Feeling pretty doomer right now about the seemingly inescapable nature of requiring a proprietary mobile operating system in order to use banking apps. Hate the fact that the American regime has so much power over how the entire world when it comes to finances, the fact that the two main payment processors are American and charge a rip-off fee for every transaction that goes to these evil companies and the US government.

What I love about software is that there's an entire community out there building a free world mostly independent from corporations and governments with FOSS. When we write free software, anyone or any group of people willing to create a piece of software can just go ahead and build it without requiring permission from some higher entity. The bottleneck is skill, time and motivation, not any legal bullshit.

Unlike with normal software, there doesn't seem to be any way for a group of passionate people to create an alternative to the existing banking and payment processing systems. GNU Taler has the potential but it isn't widely adopted, cryptocurrencies could be nice in theory but they're environmentally destructive, extremely volatile and infested with scams.
It's nice that since the start of the second Trump regime, people in other Western countries traditionally allied with the US like in the EU and Canada are looking towards and creating alternatives, as well as moves in BRICS, but right now they are limited to those people living in those countries.

As someone living in the settler colonial regime occupying Aotearoa, I don't have any hope in the current Luxon regime in moving away from American financial control. The oligarchs running our government are the people who welcomed an FBI base in our capital and under them we are still one of the only few shameful countries that don't recognise Palestine.

I also don't have any hope in a Labour government, which did basically nothing fundamental for working class people when they had full control over the government a few years ago.

The only area where there might be hope is if Labour wins the next election but are forced to make a coalition with Greens and TPM. Hopefully these minor more left-wing parties can push things in the right direction.

Netzblockierer (@[email protected])

Content warning: proprietary software, banking, payment processors

LGBTQIA+ and Tech