said “scan this QR code to pay your bill” and then the website said I needed the app. I’d be fine with online pay but not a fucking app.
My buddy works as a software engineer at a ace that develops parking apps. He’s a pretty vocal advocate for allowing people to pay through the website. They do allow it thank goodness. The last thing anyone wants to do after parking is get an app running they’ll probably never touch again.
No, cash is legal tender. Refusing legal tender for services rendered should be considered insane by everyone.
Sure, but at the same time paying some amounts in cash is immediate red flag.
In particular, when I worked cash register in a business where people often made transactions that expensive (but usually with cards), whenever anyone wanted to pay more than equivalent of around $700 cash I had to ask an extra employee to do the recount after me and the customer had to sign a paper that they are not using illegal obtained money. It went to a separate register and had to be deposited the following morning. They didn’t fuck around but at least never got in trouble for money laundering
You make me want to go out, withdraw 29k in cash and buy a car just out of spite for that. Do people launder money? Sure, but it’s usually gift card scams, and very rarely done in cash at point of sale.
The only thing a card does is make something more traceable, so that if a crime were committed, you could theoretically tie it back to a person, but I don’t know that it prevents these things from happening, just makes them easier to investigate?
I live in an area where I come upon cashless businesses with shocking frequency and I hate it even though I usually pay with a card. I see it as a way to hurt people without cards or bank accounts, and I’m old enough to remember pumping gas and paying a cashier in cash afterwards and people weren’t constantly stealing gas.
Maybe I’m just an idealistic person, but your comment makes me sad.
let me put on a freedomite hat and say: they are a private business and are free to dictate how they do their business regarding bill-settling methods; if a customer doesn’t comply they can simply go someplace else
really though, I have never EVER seen a business which would not take cash. sure, I have seen businesses encouraging card payments and there are plenty of reasons to: one is money laundering I mentioned in the previous comment; cash is fucking expensive to handle (where I live it’s 0.25% markup on card transactions vs 3 to 5% markup of a cash convoy); cash can be stolen by employees or simply misplaced. I know all this varies in different countries but where I live every single shop has cashless options, even farmers’ markets stalls take cards because it costs them close to nothing and they save time and money not gathering cash.
I see it as a way to hurt people without cards or bank accounts
well if a business should accept cash or not make a transaction at all then they are not acting rationally by refusing business. why do you they would intentionally hurt people with no bank accounts?
One Starbucks I went to in California wouldn’t, they were “fully cashless” and proud of it. I tried, they just wouldn’t accept it.
Lol that’s absurd
