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> The only ones caring about FOSS are technical minded people already working in the field. People that fought for common hygiene standards, or labor rights, o

> The only ones caring about FOSS are technical minded people already working in the field. People that fought for common hygiene standards, or labor rights, or human rights etc in the past were a minority too, because most people didn't care. But this minority was able to organize, push forward and gain support. And the fight was worth it, and improved lives of us all.

b112 1y ago
Ya think? I mean, I agree 100% that was the good fight. But to take a tangent here? That's falling apart, world wide. It's falling apart because the average person wants to be "smart". I applaud this, the fact that people want to learn, want to know, want to understand. Yet now, when they try to learn? To understand? They end up with youtube. Tiktok. Pages of AI slop. They're told what is "astonishing" or "proves that scientists don't have a clue!". They're told that gibberish is real, that those lab-coats are all evil, or trying to poison people, and so on. Or even better to their egos, that the lab-coats aren't so smart, and with this "one simple trick", you can be smarter than them! This is coupled with outrage!!, when this rarely tends to be the case. Yes, there is corporate greed and it gets caught, recalls happen, mistakes happen, yet 99.99999% of the products and services just work. No one notices that aspect, only the "big news" of the tiny, rare, unusual failures of our system. And then on top of that, politics enters the scene. Now, it's "us vs them" on matters like medicine?! Or health? Or school? What?! And no it's not just "one side", it's both sides, just in different ways. People used to say things like "I don't know". Now people who can barely write, and read, have opinions on everything. They have no idea of the science behind things, but they'll just say "Oh! I saw this on youtube by a random person I've never heard of before! That's true, not what I learned in school!" And the worst part is, we want people to think "being smart" is important. We want intellectual betterment. Yet now this is twisted and warped against the light of knowledge, for now everyone craves it, but are given the ashes of burned truths. All provided by false profits, so they can pocket some coin. As far as I'm concerned, youtube and tiktok need to die. Social media needs to die. There are other solutions, but Google, Meta, the rest only care about cash, profit, and not one iota about fixing this. So if they won't fix it? Then we must destroy it. And can we? Nope! Because the public LOVES it. Loves loves loves it. So back to FOSS. I've dedicated my entire life to FOSS. But the time of "making people care" about things is gone. They don't care. They never will with all this noise going on. I'm not happy about it, but if you can't get people to even be interested about privacy violations by Google on their Android device? How will you get them to even remotely care about FOSS? Parent is right. Only geeks care.
- fsflover 1y ago
  > Only geeks care. This is false, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20207348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20207348
  - b112 1y ago
    Surely you can't be linking to a post on HackerNews, or a response, when trying to say "the average person" cares about privacy, are you? The fact that the person is even posting on Hacker News invalidates "average person". So you must therefore be talking about the Times article? The title of this gatewayed article is: "You Care More About Your Privacy Than You Think" It's literally saying that "you don't care", then trying to tell people why they should. This actually supports the premise that the average person doesn't care about privacy. Yet beyond that, my "Only geeks care" clearly was about FOSS. Trying to invalidate my privacy statement, which everyone knows is an issue, doesn't invalidate my "Only geeks care -> FOSS" statement. Do you really believe that if you stop 100 random people on the street, they'll even know what FOSS is? If they don't know, they do not care. I wonder how many people know what FOSS is? What if I stopped 1000 random people in 5 rural towns, and 5 urban cities. Out of those 10k people, would even 100 know? You might say "Oh, well if I explain it to them!". Nope. Caring implies knowing about the issue, considering it, and worrying about it. This isn't even on the public's radar. They don't know what FOSS is. They don't even know what software is, nor do they know what files are. Even if you sit them down, get them to listen to all sides of the issue for hours, some still won't care. At all. And of the ones that do, what does "care" mean? After all, upthread is discussing how the mildest inconvenience means nope, don't care. In the contexts of this thread, "caring" means "willing to use FOSS even if there are inconveniences". FOSS software is everywhere. People could be using it. They aren't. Why? They don't care.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - fsflover 1y ago
      People have too many other problems in their life to spend efforts on every (important!) world problem. This is essentially a Maslow's pyramid. Unless it's also your hobby, you simply have no energy to spend on things which aren't immediately beneficial to you. This is not equivalent to not caring.
thefz 1y ago
Good point. Wasn't going to say the fight is useless, just that those who know are the minority.

b112 1y ago

Ya think? I mean, I agree 100% that was the good fight. But to take a tangent here? That's falling apart, world wide. It's falling apart because the average person wants to be "smart". I applaud this, the fact that people want to learn, want to know, want to understand. Yet now, when they try to learn? To understand? They end up with youtube. Tiktok. Pages of AI slop. They're told what is "astonishing" or "proves that scientists don't have a clue!". They're told that gibberish is real, that those lab-coats are all evil, or trying to poison people, and so on. Or even better to their egos, that the lab-coats aren't so smart, and with this "one simple trick", you can be smarter than them! This is coupled with outrage!!, when this rarely tends to be the case. Yes, there is corporate greed and it gets caught, recalls happen, mistakes happen, yet 99.99999% of the products and services just work. No one notices that aspect, only the "big news" of the tiny, rare, unusual failures of our system. And then on top of that, politics enters the scene. Now, it's "us vs them" on matters like medicine?! Or health? Or school? What?! And no it's not just "one side", it's both sides, just in different ways. People used to say things like "I don't know". Now people who can barely write, and read, have opinions on everything. They have no idea of the science behind things, but they'll just say "Oh! I saw this on youtube by a random person I've never heard of before! That's true, not what I learned in school!" And the worst part is, we want people to think "being smart" is important. We want intellectual betterment. Yet now this is twisted and warped against the light of knowledge, for now everyone craves it, but are given the ashes of burned truths. All provided by false profits, so they can pocket some coin. As far as I'm concerned, youtube and tiktok need to die. Social media needs to die. There are other solutions, but Google, Meta, the rest only care about cash, profit, and not one iota about fixing this. So if they won't fix it? Then we must destroy it. And can we? Nope! Because the public LOVES it. Loves loves loves it. So back to FOSS. I've dedicated my entire life to FOSS. But the time of "making people care" about things is gone. They don't care. They never will with all this noise going on. I'm not happy about it, but if you can't get people to even be interested about privacy violations by Google on their Android device? How will you get them to even remotely care about FOSS? Parent is right. Only geeks care.

fsflover 1y ago
> Only geeks care. This is false, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20207348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20207348
- b112 1y ago
  Surely you can't be linking to a post on HackerNews, or a response, when trying to say "the average person" cares about privacy, are you? The fact that the person is even posting on Hacker News invalidates "average person". So you must therefore be talking about the Times article? The title of this gatewayed article is: "You Care More About Your Privacy Than You Think" It's literally saying that "you don't care", then trying to tell people why they should. This actually supports the premise that the average person doesn't care about privacy. Yet beyond that, my "Only geeks care" clearly was about FOSS. Trying to invalidate my privacy statement, which everyone knows is an issue, doesn't invalidate my "Only geeks care -> FOSS" statement. Do you really believe that if you stop 100 random people on the street, they'll even know what FOSS is? If they don't know, they do not care. I wonder how many people know what FOSS is? What if I stopped 1000 random people in 5 rural towns, and 5 urban cities. Out of those 10k people, would even 100 know? You might say "Oh, well if I explain it to them!". Nope. Caring implies knowing about the issue, considering it, and worrying about it. This isn't even on the public's radar. They don't know what FOSS is. They don't even know what software is, nor do they know what files are. Even if you sit them down, get them to listen to all sides of the issue for hours, some still won't care. At all. And of the ones that do, what does "care" mean? After all, upthread is discussing how the mildest inconvenience means nope, don't care. In the contexts of this thread, "caring" means "willing to use FOSS even if there are inconveniences". FOSS software is everywhere. People could be using it. They aren't. Why? They don't care.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - fsflover 1y ago
    People have too many other problems in their life to spend efforts on every (important!) world problem. This is essentially a Maslow's pyramid. Unless it's also your hobby, you simply have no energy to spend on things which aren't immediately beneficial to you. This is not equivalent to not caring.

thefz 1y ago

Good point. Wasn't going to say the fight is useless, just that those who know are the minority.