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.

@rustydev GNU Taler is Vapourware at best but to me just a shittier implementation,of what Sony released as FeliCa and run as payment systems like Pasmo, Suica & Octopus…

Monerocexists, but it's so good it's being criminalized!

@Netzblockierer What's the problem with GNU Taler?

@rustydev it's combining the disadvantages of Shitcoins and silo'd payment systems without the advantages of either:

  • It has neither fungibility
  • nor acceptance
  • now low fees
  • nor is it easy to use.

It feels and handles worse than Monero, Paysafecard and SMS-payment.

  • It doesn't even compete with girocard, V-pay or PayPal at all…