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I hope you're joking. The obvious easy fix is to give them unlimited data. If the intent is to give them internet, they should give them internet that function
by TheDong 7mo ago
I hope you're joking.
The obvious easy fix is to give them unlimited data. If the intent is to give them internet, they should give them internet that functions for the modern web.
- nathanmills 7mo agoUnlimited data! You make it sound so easy.
- asdff 7mo agoIt was seemingly easy for every cell provider to give it to every teenager in america just 10 years ago. What is a few marginalized adults in 2026?
- lazide 7mo agoThey won’t be marginalized if we don’t shit on them somehow.
- mikkupikku 7mo agoUnless we nut up and ban gambling, there will never be a shortage of broke motherfuckers who should be able to make ends meet with their job but simply never will be able to. You have no idea how badly gambling suppresses a large subset of the working class.
- bjoli 7mo agoI dont think most people here see that, or even have the willingness to see that. The same was true for the opioid epidemic. Had it hit a group with any political capital there would have been laws passed and the sacklers would have been not just painted as villains, they would have been castrated a quarter of a century ago. Just wait 15 years when the middle class has been struggling with easily accessible gambling and it can't be explained as problem of character. There will be laws passed and people prosecuted or successfully sued.
- lazide 7mo agoMany of those targeted by the sacklers did start as white, middle class, etc. or even white, upper class. Those folks that did fall to it, then became (often) lower class while failing to it. The thing to realize, is that the upper classes ‘eat their own’ just like any other. It’s why Trump is as frantic as he is, he knows what will happen when he stops being ‘useful’/necessary.
- hn_acc1 7mo agoI'm not really affected by it yet (I've been able to resist gambling more than a self-imposed $20 at a time, which I can afford, and one time I realized I wanted to break my limit, I realized it was an important moment to nut up and walk away). But I understand that there are people it's really affecting. So I'm all in favor of "NO more gambling". But even if that wasn't a thing - the way it's ruined watching sports now, with the constant odds flashing, etc, I'd ban it JUST for that, on top of all the detrimental effects on society.
- mrguyorama 7mo agoWhich, as a reminder, was the status quo just a decade or so ago. I don't remember "I can't throw money away on this football play" being a massive society wide problem that needed fixing in 2010, pretty sure everyone could bet with their friends already.
- mikkupikku 7mo agoWhat's more, betting with friends is vastly less harmful than betting at casinos (digital or otherwise.) When you bet with friends, your loss is their gain and their loss is your gain, the money more or less sticks around, the community as a whole isn't impoverished by it. But when people are gambling away their days wages playing rigged slot machines on their phone, that money might as well have been set on fire. It goes into the pockets of investors who might as well be on the other side of the planet and in the long run it will never be won back. The community as a whole is impoverished by this kind of gambling.
- olgkov 7mo ago[dead]
- hackpelican 7mo agoI hope you’re still joking. Data caps are to an extent “fake”, in that telcos’ costs aren’t measured in how many bytes their customers download/upload. Telcos’ costs come from renting bandwidth from tier 1 and tier 2 ISPs. This bandwidth is constant. And for popular websites, they will cache lots of content on their own network or peer directly with data centers so they don’t have to pay for the bandwidth there. The routers will continue routing and the switches will continue switching whether you download 5GBs or 5TBs. One more way to understand how much of a scam mobile data caps are, is that the same ISP will sell you unlimited fiber plans even though essentially your traffic goes through the same backbone. Data caps may help lessen congestion on their cell towers, but they don’t need to be as low as they are today.
- encom 7mo agoDidn't https everywhere ruin caching? Unless you MITM everyone like CloudFlare.
- codebje 7mo agohttps-everywhere does indeed prevent transparent proxying by ISPs. Mostly this isn't an issue: site owners are less likely to have their content tampered with by a content distribution network than by an ISP, and have full control over which CDN(s) are allowed to act on their behalf. Larger content providers operate their own CDNs, of course. In the case of TFA, PC Gamer isn't directly consuming the bandwidth with their own servers on their own domain name. It's an ad distribution network doing that, and odds are reasonable they're already colocated someplace with your ISP and the bandwidth consumed by ads is totally irrelevant to everyone except the poor sap at the home end of the last mile.
- happymellon 7mo ago> Data caps may help lessen congestion on their cell towers Data caps make congestion worse, because you are more likely to restrict where you use data and people are predictable. You'll no longer use bits everywhere because you care less, you'll use it where everyone else does.
- 7mo ago
- what 7mo agoThey’re already given unlimited data? It just gets throttled the 2G speeds. They can also just go to the local library or Starbucks for the WiFi if they need more.
- TheDong 7mo ago2G speeds isn't really full access to "the internet" for some parts of the internet. My experience with 2G speeds is: 1. Open job application site 2. Upload resume pdf 3. Upload required picture of ID 4. Server's nginx config has a hard-coded timeout after 1 minute. Connection error 5. Try to upload again 6. Connection error A huge number of pieces of the web have hardcoded timeouts and limits designed to stop slowloris style attacks, and if your connection is slow enough, those will prevent you from ever being able to complete some tasks.
- coryrc 7mo agoYou'll need to go to the library then, if you can't manage to watch your data use and use your free phone only for important usage. I've paid for 2GB/mo for years now. I think I ran out once.
- lukevp 7mo agoThis thread is about how a static text article loaded 500 megs in the background. How would someone prepare for that exactly? This is effectively malware as far as your bandwidth is concerned.
- mr_toad 7mo agoI’ve used travel SIMs that only give you about 5GB. You avoid using the web at all, unless you are on WiFi. You can use maps, train and bus apps, banking apps, messaging, AirBnB etc, but not the web. If you go to some place and they want to use a QR code to buy a ticket or use a menu you may as well forget about it.
- 7mo ago
- jerf 7mo agoThere's a very wide band between "2G" and "unlimited" to explore. Cell phone systems already have some tiering built in, at least based on the fine print I've read about my plans. Once I run out of "official data" I fall back to low-priority usage, but the cell system is generally so well-provisioned nowadays that I hardly notice. In 2026, one must take explicit action to force people back to 2G. Nothing would stop these plans from, say, simply always being "low priority usage" but at full speed, and for the most part this would satisfy everyone. This sort of clause reeks of "it was written into a contract 15 years ago and nobody has even so much as thought about it since then" rather than some sort of choice.
- johnnyanmac 7mo agoPublicly provided wifi would also help them and everyone. But of course, guess who's fighting real hard against that...
- 9864247888754 7mo ago[flagged]
- johnnyanmac 7mo agoBecause the context is "bottom end of society in the USA." that "are given government provided phones". If you mean why I don't pay for the publicly provided wifi: well, I would. And all of us. Public services are funded by taxpayer dollars. I would happily accept public wifi for that