I’ve seen big social media banned already. That does not make people leave the platform. That just ensures even grandma has the means to bypass restrictions.

I think this was a joke.

Why wouldn’t they have this access?

There’s Fediverse. There’s federated or selfhostable messaging. There’s a multitude of selfhostable solutions for everything. There are people’s personal websites. It just cannot be killed off by its very nature.

I am content with XMPP for now. I know it has some flaws but seems like Matrix brings more - such as heavier servers and most importantly for me - the “store everything” aspect.

Matrix.org is one of my big concerns with Matrix, as it oversees most big groupchats. If you selfhost your server, chances are it is still observing some of your conversations due to just how big and prevalent it is.

That is an insanely short time to use a phone. Especially such a relatively expensive one.

I use Sponsorblock, but still hear ads sometimes because it’s not applied to downloads.

I cannot imagine spending $1000 on a phone in general. And even more so, I cannot imagine spending $1000 on a phone I cannot even sideload something like Newpipe on.

Since you are seemingly wealthy enough for this - maybe Pixel with GrapheneOS would be a right fit for you? Pixels also have longer support now (although I still think it’s very short, so I’d likely have to switch to Lineage afterwards).

Maybe they mean ads by the creators themselves, which I do understand. While my Freetube has Sponsorblock, I am still exposed to ads - Sponsorblock is not applied to downloads.

I saw something like this happen (major social media gor blocked). Can confirm that those sketchy free VPNs are now on seemingly every phone and it is worrying as hell :/ At least some people use charity censorship evasion projects instead.

I just assumed they operated by collecting and selling user data. So while I knew the business model was unethical, I didn’t expect them to get more creative!

“Flagship” is doing a lot of work here. Most people here use cheap phones. My Pixel 7 was already $300, which is a bit hard to swallow, and it was not the newest model at the moment. Pixel 9 in the same place is close to $1k now, which is completely out of reach for a lot of people including me. That is frankly an insane sum to spend on a phone.

A lot of couriers in my area are also using ebikes now. At least in winter, it seems like even more than regular bikes.

That support is about as long as it goes on mobile. An average poor person can’t afford to just buy new phones as soon as the support ends. Some updates is still better than no updates in this case.

fair

I thought the opposite: “well I like the app, I just can’t use it unencrypted and not even sure what encryption is!”

Not really. Stock OSes are really bad in terms of privacy, maybe with a few exceptions - I wouldn’t be able to trust them with any personal info. Just like Windows. So a custom one is a must.

Eight years, minus the few years you’d have to wait until the phone is close to affordable. And updates via LineageOS is still way better than just using a phone with no updates when it hits EOL like you normally would.

What about Simplex? About equally easy to host and doesn’t even give an option to not encrypt. I use both.