I want to talk about this because of a conversation I had with a colleague on a lunch break a few days ago. I am a doctor, and I was talking to him about how angry I was (and still am) about the fact that the COVID vaccines, when they were first invented, were not made public, but instead were patented and sold. This basic fact made millions of people around the world suffer. I was rambling about how scientific information should always be free. How we should be able to use the internet as the greatest library our ancestors could have only dreamt of, instead of putting information behind paywalls. Even back in med school I was an avid user of sci-hub and I wasnāt ashamed of it one bit. I still use sci-hub to keep up with new researches so I can treat/inform my patients better. And I hate how some of my colleagues think that I am stealing othersā work.
Anyways, so I was rambling on and on. I sometimes do that. And my friend said something so strange and unrelated (in my eyes) to the conversation. He said āLook at you, defending open access to medical information for everyone, yet you only use Apple products.ā I was like, āWhat? What do you mean?ā He explained, āMan, all the things you use are made by Apple. Your laptop, tablet, phone, watch, earbuds or whatever, made by the company that is one of the main adversaries when it comes to right-to-repair and open source software.ā So you need to see here, Iām not a tech guy. Itās just not my field. My job only requires me to read textbooks and keep up with new researches in my field, which any device can do. So I was like, āIā¦ I donāt think I follow.ā So he briefly explained what open-source software is, and how itās related to my idea of free and open access to information for everyone, but this time itās not in our field but programmersā. And when I almost reflexively said āWell weāre not programmersā he said āI mean, when it comes to software, itās the programmersā and developersā thing. But free and open source is an idea. It applies to everything. And I think youāre supporting a company that opposes your views by buying their products.ā
We didnāt have much time left so that was the end of that conversation. And I have been thinking about it since. When buying tech products I mainly care about if they are integrated with each other or not. Like if I turn on Do not Disturb on my watch, I want my phone, tablet and laptop to go quiet as well. Or I like being able to answer a phone call on my laptop. And I love the aesthetics of Apple products, at least more than what other companies have to offer.
Every evening since that conversation Iāve been looking up stuff related to open source software. Linux, distros, the philosophy behind it all, Linus Torvalds, Steve Wozniak, Arch, āread the wikiā, terminal, GUI, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA my brain is filled with so many things at this point that I donāt understand anything at all.
So, TLDR; Iād love to hear your opinions about Apple. Most people (myself included) buy Apple devices because of the ecosystem, the design, privacy (?), consistent updates (especially on mobile), or for you might say, a lack of knowledge in the field of tech. Do you support Apple or are you against them, or are you indifferent? Do you think people who are not in the tech field as well should look into and use open source software? Leave your thoughts below! ^^
Personally, I strongly agree with your colleague. If you truly believe openness is a good thing (and it sounds like you do), Appleās ethos is just about the direct antithesis. They only collaborate with the wider tech industry when they absolutely have to. Otherwise, they are greedy, secretive, controlling, and vindictive - oftentimes openly hostile to anyone who dares choose a non-Apple device/platform.
The best example of this is the iMessage āgreen bubblesā phenomenon. Some background: Appleās default texting experience is iMessage. This service has a bunch of nice, modern chat features - except theyāre only available when texting another iPhone. These ābetterā messages are indicated by blue bubbles. People who donāt use iPhones (whether by choice or by necessity) are forced to use the ancient, insecure, feature-poor SMS protocol, reducing the privacy and security of everyone involved (including iPhone users). Itās also extremely obvious when this happens, since the chat app will switch to green bubbles.
In places where this service has caught on (such as the US), Apple uses this separation to deliberately make texting non-iPhone users a significantly worse experience. This causes social effects, especially among teenagers, where those who donāt use iPhone are bullied and shunned for being a āgreen bubbleā. The Wall Street Journal did a great expose into this phenomenon.
Now, to be clear, this is a totally artificial problem - Apple could fix this overnight if they wanted. For years, the wider tech industry has been working on replacing SMS with a much more modern standard called RCS. Every single other party in the mobile industry has moved on. Apple, however, is the lone holdout. They see kids bullying other kids into buying an iPhone as a good thing - more iPhone sales! In fact, Apple openly encouraged that narrative: when a journalist asked the (very reasonable) question of āhow can I make texting with my Android-user mom better?ā, Apple CEO Tim Cook responded with ābuy your mom an iPhone.ā
Thereās plenty more examples of this I could talk about, but this one is the most telling.
Of course, if you do choose to go all in with them, you wonāt see that side of Apple at all. They are frighteningly good at cultivating their image as the āgood guysā among Big Tech, and, honestly, itās not unwarranted. They are good at what they do, and they do take care of their users. Their tech is great.
Ultimately, my take is that if you prefer using it over more open alternatives, donāt change what you like! Just remember that they have a dark side. It is good to be aware of the wider tech ecosystem, and to make open technology choices where you can. By being active on the Fediverse, youāre already doing your part š
Commenting to agree. The green bubble is very literally a deliberate choice on the side of Apple. The infrastructure is already in place to merge with every other phone manufacturer.
Addendum: Apple products as status symbols has been their project from the start. āSent from my iPhoneā as default on emails, being the most emminent example.
Sent from my fairphone3
As a follow up for those interested, hereās the exception that proves the rule: Appleās adoption and support of the Matter smart home standard.
For those who donāt follow the smart home, the basic backstory is that there are several competing ācontrollerā platforms for the smart home, including: Amazon Alexa, Google/Nest Home, Apple Home, and Samsung SmartThings.
Each of these platforms can control smart home gadgets like smart switches, lights, and thermostats, and they all do so in a slightly different way. However, this diversity in platforms posed an issue for gadget manufacturers (think Philips Hue): in order for their gadgets to work with each platform, they had to write integrations to talk with each service. This added a ton of extra cost and complexity to something that should be a commodity, meaning that only the larger players could afford to make gadgets that worked with every platform. Smaller vendors didnāt have that ability, so theyād focus their attention to just one or two platforms - often the largest ones.
This market setup was (fortunately) a disaster for Apple. As it turns out, people arenāt willing to pay hundreds of dollars for a nice speaker and Siri when you could get the vastly more capable Google Assistant/Alexa for literally a tenth of the price and blanket your home with them. Appleās arrogance and hubris had landed it in an unfamiliar position: they were, by far, the smallest player in the smart home market, and accessory makers werenāt building for Apple Home as a result.
Faced with abject failure, Apple pulled a very un-Apple move: they joined an industry standard! They open-sourced parts of their HomeKit framework and helped the next-generation Matter protocol come to market, in collaboration with all the other big players (Google, Amazon, Samsung). Matter is great because it provides a single protocol for accessory makers to build for: as long as it supports Matter, it will work with any of the big smart home controllers, including Apple. Now that this standard is out in the world, itās great: most newly-released smart home gadgets will work with whichever platform you prefer, including Apple!
So: why did Apple suddenly become collaborative in the smart home space? Because they were going to fail otherwise. Their backs were literally against the wall; their hand was forced. You can bet your lifeās savings that if HomeKit had been even moderately successful, they would never, ever have supported the Matter protocol. They would have preferred the lock-in to their dystopian walled garden.
Of course, if you do choose to go all in with them, you wonāt see that side of Apple at all. They are frighteningly good at cultivating their image as the āgood guysā among Big Tech, and, honestly, itās not unwarranted. They are good at what they do, and they do take care of their users. Their tech is great.
This paragraph perfectly describes me. Way back, I was a blind Apple fanboy. In my eyes, they could do no wrong. Plus, I enjoyed rooting for the underdog, because back then people were constantly publishing stories about how Apple was doomed to go bankrupt any minute.
Later, I learned how terrible they are in many waysā¦ but I still use their stuff. I first learned how to use computers on a Mac, so any other OS is weird and unintuitive to me. Besides, it just works, literally right out of the box. Yeah, Apple is still overpriced, but itās not as bad as it seems. If you enjoy spending hours to get something to work, and you think your time is worth nothing, then okay. If youāre like me, part of what youāre paying for is quality design and convenience.
you think your time is worth nothing, then okay.
What exactly do you mean by this? Do you really think that people who use or try to use open source software do not value their time?
Apple doesnt even need to support rcs to fix the issues with imesage. They just need to open the chat API for third party support or just release an imessage for other platforms like every other chat app does.
The current system they have essentially tricks less savvy users into thinking that iPhone is just better at texting and other services are bad, when the issue is that apple stealthily enrolled you all into a restrictive IM program that cant communicate with anything other than apple products. Itās actually quite devious. If imessage and itext were two separate apps from the start then it would be more apparent that you are texting the green bubble and using a limited chat app with iphone users and more people would probably just use one of the many chat alternatives that exist. Because they are able to still communicate with nonapple users in their chat program and even add them to groupchats and stuff it gives this weird appearance from the inside that the green chats are the problem.
I like to think that the initial goal of imessage being this way wasnt locking but as a way to seemlessly push grandma who would never go out of her way to download a chat app, into an IM client. The lockin side effect just wound up being a happy accident.
To get the point since as youāve stated your brain is filled.
Hereās how I view Apple:
- anti consumer
- Test
- anti developer
- anti privacy
- anti right to repair
How does anti-privacy fit in there, and what mainstream alternatives are better?
While Apple claims to be private there really isnāt any proof since all their software is proprietary. On top of that, on my home network where I have a ton of devices and my wife has one iPhone, Apple sure gets a LOT of calls back to home base. So Iād say they collect a ton of data. Not private. But they do not sell it as much. Since you can look at how they make their money is primarily through hardware. That being said it still isnāt the only way.
You might want to check what those calls are, specifically. Out of the box they use the iCloud Private Relay to hide network traffic, essentially a VPN. If you go onto the wifi settings of her phone and turn off the āLimit IP Address Trackingā it will likely be a lot less chatty. Otherwise there is iCloud stuff, but overall they do not collect all that much data at all (they allow you to request a copy of what they do collect on their privacy page). You might also help her review the privacy settings on her phone, there are many things that can be disabled.
Right but this all completely neglects my first point, you donāt know if they are telling the truth.
That alone doesnāt make them anti-privacy,
While I suppose youāre right, the fella up there shares some of the other real reasons. Airtags too. They can recognize me with my android because Iām around enough Apple users and their devices flag mine. Appleās mesh network for find my iPhone is the single greatest example that they donāt truly want you to be private, at least not from them. From others yes I will agree, but not from themselves.
As far as anti-privacy hereās an example https://gizmodo.com/apple-iphone-analytics-tracking-even-when-off-app-store-1849757558
And in regards to mainstream alternatives:
- Calyx OS
- Graphene OS
- Lineage OS
- anti consumer
Dont feel too bad about not knowing everything from everywhere, as you said you arent a tech guy, but lets get to your questions
- Privacy thatsā¦depending on how you see it, supposedly they donāt sell to third partys but they do use it for you
- I will never support them, not only are their prices disgustingly high compared to their quality, their walled garden and fucking tooth and nail fight to keep it that way isnt helping helping
- While not required I do think they should at least look into all of it for a bit
Im the end, do whatever you wanna do
I spent many years trying to be as FOSS as I could. I tried many different Linux distros, hunted for open source operating systems for my phone (at the time, none did even the basic things I needed it to do) until one day I decided I was sick to death of having to spend hours researching and trying multiple arcane cli commands to get even simple things to work (like WiFi). I realised that I was wasting an enormous amount of time being all-things-open-source.
My next purchase as a macbook as it was based on a *nix and Iāve come to realise that while Apple is a walled garden and in some ways is āevilā, itās less evil than Google is now, or Microsoft was back in the day.
I also like the way that the various Apple devices work really well together. But I hate the fact that itās harder to hack things to be the way that I want. Donāt get me wrong, I still love open source software, but I have too few years left to waste them on modifying config.org files, or whatever they do now, so Iām much more selective with what I use. I tend to use FOSS applications on MacOS where the software works well enough.
Not trying to bash FOSS, just my 2 cents.
@Bluetreefrog
@IronTwo
Iāve got to say, Linux and FOSS in general has really come a long way just these few last years. For me it has gone from tedious and problem-ridden to mostly frictionless. But the times that I do stumble unto an issue, it still takes a while to figure out a solution š So, not perfect yet, but a looot more user friendly these days! šOP probably got really unlucky with their wifi chip and this is still an issue today with certain brands
itās that awful that most linux user just buy a 20ā¬ intel wifi card, open their laptop and than replace it but not anybody wants to do that so it isnāt a foolproof solution either
I dislike Apple due to their user-hostile business practices. They donāt let you install alternate browsers or keyboards (TRULY alternate and not just re-skins of Safari and the iOS keyboard). They donāt let you sideload (officially). They donāt want you to interface with other phone manufacturers in an equitable way (see the whole blue bubble/green bubble drama). They donāt want you to have the freedom to repair your own devices (see the whole right to repair movement).
And so on and so forth. They are nice products and do what they are supposed to with minimal friction. I just cannot support a company that is so blatantly user-hostile.
And this is the main reason I like Google phones. I think their phones are the most anti Google phones (if you know how to do that). Its so much easier to de-Google a Google phone than it is any other phone. I wish Apple were more like that. Hardware is great but its the fact I cant sideload (officially) apps and install FOSS.
It is interesting that a Google phone of all things is the phone that best supports making it anti Google as you said. So many other manufacturers donāt even allow it by locking down the bootloader in certain countries or punishing users for unlocking it like Samsung does with Knox.
Yeah it is pretty interesting. Im thinking of buying a pixel just so I can install one of the more privacy based ROMs. Right now im using an Xperia and ive installed FOSS wherever I can.
It is with high confidence and with a straight face that I can state my opinion that Microsoft is a better partner of open source software than Apple. Microsoft contributes back, Apple pretty much doesnāt. Theyāre better than AWS, but thatās more a matter of damning with faint praise.
Appleās built up a vertically integrated market of disposable widgets which cannot be repaired or upgraded. Their sole positive is theyāre better than the other guys at keeping older software updated, but Iām sure they did the math on having their customers not getting hacked at the time.
Iām my opinion theyāre worth looking at for anti-trust.
A good recent example of Microsoft supporting the open source community is Orca. Itās a LLM that was basically taught by ChatGPT (GPT3.5) and GPT4 instead of training on its own dataset by having the chatbot explain its reasoning step by step, ELI5, etc. And itās about to go open source.
As someone who went from FOSS -> Apple -> FOSS, I fully understand the love people have for the Apple ecosystem. In terms of proprietary hardware and software, they have a sheen and an inter-operation between their products that is genuinely unmatched.
That said, what ultimately pushed me out and back to Good Ole FOSSā¢ was the lack of any control, and the lack of any transparency. The idea of trusting a for-profit company with anything beyond my email address and sometimes phone number is just something I dislike doing. Appleās processes are extremely opaque, and the last thing they want to give users is any control over their products, itās an antithesis of what I desire from digital electronics.
As for if non-technical people should look into FOSS. I think FOSS can really give people a fundamental baseline of digital computing, and in the modern world such a baseline is extremely valuable. If they decide afterwards they prefer their proprietary ecosystems, Apple or otherwise, thatās their prerogative and thereās absolutely nothing wrong with that.
For all of their faults I admire Appleās commitment to product design a lot. They really seem to center the human use case and mold the technology around that. This kind of focus on design (not just aesthetics!) brings the benefits of technology to people that might not have been able to access them otherwise due to knowledge, time constraints, etc.
How does this relate to FOSS? Well to be blunt the UX on a lot of FOSS technology is bad. It conveys freedom and privacy to technologically inclined people like us who can make sense of it, but it does very little to liberate people who donāt find this stuff easy or canāt devote enough free time to it. Ease of use is not a weakness to be mocked. It can be an extremely powerful force if done correctly. Personally I would love to see more UX designers getting into FOSS development, but unfortunately I canāt really help myself on that front.
Iām a UX product designer and a major issue Iāve encountered within FOSS is extremely opinionated developers, who regularly sacrifice usability for features and configurability, which is instantly off-putting to a general audience.
Iām painting a very broad picture there, and Iām not criticising - Iām a staunch advocate for Linux and FOSS in general, the technical execution and intent is usually brilliant.
Apple is extremely opinionated in their design by limiting options and complexity, thatās one way they achieve a solid foundation, by offering few options (both in terms of software and hardware). They donāt make their users think too hard.
Thereās plenty of low hanging fruit that could be addressed (use of plain language, clear actions, other tried and tested design principles) but thatās not enough, and it often relies on strong UI dev skills, which the team doesnāt necessarily have.
Iāve seen some appetite for making FOSS projects easier for a general audience, but things fall flat when it comes to making hard decisions (stripping out or hiding complexity, making decisions to promote simplicity, spending considerable effort on UI instead of features).
Iād love to be more involved in it, and maybe Iām being unfair, but it can be demoralising work for a designer.
Yeah, thatās the main thing keeping me personally from using more FOSS.
I tried using Linux for example, but itās just so incredibly tedious compared to Windows that I didnāt even last a week before I got frustrated and switched back.
Though I did switch to Aurora store on my Android, because using the Play Store is actually becoming harder and harder. There are so many ads on it now, browsing it is starting to get difficult.
Thank you for opening yourself up to the discourse!
First of all: I donāt use any apple products, because I strongly disagree with the company on an ideological level.
My opinion on apple products, personal opinion that is, is that the walled garden approach has pros and cons. Meaning, they control everything within their ecosystem. You canāt install a third party app without it being approved on the appstore first. This is good in the sense, that there is virtually zero risk of bad actors being able to access your systems. This is bad, because it allows apple to dictatorially allow/reject apps, and ideas that they donāt agree with. I donāt know if they have done this, but it would not surprise me.
Another large issue I have, as a nerd, with appleās approach. Is that having everything easily accessible and controlled by the company (here I mean things like, its more difficult to make changes to your computer as compared to linux, where you have full control) makes for a tech-illiterate public. Anecdotally, I have friends who are very skilled at tech, one is a space-tech student, the other a high-level games programmer, and both feel they canāt switch to another phone than Iphone, because it is such a specific way of interconnectedness that exists when you have all apple products. It is so easy to airdrop, or screen share, cloud save etc etc. That it is a fundamentally different experience to use anything else. Now, that might seem like a pro for apple, but my issue is that this interconnectedness should be a priority between ecosystems too. Ideally I would like to have these features as a given on any system, like email can talk to email (fediverse hype), instead of being locked to a single ecosystem.
In conclusion: Apple is known for keeping their information under lock and key, and not allowing any interference with their systems. I think this is bad.
Thanks for bringing it up! And remember there is no right/wrong, except what you personally feel good about.
Well, there are many things to consider here. First off, let me say I really appreciate your ābattleā for open science: I think thatās what we should fight for, and I totally support that (Iām a PhD in computer science, but done with research). I donāt think that the fact that you donāt use FOSS makes your battle for open science any less legitimate, that is still super valid and you shouldnāt feel hypocrite. That said, it is true that Apple does not support or contribute to open source at all (I believe CUPS is one of the few open source things Apple did, correct me if Iām wrong here).
Nonetheless, I totally understand the coziness of having such an integrated environment between all your devices: this is not gonna happen on Linux, or at least not at that level. I do believe that the Linux desktop experience has become much more user friendly (imo much more than Windows for instance), and there are also cool integration options such as KDE connect, but thatās probably not as good and cool as Apple integration.
Committing to open source can be a time-consuming decision, and most people that advocates for FOSS still use or give their data to non-FOSS software (such as Google, Facebook etc.). So, my advice would be to embrace as much as you want of the open philosophy: youāre already āfightingā for open science, maybe you can start using some open source software (maybe your email client? your pdf reader?). Little by little youāll judge by yourself what and how much you want to commit to the FOSS philosophy :)
Finding the right compromise can be hard. If youāre a really hard-core FOSS advocate, life can be very difficult in a modern society. I would love to live in a world where all of my mobile devices would run 100% FOSS and I would use only the kinds of services that respect my privacy. Sadly, getting there seems to take a while.
After having tried a bunch of different options, Iāve finally settled on a very disappointing compromise (apple). Itās far from being acceptable, let alone ideal, but the other options are much worse IMO. These are not absolute things, because everyone values different things and everyone needs to figure out where they draw the line.
I 100% agree with your colleague, though I donāt agree with his purity test. Youāre allowed to feel the way you do about medicine and still use whatever products you want. But, yeah, I donāt own or use and Apple products, though I would like to own and restore an Apple IIe.
@IronTwo
Appleās ecosystem works well for itās users, but it screws over anyone else not completely consumed in their ecosystem.Your friend is right. Listen to them, read and understand. Donāt feel obligated to necessarily change your habits. If you get the time and desire to make a change, that understanding and knowledge will inform your actions. āŗļø
Iāll preface this by saying donāt beat yourself up for using Apple. You can be critical and still use their products. I am typing this on Windows 10 and have a macbook for work. Microsoft and Google are far from perfect in this space. As the saying goes, āthere is no ethical consumption under capitalismā lol.
I think you should use open source software but I donāt think you should force yourself if good alternatives donāt exist for your use case. A good example is Photoshop. The open source version is GIMP. I use GIMP mostly because I donāt want to pay for Photoshop but from what Iāve heard from people who edit pictures professionally it is not even a competition.
Compare that to Audacity, my understanding is more people in the audio world use it. Or VLC Media player! It can basically open any format of video, itās crazy!
If youāre curious to try a linux desktop operating system the choices will become overwhelming like you said. Ubuntu is the go-to suggestion usually. There are ways to create ālive USBsā to run it from the USB like a test drive (but it may be slow). Iāve decided my next computer I build Iām going to run Linux primarily but I havenāt got around to building it.
Just FYI vanillaOS is an awesome system to suggest to both new users and experienced ones. None of the snap BS but still based on Ubuntu. It also makes it really hard to mess up your system. Vanilla Gnome too. Check it out.
YES!! I love vanilla OS its so good benefits of arch rolling release and AUR and Ubuntu with stability best of both worlds
I suggest Ubuntu because it is so widespread and one of the ones that ājust worksā. Also I donāt want to introduce a newbie to the snap debacle. It wonāt affect them much to be honest.
Mint > Ubuntu if you really want to stay in the Debian space. Canonical is without a doubt the dodgiest Linux company, and Ubuntu is only being recommended because it became popular almost 20 years ago due to the easy installer wizard and free CDs.
Fedora and openSUSE are also amazing ājust worksā distros. And I donāt think Iāve ever seen proprietary software company provide a deb binary but not an rpm/dnf one.
There are definitely reasons to not like Ubuntu but I still believe it is the best recommendation for beginners due to the massive community. Iām not saying Canonical is faultless. Mint has its problems too, in 2016 a hacker got an ISO with a backdoor onto the website (link).
I mean, how much of the Ubuntu info wonāt be applicable to mint problems? And how often is a Debian/Ubuntu derivative user going to need distro specific help in the first place?
A hack from 7 years ago is not the same thing as a company constantly trying to exploit its users. What other distro thought it was a good idea to sell user data to Amazon, show ads in the terminal, or team up with Microsoft to EEE Linux?
Most people arenāt going to distrohop all that much. So what they start with is going to be what they stick with for a while. Nobody should have to learn Linux in a snap infested canonical world.
Like I said, I donāt believe Canonical is perfect by any means, itās just that Ubuntu has the largest community and is easy to use. Thatās it. Iām not saying anything else youāre saying is wrong, I just find these things more important for absolute beginners. I agree with a lot of what youāre saying, I just believe different things are important for the absolute beginner is all.
My momās (mid 80s now) has been using straight Debian for well over a decade with no problem. Just stick with the real OG.
You should look in to openstreetmap.org . Itās open and free map data. Having a single giant company (Google) control all the maps is not good for the commons.
Iām so glad Wikipedia exists as a non-profit organizations. Imagine if Facebook or Google owned The Encyclopedia
Speaking of, there is something called the https://creativecommons.org/ mostly known for the Creative Commons family of non-comercial Licences. Itās used by creators to licence and freely share their work, similar to how programers use FOSS software licenses
There are a number of ongoing FOSS projects that will hopefully culminate in an ecosystem experience comparable to Apple. There are already some laptops being sold with Linux pre-installed, guaranteeing hardware compatibility (HP, Dell, System76, Slimbook, Tuxedo, Starlabs). KDE Connect integrates your phone and computer. Nextcloud can do much of what iCloud can do. Various phone projects are making the Linux phone possible, like Librem Purism, Pinephone, FOSH, KDE Plasma Mobile. And degoogled Androids like /e/ project / LineageOS and GrapheneOS. Thereās the PineTime smart watch.
Things often move slower in the FOSS world compared to literal TRILLION dollar companies. But when FOSS solutions get a foothold thereās no going back. FOSS projects are also virtually immune to enshitification
While the Apple ecosystem is nice, itās also the epitome of Vendor Lock-In. They deliberately make their products hard to integrate with other products (charging cables, green text bubles etc). As well as everything else people have mentioned here about right-to-repair, planned obsolescence, factory worker conditions
So yeah perfectly understandable to use all Apple-stuff today , but Iām optimistic for a future where more people are free from the big tech giants
