Apple is once again running ads on the social media platform X, after the company previously stopped all advertising on the website due to the presence of objectionable content on it.
How quickly most companies have walked back all of the "moral" stances they have taken over the last few years, all within just a few weeks of the political winds changing, should be a lesson to everyone that there is no such thing as an ethical publicly traded company.
They will do what they think will make the most money for the shareholders, no matter what. If you want them too "pay", the only choice is to stop giving them money.
If anyone ever pays any attention to a company's posturing and dewy eyes they are truly naive. It is just pandering at best. It is why I want them to be honest and cut out all of the "We celebrate group _____" and all that and just be honest. "We want to increase our stock price by 5 cents." The best they can be is neutral. A small private company can be positive though.
Apple is just like the rest of big tech. They tried to play it as if they were the ethical one, but in the end all these private corpos are just the same.
Its been wonderful purging all my american owned crap from my smart speakers to reddit. Looking forward to getting a linux desktop for the first time in nearly 10 years!
Agreed, moving away from American tech stuff is becoming a priority.
American oligarchs are no better than the oligarchs who work with putin or Xi. Perhaps even worse because they tend to be much more dishonest in their rhetoric (constant pompous rants about "changing the world for the better").
No, I don't think it's any particular election. I also don't think those companies were somehow more liberal when Democrats were in power. But it's a really bad tendency that they gradually lick the boot more and more. It means they are big enough to be controlled and threatened, and it means governmental overreach is strong enough.
Next up is Tim apple announcing his conversion therapy was successful and that he will now be marrying a blonde fox news anchor on the white house lawn. He'll then run for Lindsey Graham's senate seat and carry on the tradition of being the most closeted man in the Senate... And the world.
When Lindsey Graham was asked who his first lady would be should he ever win the presidency, he replied... "My sister".
Just can't take those swinging bachelors off the market.. one at a time ladies.
Actually last time I checked apple did their keynotes mentioning the environment and stuff, greenwashing their choices... I'm curious what they'll do now.
Just like Tesla, they might have saturated their liberal userbase, I wouldn't be too surprised if they took a more "neutral" stance
FOSS alternatives exist for many Android devices. Apple goes to great lengths to block every alternative on all hardware that isn't mac. I've been on iOS since the 3G, but have just purchased an older pixel to start migrating apps and data to GrapheneOS. I wish Pine phone had GOS, but it is what it is.
There is no negotiating with fascists, and Apples #1 market is the US. There is no chance in hell they will defy or deny fascism.
For other potentially worse manufacturers. I hate how far it’s all gone, but even buying a used/secondhand device is empowering the prior own to support one of these manufacturers.
At least the mask is off. Apple, Google, Meta. None of them care about anything but profit and there isn’t a value they aren’t willing to compromise on if it makes the line go up.
I'm looking for silver linings and I suppose the marketing people at these companies are much less stressed to have to keep Googling, "how to pretend to give a shit about fellow humans" every time they need to produce a few hundred characters.
I can't help but feel that a lot of companies would have been better off just staying out of controversial issues only tangentially related to their business.
also, idk how true this is, but ive seen that google sells pixels at a loss when they’re on sale (they expect to make back the money by spying on you)
so if you were to get a pixel while it’s on sale and install grapheneos on it, not only would you get a nice phone with a secure os, but you’d do so while costing google money. win win win!
Yeah, the most "free" option is probably android custom ROMs (anything based on lineageos, I suppose).
There are alternatives that are slowly building up, such as postmarketos, but it's not production ready.
I think KaiOS was a thing for a while, and it's based on FirefoxOS. But you would have to ditch the confort of a real smartphone and I'm not sure it's still active?
EDIT : KaiOS is indeed maintained BUT it is still based on Android (probably with less higher level components)
Fairphone uses their own custom OS to degoogle things and help ensure privacy. I dont think its perfect but its about as good as it gets. Otherwise you can buy a google phone and degoogle it with Graphene
Fairphone uses their own custom OS to degoogle things and help ensure privacy
no they don't. the default Fairphone OS runs stock Android with all Google apps. there are degoogled custom ROMs available, and you can buy some models with it preinstalled, but those are managed by third party resellers/partners.
It styled itself in that way to capture the upper-middle class market segment of people who wanted to use technology but couldn't be bothered to learn how
Like every tech company, they sell you the ability to access the fruits of technology in exchange for your privacy and, in doing so, ensure you never have the motivation to learn how to do it yourself.
Want to watch a movie? Don't worry about learning about media files, players, codecs, etc. Just install this spyware on your phone and pay us $9$12$15 $19.99/mo and you'll never have to learn.
You're already on Lemmy, so most of you understand the stakes of signing up for corporate mediated technology. Just don't use their products.