Mastodawn

I hate how everything requires you to download a shitty proprietary data harvesting app nowadays when everything can be done just fine without an app.

https://lemm.ee/post/9057055

I hate how everything requires you to download a shitty proprietary data harvesting app nowadays when everything can be done just fine without an app. - lemm.ee

I have recently started university 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, for the dining plan, when it would literally work perfectly fine using your student ID and ordering to a real cashier, LIKE HOW IT HAS BEEN DONE FOR DECADES. 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

Extras Sep 23, 2023

Honestly its fucking annoying literally had to make several user profiles just for my work life and my other invasive activities

radix Sep 23, 2023

A person’s music taste seems to crystalize at some point in their teenage years. The bands you loved at 15-17 are probably the bands that you’ll love forever.

Likewise, I’m finding that my relationship with information services as a whole probably crystalized a while ago, and the new era of “apps for every individual thing” is just wholly unappealing. Give me a web browser to interface with your information. If I can’t get it done with that, I’m more likely to move on to some even older tech and skip your product altogether.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m late to bingo. And get off my lawn.

N-E-N Sep 23, 2023

I’m doing my best to constantly listen to new music every week to keep fresh and malleable in my taste

expatriado Sep 23, 2023

yea, discovering is part of the fun

Rai Sep 23, 2023

RIP what.cd’s amazing music discovery spider web chart

nilloc Sep 25, 2023

I leaned hard on Waffles top 10 and also turntable.fm rooms after college.

Now in my 40s, I’ma little bit stuck in the LCD Sound System era of electro indie.

Rai Sep 23, 2023

I HATED rap and whatnot when I was 12-19 or so. Apple too.

Now I’m constantly listening to clipping. and doneone and UGK (RIP Young Pimp C) on my iPhone.

fraydabson Sep 23, 2023

PWAs for the win!

Scrof Sep 23, 2023

Dunno I can’t stand the music I listened to in my teenage years.

A_Random_Idiot Sep 23, 2023

I dont listen to anyone I liked as I kid cause they all came out as sex traffickers and pedophiles.

now I just listen to disney music, and waiting for the inevitable horror revelations with regards to those.

swab148 Sep 23, 2023

Well, it’s Disney so…

Rai Sep 23, 2023

I WILL NEVER STOP LOVING THE BLOOD BROTHERS

Whisp Sep 23, 2023

But...your grass is so nice and I can't afford a lawn 🥲

TonyTonyChopper Sep 24, 2023

cut out avocado toast and Starbucks (sarcasm)

idk Sep 23, 2023

I don’t think that’s tri,

radix Sep 23, 2023

I don’t know if anyone growing up these days would actually like mobile app requirements if they took the time to think about why they’re required. Source: I’m one of them.

Auli Sep 23, 2023

Most people young or old don’t think about it and don’t care.

RaivoKulli Sep 23, 2023

The bands you loved at 15-17 are probably the bands that you’ll love forever.

Thank god that wasn’t the case. Listened to some awful shit as a kid

eumesmo Sep 24, 2023

Me neither. I wonder if that’s even true, because i see a lot of people changing tastes with age.

danwardvs Sep 23, 2023

An interesting experiment on the music thing. Top songs on your 13th birthday, at least for US/North Americans. www.birthdayjams.com

#1 Song On Your Birthday

Find the number one song on any day. Listen now or watch the music video. Featuring the top hits from all the charts.

jarvis2323 Sep 24, 2023

Wonder what they use your birthday for?

doppelgangmember Sep 24, 2023

Wait come back!! You dropped your cane!

Pons_Aelius Sep 24, 2023

I’m finding that my relationship with information services as a whole probably crystalized a while ago

You are correct but it goes further:

Any tech that existed before you start school is completely natural and quite boring.

Any tech that is invented while you still care about new tech (this can be anywhere between 15 and 45 as it depends on the person) is exciting and cool.

Anything after that is squarely in get off my lawn territory and a bit scary and confronting.

this_is_router Sep 24, 2023

Everything that’s normal between age 10-20 is just as it is.

Everything you get to know between 20 and 30 is the hot new shit.

Everything after age 30 is just another fad you don’t want to invest time to get to know anyway

GoodbyeBlueMonday Sep 25, 2023

I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

this_is_router Sep 26, 2023

Oh cool, thanks for providing the source

Gabu Sep 24, 2023

That’s altogether BS. The bands I listen to have changed constantly since my teenage years. That’s just an excuse to become a ranting old man.

King Sep 24, 2023

Nice bullshit armchair Freud u hating every change due to immaturity or unwillingness to learn doesnt mean we do too

EngineerGaming Sep 24, 2023

Not necessarily… I grew up already in the era of apps, but have the same attitude. And I actually did actively use a smartphone during my tween and early teen years.

Cam Sep 23, 2023

I refuse to use services that demand you use their app.

Services only need a website for the most part, not only is this easier for development cost but it is simplier to create a mobile friendly website instead of creating an Android app, iOS app and a desktop app.

pjhenry1216 Sep 23, 2023

instead of creating an Android app, iOS app and a desktop app.

Why do that when you can just have a buggy and crappy experience taylored specifically for each device?

CatsGoMOW Sep 23, 2023

To be fair, there are frameworks like Flutter nowadays that let you build your app once in one language and it will build/compile an iOS, Android, and web app for you.

milicent_bystandr Sep 23, 2023

I use the work profile via Insular/Island, and certain apps I don’t like but do want I put in there, and freeze whenever not in use.

DocMcStuffin Sep 23, 2023

I went to college before it was app everything and our student id’s were smartcards. Dining plan associated with the smartcard. Just stick it in the reader when you show up and you’re good. You could put cash on your card then use it for the vending machines or laundry or any little incidental on campus. If you needed cashed added to your account, your parents could go online and do it, or you could. That was the only online component. The entire system just worked without any fuss or privacy concerns or anything.

Whisp Sep 23, 2023

That's how it worked at Uni for me too. Basically like a preloaded debit card that also was a security card to let me in/out of buildings. Pretty convenient actually.

idunnololz Sep 23, 2023

Our university made it so anything you can buy with the card was like 20-50% more expensive tho. I usually never bought anything on campus because of it :/

PigsInClover Sep 25, 2023

Yeah at my alma mater the “dining dollars” only covered pretty overpriced crap.

My degree program -> required to be full time and live on campus in specific dorm buildings-> the specific dorm buildings required you to purchase one of the two highest meal plans.

So just to complete specific programs you had to spend $1,000+ a semester on a meal plan for pretty terrible food that you would never see the value of, even if you didn’t want it.

And on top of that, you’re likely paying far more for all of it in the long term via student loan interest.

That made it all the more infuriating to me when my limited set amount of “dining dollars” in the plan (usually $100) only covered stuff like a $4 bag of fruit snacks or a $3 snack-sized bag of potato chips. This was back in 2015 too.

For profit higher education is greaaat.

SpeedLimit55 Sep 23, 2023

Yeah it worked this was in the late 90s except your ID was a swipe card. You also had to go to the business office with a check to deposit more funds. Online was still dial up for most people.

numanair Sep 23, 2023

Yeah, same but they also worked as bus passes.

radix Sep 23, 2023

I like this too because it doesn’t require you to turn on NFC which I feel like drains power.

KairuByte Sep 23, 2023

I mean, it does. But it’s such an insignificant amount you’d never notice.

If you got an hour of use out of your phone for instance, you’d only lose about 18 seconds runtime.

radix Sep 24, 2023

Huh, today I learned. I’d always assumed it was like Bluetooth or location.

chriscrutch Sep 24, 2023

Almost without any privacy concerns. When I went to college around the turn of the millennium, I worked at the main food court on campus. We had a card system just like you’re describing. When we swiped the student’s card to pay for their meal, their student ID would come up on my screen. Their student ID was their SSN. Back then the first three digits of a person’s SSN was based on the state they lived in when they got their number assigned. For most people that was when they were a baby or at least very young, and for most people that’s the state they did most of their growing up in. I used to have most of the codes memorized, so when I’d swipe someone’s card and see that they had an SSN from someplace that wasn’t I’d mention it. “Oh, hey, you’re from Ohio? My aunt lives in Ohio.”

DocMcStuffin Sep 24, 2023

Yikes! That was a privacy nightmare. We were fortunate that the university assigned a personal ID on enrollment. I think the only place that had access to the social was the front office. Of course some of the students worked at the front office. I hope they were required to sign an NDA.

miss_brainfart Sep 25, 2023

That’s still how it works where I am, but the little devices to renew your card every semester are broken half the time, so yay

dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️Sep 23, 2023

And related, if your hardware product requires me to create Yet Another Account just to plug it into my computer and have it work, I’m returning it.

guyrocket Sep 23, 2023

How can people push back on this insanity? I don't want 500 goddamn apps on my phone nor do I want 500 accounts on "portals" or what fucking ever your calling it today.

I agree with OP, but how do we resist the borg?

Whisp Sep 23, 2023

I try to by from small local retailers whenever I can.
They generally don't have the resources for apps like that, and/or they dont care to track their customers like that.
Plus you support the local economy. Win win.

ours Sep 23, 2023

Yet some local retailers somewhat insist on doing their own app.

One instead of a website where I could look at their course catalog and book had App Store/Google Play apps. They were terrible, and wouldn’t install on a still-supported Google Pixel phone, a friend with an iPhone tried the Apple version and said it was horrendous and uninstalled it immediately.

I don’t understand why they went with terrible custom apps, a responsive website would have been so much more convenient and easier to maintain! Also, call me old-fashioned but some things I just prefer doing from the comfort of my desktop with a nice big screen, keyboard, and mouse.

pjhenry1216 Sep 23, 2023

In things where I can't avoid an account, I use an email alias (personally I use Mozilla Relay, but Proton Pass offers logins as well if I recall.

bob_wiley Sep 23, 2023

If something is trying to force me to use an app I don’t want, I don’t give my business to them. Also ignore any financial incentives they try to get you with. You save a couple bucks once and they have you.

“Download our app and save 10% on your order.”… no. “Sign up for our email newletter and get a discount.”… no. “You need to download our app to order.”… no “If you download are app you can track your order to see when your package will arrive.”… no.

Say no. Fuck these businesses. If they have an app that is useful and you want it, ok, but if they are trying to push it on you, it’s a trap. Fuck em.

Pons_Aelius Sep 23, 2023

The 80s movie classic War Games has the answer:

STRANGE GAME...THE ONLY WAY TO WIN IS NOT TOO PLAY...

centof Sep 24, 2023

One way is to just lie and say you only have a flip phone. There are probably millions of old people that refuse to use smartphones because they don’t understand them and there no reason you can’t pretend to also have a dumb phone.

guyrocket Sep 24, 2023

GREAT idea! I have both a flip and a smart phone.

wantd2B1ofthestrokes Sep 23, 2023

I guess unpopular opinion but experience of a good app is significantly better than the experience of even a good mobile website. Especially if I’m frequently going back and forth between pages and whatnot.

The data harvesting is a huge issue but it’s clear that most people don’t give a shit. Though I think iOS and Android have both done a good job exposing what data apps are collecting on your and if you are conscious of it, the info is there for you.

smileyhead Sep 23, 2023

If the app is libre software than ok.

dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️Sep 23, 2023

I use Android, and I guess it “exposes” what permissions a given app is asking for, but in the end that’s bullshit anyway. You download some app for a fast food joint or whatever and immediately it demands all the permissions under the sun: Microphone, location, contacts, call history, media, etc., etc., which are all things it clearly doesn’t need. But it’s worthless that the OS tells you this, because the fucking thing refuses to work if you deny it any of these ludicrous permissions, so it’s become a boy-who-cries-wolf thing by now and users just click through the prompts without reading or understanding them.

edric Sep 23, 2023

As a musician, I have to maintain an artist account on all the major social media platforms. It’s frustrating that a lot of features for posting only exist on their respective mobile apps instead of making them available on the web version where I have all of them neatly arranged in tabs on my laptop browser. Instead, I had to install all their apps on an extra phone (because I don’t want those things on my primary personal phone).

Whisp Sep 23, 2023

What sites are you mainly using?
Which one is the most pain in the ass to manage?

Love to check out your tunes if you'll drop a link!

edric Sep 23, 2023

All the big ones (fb, instagram, twitter, youtube). They all have their own pains on web. For example, you can’t schedule posts on instagram on its own. You also can’t create reels on both fb and IG, although at least Meta’s business suite allows you to post standard photos and vids on both platforms simultaneously. You can’t create shorts on youtube web too. Twitter is absolutely basic, and I can’t say much about the app because I refuse to install it even on my extra phone. Besides, it’s not really intuitive for posting anything other than links, static photos, and standard videos, and most musicians are more active on IG now.

Thanks for the interest! You can check out my music at www.linktr.ee/secondstagenavigator. I do a different genre on every release so there are genre tags for each album. Just pick your preference :)