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People have always been baffled as to why I refuse to get a Google account or a Discord account, or want programs I actually run locally, subscription-free. @pluralistic explains why:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/22/degoogled/#kafka-as-a-service
https://locusmag.com/2024/07/cory-doctorow-unpersoned/
And no, I don't buy into the "if you're innocent you have nothing to fear" attitude about things like this, or privacy, or the like. I have plenty of experience with authority figures or people in positions of even petty power being arbitrary and untrustworthy.
I have co-member on a committee I serve on who's trying to set up the org's digitized "bible" on Google docs—fine so far. Except what happens when Google randomly decides to shut down its "Folders" feature for some arbitrary reason?
I'm really grateful to Cory for this article, because now I can just point Committee Member to it, instead of trying to blather out my inarticulate understanding of the concern.
@cavyherd @pluralistic While I was never involved with Google+, as a TTRPG fan I am aware of how that community embraced that platform only to be screwed over and have years of its history disappear.
Though Google's general unreliability is a bit of a different issue than the one brought up in these articles.
Digital stability is a general problem. I am a daily user of the Mac graphics app Pixelmator, which can do damn near everything Photoshop can do, at an actual reasonal price (& it's a download & NOT a subscription). But I resisted moving from Classic to Pro (UI stability is Yet Another issue) until the upgrade to Sonoma spiked Classic. >
But oh wait—there's something about the files I created in Classic before I bought my current Mac that makes Pro barf when I try to open them. So now recovering all that data has become a Project—that's not even guaranteed to be *possible.* And this wasn't even a case of some platform randomly deciding to slice off a userbase.
It's maddening.
@cavyherd @pluralistic Yeah, I remember those kinds of compatibility problems myself from my old pre-OS X Mac-using days. Programs often wouldn't get updates to remain compatible with later versions of the OS.
1/2
@cavyherd @pluralistic Back when you could fit a program, whatever version of the OS worked best with the program, and some files onto a floppy that could boot the whole computer, that wasn't a problem, but the shift to versions that required a hard disk to run changed the paradigm, to say nothing of later hardware that couldn't run earlier OS versions.
2/2
In fairness, I had a, shall we say, non-standard evolution that I suspect is what's breaking the old files. (I wish I'd thought to preserve a back-up from the old machine,but the whole experience kind of short-circuited my process.) (It was an emergency upgrade bc my old Mac got destroyed unexpectedly.)
But it's still irritating af.