Mastodawn

Colin Jan 11

@cstross Would you like more sealioning?

Yes/Maybe Later

@abstractcode Exactly.

You can't even write a brief note to yourself these days without being nudged to read the latest stock market movements, update Powerpoint (which you do not ever use), watch a video of a sportsball game you aren't interested in, or sign in with your google account for entry in a free lottery.

It's exhausting, and it's not our fault: the people who design our tech don't want us to be able to make it do what we want.

Brendan Halpin Jan 12

@cstross @abstractcode
Not to threadjack, but just a note to myself and anyone interested:

I was delighted to find you can block a lot of those "Sign in with Google" popups by filtering out "accounts.google.com/gsi/*", e.g., in the "My Filters" entry in Ublock Origin.

Henri Verymetaldev Jan 11

@cstross That guy has more food for thought:

https://wondermark.com/c/1551/

Mans R Jan 11

@verymetalsite @cstross The sequel has the finest description of Tiktok I have ever seen.

#1551; Spring Forth, My Creation (Part 3 of 3)

This storyline began with Part 1.

Wondermark

@mansr @verymetalsite I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA how I manage to survive without a TikTok account. No, really. Life is so drab and miserable without having to worry about the slavvering hordes of springfluencers stalking my follower count …

Hippo 🍉Jan 11

@mansr @verymetalsite @cstross this conversation just keeps getting better and better!

Sam at BLAG Jan 11

@verymetalsite @cstross I love this one and used it (with permission) to help illustrate this recent article: https://bl.ag/marketing-without-social-media-advice-for-your-creative-business/

Marketing Without Social Media: Advice for Your Creative Business

The problems with marketing creative businesses on social media, and alternatives to set you free.

BLAG Magazine: Adventures in Sign Painting Craft, Community & Culture

Vincent De Baere Jan 11

@cstross so true. Didn’t know that the mechanism responsible for slowly driving me back to Emacs for everything had a rather nice name attached to it.

Russell Jan 11

@cstross Slack has been doing this with their push of AI on users, but the really insidious thing is that they don't do it to the workspace owners.

Every area of the app has gotten a "Request AI access? [Yes / Not Now]": The unread messages, the search bar, the search results, the user list, the workspace menu, the ..., and everywhere has to be dismissed individually. But the owner? One dismiss and they never see it anywhere again.

Just Jim Jan 11

@cstross Didn't know the term sealioning. Thanks to you and Wikipedia. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more.

Cory Doctorow Jan 11

@cstross I think the point is that if you ask "Do you want an upsell/AI/unnecessary feature?" enough times, the user will eventually accidentally press the wrong button and "consent" to whatever it is.

Happened to me last week. Opened the photos app on my phone because I needed to find a pic I took of a sign I urgently needed to ask an airport staffer about, and accidentally clicked the "Yes, store all my photos on your cloud" dialog I'd declined 5,000 times before.

Oggie Jan 11

@pluralistic @cstross I fucking hate that I have done this a few times. They ask every time when you say no, but only once if you say yes, and clawing any of it back is at best difficult, arguably impossible.

@Oggie @pluralistic Yeah, but you can at least see the business model at work there ("store photos in the cloud" = "pay us rent for cloud storage") and there *is* a tenuous value proposition ("make it easy to share photos with other cloud-connected devices"). Whereas the AI-with-everything is transparently a grift. And most of the sealioning devices are pitching for permission to do something you didn't buy them for (your smart fridge wants to subscribe to the weather channel).

NKT Jan 11

@cstross @Oggie @pluralistic Google keeps harassing me to allow it access to my SMS messages so I can have them AI summarised!? It's under 255 characters! What sort of lack of attention would require that?
And we all know it's really for data to harvest.

Andreas K Jan 11

@cstross
Well I don't have slack on my mobile (it seems to be a bit resistant to installing in to my work shelter), and my desktop app does not nag, but it would be pointless, I am authorized to do buying decisions for the company, and we literally have an explicit default no using of AI based products without explicit management permission policy.

And I would assume that this aspect (not having buying power) is common for most slack users. So why nag them?
@Oggie @pluralistic

Sabrina Web

📎Jan 12

@cstross @Oggie @pluralistic what's the point of a fridge subscribed to the weather channel? So that it knows when it's cold enough and it can tell us to store the food outside?

Charlie Stross Jan 12

@sabrinaweb71 @Oggie @pluralistic Obviously an IoT fridge can bulk-order ice cream when the outdoor temperatures goes over 5℃. (Or not, if you pay your monthly subscription the fridge manufacturer to *not* be spammed with unwanted frozen goods.)

beeznatch Jan 11

@Oggie @pluralistic @cstross This feels exactly how I've heard cyber security works versus attackers: the defender has to be right/correct everytime always forever; the attacker only needs you to fail once.

ahoyboyhoy Jan 11

@pluralistic @cstross my how the mighty have fallen! Worse yet that little slip just ++ the number some BA or PM will parade about to call that prompt a success. And it's probably not anonymized, your name will be on their tongues, "Even vocal tech critic CD found our intrusive and incessant prompt useful!"

@cstross @pluralistic The sealioned enshitifcation of service.

Pier Jan 11

@pluralistic @cstross Hi, this is Con-rad, your virtual personal assistant! I see you have searched “How to disable AI”. Thank you for your interest, I know you’re going to love the new features. I have now enabled AI for all products. You will be charged an additional $50/month going forward. Please note that this change is permanent. Thanks for being an awesome customer! Made with ❤️ in SF.

cliffle Jan 11

@pier @pluralistic @cstross we really need an emoji for describing the seething disdain with which these companies view their customers (except as money sources).

Like, "Made With 🙄 In Palo Alto"

Kevin Workman Jan 11

@cliffle @pier @pluralistic @cstross Isn't that what ✨ means now?

(jk, kinda, but not really)

CoolBlenderKitten Jan 11

@KevinWorkman @cliffle @pier @pluralistic @cstross
What have those poor stars ever done to you?

lizard appreciator Jan 11

@cliffle @pier @pluralistic @cstross mr. beast

0x575446, Fifth Columnist Jan 11

@pier @pluralistic @cstross The best part about "Made with ❤️ in SF" is that I can't tell if SF is referring to San Francisco or Salesforce.

@cstross @pluralistic @pier

Very Human Robot Jan 11

@pier @pluralistic @cstross
You tried to search "How to disable AI" but as murder is illegal, I am blocking this search. Pray that I don't report the next one!"

Virginia S. O'Possum Jan 11

@pluralistic @cstross
I'm sorry for your loss.

bomberfish Jan 11

@pluralistic @cstross what photos app is it? so i can stay farrrrrr away

Cory Doctorow Jan 11

@fish @cstross Google Photos.

@pluralistic @fish OHHHH this is my surprised face at Google enshittifying their app ecosystem by pushing for maximum access to personal data for training their LLMs 🤷‍♂️

B O Jan 11

@pluralistic @fish @cstross I erroneously onboarded my father into google photos, back when they were offering unlimited cloud storage, believing his photos would be safer with some backup mechanism. How naive I was… google rolled back that policy some time ago, reducing quota to 15gb, and started bombarding my parents with alerts/warnings for upgrade. What’s worse was since photos/drive shares storage with mail, when you’re out of storage you’re not able to receive emails. My parents were used to the interface and were hesitant to remove all their photos, so every 2 weeks I had to help them remove some photos so they had enough storage for mail. I got them out completely last month, finally.

bicebird

Jan 11

@piyuv @pluralistic @fish @cstross
Just a plain mean thing to do and really stressful for less technical users
Hate the kind of corporate calculations involved where they must reckon the number of people who give in to get the warning to go away offsets those who change providers

Noodlemaz Jan 11

@piyuv @pluralistic @fish @cstross all my wildlife videos got reduced to terrible quality when I ran out of storage while having bad Internet.
Regrets.

Led By Fools Jan 11

@noodlemaz @piyuv @pluralistic @fish @cstross
You may want to follow this cybercleanse program
being published by @cyberlyra

https://www.optoutproject.net/the-cyber-cleanse-take-back-your-digital-footprint/

The Cyber-Cleanse: Take Back Your Digital Footprint - The Opt Out Project

New Year, New Digital You! New Years are an opportunity for committing to resolutions, starting new habits, discarding what no…

JPeck Jan 11

@piyuv @pluralistic @fish @cstross I got suckered into the same trap. It's a hassle to change so I pay $2 a month for more space since it'd take me hours to sort out what photos are where. There used to be a way to download all of your photos and docs from drive but best I can tell that was removed. I'd rather do that and walk away

B O Jan 11

@boscoandpeck @pluralistic @fish @cstross you can arrange a takeout from a computer but via the mobile app you have to download each image individually, there’s no “select all -> download” flow. I’m 99% sure that’s intentional

JPeck Jan 12

@piyuv @pluralistic @fish @cstross thanks for that. i'll have to checkout take out. need to start cleaning up my digital life... it's a mess 🤢

@piyuv @pluralistic @fish @cstross

Roy Brander🇨🇦Jan 11

Teach your children well.

Don't sign up with "Free" services, the way you don't go along with the guy promising "Free Lunch" to new arrivals at the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

This communications revolution is very, very new. The first generation to try it has gotten badly burned.

We have to teach our children well to never get into the van in the first place, the way hitchhiking has been vastly reduced.

B O Jan 11

@RoyBrander @pluralistic @fish @cstross oh definitely, mine will meet my home server with Immich as soon as s/he’s born

@pluralistic @cstross

& people (& by people I mean companies whose services I can't reasonably do without (think laundry & groceries) do without) wonder why I have so far absolutely refused to get a smartphone to use their "very convenient" features.

Hadn't been conscious before I saw your post, but in addition to everything else, it would be an added attention load of constant vigilance to resist this (highly automated) pressure.

@cstross @pluralistic @cavyherd Fact is that you can get an android phone, don't install google at all, install the f-droid repository where you find all the basic apps you need, including things like apps for the fediverse, and be just fine.

The FOSS comunity always builds the option, but nobody sells these so nobody knows about them.
You simply have to search "alternative" or "none commercial" alternative and find that parallel universe.

@utopiarte @cstross @pluralistic

This is very good to know, & I'll bookmark it.

I wonder how it would intersect with the apps my grocery store requires for arrival notifications for their grocery pick-up service? Or the app the laundry service wants customers to use to pay for laundry?

Those, at this time, are the *only* two motives I *might* have to get a smartphone. It would surprise me if big box retail apps would play well with that environment. (I'd love to be wrong, though.)

@pluralistic @cstross

Practical question: are you now irretrievably borked, or can you call this back? (Assuming you can call it back, one assumes the process for doing so is as hard & arduous as they can figure out how to make it.)

Willem Atsma Jan 11

@cstross An OS like all great technology should kind of disappear. Be so good you don't think of it being there. Not great if you depend on marketing hype to push your version 11. Linux does this on PC for me.

@cstross This is the site where you get the #playstore replacement #f-droid by @fdroidorg for #android phones:
f-droid.org

There is even an emulator for the google #APP store that let's you download APP's without register to #google at all.
f-droid.org/en/packages/com.au…

There are also sites where you get APP's that are on google play, for example:
apkpure.com/

You can reset any android phone, start from scratch, confirm the inicial TOS but not register with google services and the playstore. That's the moment when you get a little bit sealioned with the intention to trick you into confirm registering with google and perhaps the phone vendor and maybe the producer.
In the android settings in applications you can stop and uninstall all standard google programs, including things like #chrome. The only one I use is #googleMaps, but I don't allow access to the #GPS, for any APP, including weather forecast. And I have GPS nearly always turned off.
They might sealion you into registering with google to update things like chrome so stopping those APP's is useful.

You wont have a #gmail account or anything but you normally have some kind of browser, or the #USB connection for the #phone. From there you start by installing the f-droid APP, you have to allow third party APP's and can install the rest. You probably would want to install #KDEconnect, #Newpipe or #Pipepipe as YT replacement, #mastodon or #fedilab APP fro the #fediVerse, of course there are more options, #lightning as web browser, #antennaPod for podcasts and some email client.
Updates for f-droid installed APP's come in automatically and you have to allow each and every one. Of course the android updates themself work as always.
👍

@cavyherd @pluralistic

F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository

F-Droid ist ein installierbarer Katalog mit FOSS-Apps (Free and Open Source Software) für Android. Der Client vereinfacht die Suche und Installation von Apps und behält den Überblick über Aktualisierungen.

@utopiarte @fdroidorg @pluralistic @cstross

Thank you!