OK cool now you are arguing in bad faith. Nothing in my response was an attempt to hide the class conflict inherent in liberal democracy.

Ok, so we should ignore that he is currently advertising that he will go even further right. I do not agree with people who dismiss Trump's promises as if they cannot happen. He is a fucking idiot, but his campaign (and the Republican Party) are not.

OK, I watched the video. You asked me to humble myself and engage with your point of view. I did. Hopefully you can do the same with mine.

1. I don't expect reforms of liberal democracy will bring us toward a democratic ideal. They are temporary harm reduction.
2. yes I agree the US is a class dictatorship. How does one start to break that in the short term? Labor organization. Which I am fully in support of. Long term? I don't pretend to know, but at least if we are organized as a labor force maybe we can start to see a path through.
3. I'm not unaware that my vote is not always effective depending on which policies the capital holding class supports. However in my over a decade of voting I have also seen GOOD regulations pass despite corporate interests and capital investment in lobbying. So no, voting is not PURELY to pacify my guilt at being a citizen of the evil empire. I vote for what I believe in and if it reduces harm that's great. If not, that's OK, voting is not preventing anybody from doing more to oppose shit policies.
4. One oversimplification in this video is that it implies any and all leaders in a liberal democracy are always going to do the same level of violence when repressing civil disobedience. You can look at the civil rights movement to see how there were key differences in how the movement was able to develop in the south (where segregation was law) and in the north, where it was not. https://academic-oup-com.proxy.library.nyu.edu/book/45643/chapter/396344580 (link to full text of this chapter: https://file.io/xsfTsCUAIfFE) The point is, that if I have a choice between Harris and Trump, I'm going to pick the one least likely to call in the National Guard to the protest...and if I don't show up to vote, I didn't even try to do that. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-barr-used-loophole-deploy-national-guard-u-s-cities-ncna1236034
5. As was suggested elsewhere in this thread, apparently the only way to create a just society is through "revolution". Of course, nobody cares to define what that looks like. Why? Because it is an absolutely enormous task, and one that you could (probably rightfully) debate for years in order to try to do it "the right way" and avoid an utter disaster (a shooting civil war). Part of the issue is that currently, millions are dependent on the systems in our liberal democracy. From healthcare to food, there is a massive void that must be filled before just the masses can just say "I don't recognize this govt as legitimate". Time and time again I hear anarchists online repeat "we just need a revolution", and apparently this understanding makes them better than me despite the complete and total lack of any coherent path to the endgame besides "fuck some shit up". Given the amount of failed revolutions strewn throughout history (and the death and destruction they left in their wake), I would suggest that people stop throwing out that word as if it means something specific.

How is "increased border protection" to the right of mass deportation...

Nice one lol

Functionally, doing nothing is also a choice. And in this case it does more harm than good to let MAGA get the backing of the Federal govt. I am familiar with the theory of democracy not being possible under capitalism, and agree. But what does it do for me? I can't snap my fingers and transition from a full on capitalist system to anarcho-socialism in a fucking day. So yeah, I'm gonna participate and try to stop the harm to my country that would result from me not participating.

OK, not voting and trying to further the already existing movement to divest from Israel. In which case Donald Trump and the Republican party down-ballot wins (historically, lower turnout means Republican victory), and now you have a genocide occurring in Palestine AND America when Trump haphazardly tries to deport hundreds of thousands of Latin American immigrants en masse. I don't think people understand that Donald Trump actually does have a record of doing what he promises... he did actually build the wall. Is it shit? Yeah, but he built it. Did he actually install people in federal agencies who worked to make them ineffective? Absolutely. MAGA with the backing of the US govt is terrifying; without that, much less so. Keeping MAGA away from power and confined to their corners of the internet is important. That is literally the ONLY reason why I feel the need to participate in this fucked up system.

https://theintercept.com/2024/09/11/harris-trump-debate-gaza-israel-saudi/ So, what is the right choice then?

Invidious, one good instance is https://iv.nowhere.moe/

I wonder how this calculus changes with the dawn of AI built into the OS... will a Linux system that avoids all that nonsense end up being more energy efficient?

My experience so far as a new user, which might be a little redundant but here goes:

• Overall, there is a balance to work out between security, decentralization and FOSS, and anonymity.
• for the average user, using sandboxed google play is pretty much essential. Otherwise you'll spend days trying to figure out why you aren't getting notifications, why certain integrations aren't working, etc. Notifications especially are just painful without google FCM. HOWEVER, I do not believe it is mandatory to sign in to your Google account for notifications to work, so you could in theory avoid signing in at all and still take advantage of FCM.
• multiple profiles don't make sense for my use case (and possibly most people). Graphene does advertise the use case of having banking apps on a separate profile, but after attempting to do just that I believe it is a very niche use case that would actually benefit from it. Obviously a great tool to have for privacy and security, but not something you'll went to use everyday.
• For the move away from Imessage, it is indeed kinda painful and still ongoing. The simple fact is that people are super weird about switching from I message, and honestly going straight to Signal was a no-go for many of my contacts. I've had to settle for WhatsApp, Telegram, and even Discord... I just have had to accept that the transition will take time. I've weighed that privacy issue against the privacy gain of GrapheneOS itself, and the benefits of supporting a 3rd party OS option, and I still believe using Graphene is better overall. And, once people get used to using a 3rd party app vs Imessage, in a couple years the jump to Signal will be no problem at all.
• banking apps are super painful. That being said, here is an opportunity to vote with your wallet... Support apps that don't require invasive system access for "security". For me, the biggest eye opener was that there are NO GENERIC THIRD PARTY TAP TO PAY PROVIDERS IN THE US. It is only Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, or Google Wallet. And, as is pointed out on the Graphene user guide, 3rd party apps are allowed to implement their own NFC payment system, but the extremely vast majority simply choose to use Wallet or Apple Pay. This is obviously rather scary as more and more retailers use these systems, and I've realized I would gladly support and use any alternative at this point. Without Graphene, I would have never even thought about it.

What are you using for the Unified Push setup? I tried using ntfy and could never get notifications to come through on GrapheneOS

If it works on chromium I’d consider that even if it is a quirk on the bank website, chromium is handling it cleanly and allowing you to use the site. That’s something we probably want incorporated in Firefox. I’d encourage submitting the bug report to Mozilla, and don’t assume too much about what they can/cannot do!

I think the key part here is that it’s a guess on your part whether using Firefox is the cause. Do you get any specific error when using the website? Or does something just “not work”, such as you click a button and it does nothing?

Also, I’ve run into stuff like this before, and my best bet has been to be flexible about using other browsers to work around issues. I would suggest testing the banking website with Chromium (or even Chrome). If it works, file a bug with Mozilla (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/file-bug-report-or-feature-request-mozilla) and just use Chromium/Chrome for only that website until the bug is fixed.

This will allow you to still do business, while still participating in open source via a helpful bug report that could end up benefitting others as well.

monkaS

Vmware workstation player is extremely good. Setup is simple and as far as I know it is faster than VirtualBox. I use it with Windows 10/11 and RHEL Linux for developers.

It still might for many, just to a lesser degree than defederation because a conscious user can choose to unblock things. I block many things year round but when election season comes around, for example, I unblock alot. Either for perspective, or as a reminder of the importance of my voice and vote because people are nuts 😂

This is why instance blocking as a native client feature is needed. I am aware some apps such as Memmy, which I use, implement it in a 3rd party way. However it’s clearly not easily done for everyone in all situations. Defederation is going too much toward an echo chamber; inability to have enough control over the content you see is also an issue.

Personally I see value in having access to misinformation via lemm.ee; it is useful to know all perspectives when that is helpful. However, I don’t wanna see that shit everyday.

Long story short: I think for now, block accounts and communities or use an app with instance blocking. Wait for instance blocking to be native. That’s my 2 cents.