I have recently started university and am required to use an app that has three Facebook trackers, one of them being a Facebook location tracker according to Exodus App Privacy, for the dining plan, when it would literally work perfectly fine using your student ID and ordering to a real cashier, LIKE HOW IT HAS BEEN DONE FOR DECADES.
I have also read many stories of people that live in apartments that require them to use a mobile app for god damn LAUNDRY. All you need, is a card reader, and it will work perfectly fine like it has been for the longest time.
Privacy concerns aside, it is just annoying that you need this app and that app and this app and that app and it just clutters space on your phone. Security concerns too as now they have all of this additional info on you online, such as your phone number your email your real name, instead of just your credit card info like a card reader would have. And I am willing to guarantee that their security model is absolute horseshit because they have such a small team of engineers working on the app and the servers.
Literal enshitification
Funny you mention enshittification, I just watched a talk from Cory Doctorow who coined that term and he pointed out the reason for insisting on an app is that it means you can’t block ads without violating the DMCA. Browsers can have adblocker extensions, apps cannot (unless you hack them.)
This one? It came up as the next post on sync:
That’s the one!
it means you can’t block ads without violating the DMCA. Browsers can have adblocker extensions, apps cannot (unless you hack them.)
I imagine this is just going to lead to more people using DNS ad blockers. My phone literally can’t access your ad server, sorry.
As an app developer some people just get hard for an app and don’t know why they would want one.
It’s rarely some big plan just an ego thing
If DNS ad blockers get popular enough, there are easy enough workarounds. The workarounds have tradeoffs such as security or stability, but they’ll serve the ads for at least the current year.
Private DNS FTW!
On Android:
- Swipe down and select settings (the gear)
- Search for: DNS
- Select Private DNS.
- Select Private DNS again.
- Select Private DNS provider hostname.
- Enter: dns.adguard.com
- Select Save
- Enjoy most ads being blocked in apps.
- Might work poorly on public wifi (Walmart wifi for example doesn’t work with a private DNS set).
On Apple:
- Fuck if I know.
I heard there are security concerns with this as adguard cannot be fully trusted. Anyone got the scoop?
Ed: as in didn’t adguard get bought by some questionable company?
Your traffic is going through them instead of your ISPs DNS. Which do you trust more?
You are doing the lord’s work
Thanks!
Everytime I use this my WiFi stops working on my mobile.
Not sure why that would be. 🤷
Have you tried other private DNS servers? Curious if your Internet provider is blocking specific servers or DNS over HTTPS.
Same here… I had to go turn it off… why is that…
For me it works 95%, then throws that error randomly.
Unless someone makes a router that does that in firmware, there’s a lot of people who won’t bother.
Honestly, the thing keeping me from rolling it out to my family is that it isn’t easy to override when you do want to see a site. Folks understand turning off uBlock Origin (or clicking proceed). I’ve only used Pi-Hole and NextDNS, but they really need a browser extension that will provide a better error message and an option to allow with a DNS cache clear.
Eero does but you have to pay a subscription fee and it’s an Amazon product.
So, blocks all ads but Amazon ads?
oh noo not the dmca. i love following the dmca with all my heart
That’s why I use the browser for pretty much everything.
I realize you may just be venting but consider complaining to your college administration either via your student council or by yourself.
It should not be the norm to have to tell a stranger where you are to eat food.
You are paying for your education even if you are doing so via a loan and that gives you the right to tell them how you feel about them invading your privacy. In college and in jobs authority figures routinely try to control you and it is worth learning to take a stand against such abuses.
They literally could not give one fuck less. They are probably being paid or otherwise are getting some other kind of kickback to push these apps. Colleges are…I hesitate to say greedy, but let’s call it “capitalistic”.
I agree with the sentiment, but if no one ever complains things are guaranteed to not change. At least this is, at the very least, an exercise in explaining your own viewpoints and understanding the workings of an institution. That is a skill and lesson that is valuable in the professional world.
via your student council or by yourself.
This is literally what the student council exists for! Also, OP could join student council! As a graduated student government nerd I highly recommend it!
Worth noting the college probably did it because they want to appear to be technologically advanced. As part of Student government I visited a campus that had no public water fountains but did have a gigantic touchscreen map about the size of a normal printed map that conveyed no extra information that a printed map would. It was very clear what motivations were behind those decisions
I got an apartment from a housing company that came with a “smart” Bluetooth washing machine. Of course it works just fine without using Bluetooth, but if I so were to wish to use such services, I would need to provide access to Bluetooth, WIFI, and location all the time. As in, I’m not allowed to turn that off.
How can people push back on this insanity? I don’t want 500 goddamn apps on my phone nor do I want 500 accounts on “portals” or what fucking ever your calling it today.
I agree with OP, but how do we resist the borg?
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Yet some local retailers somewhat insist on doing their own app.
One instead of a website where I could look at their course catalog and book had App Store/Google Play apps. They were terrible, and wouldn’t install on a still-supported Google Pixel phone, a friend with an iPhone tried the Apple version and said it was horrendous and uninstalled it immediately.
I don’t understand why they went with terrible custom apps, a responsive website would have been so much more convenient and easier to maintain! Also, call me old-fashioned but some things I just prefer doing from the comfort of my desktop with a nice big screen, keyboard, and mouse.
In things where I can’t avoid an account, I use an email alias (personally I use Mozilla Relay, but Proton Pass offers logins as well if I recall.
Edit: for clarity, this adds at least a level of abstraction from my actual data. It’s not the only thing I do, such as blackhole DNS via PiHole, VPN in other scenarios, Tor for others (for those curious, pihole and Tor don’t work at the same time, and pihole and VPN generally doesn’t either without extra work and it’s not compatible with every VPN).
If something is trying to force me to use an app I don’t want, I don’t give my business to them. Also ignore any financial incentives they try to get you with. You save a couple bucks once and they have you.
- “Download our app and save 10% on your order.”… no.
- “Sign up for our email newletter and get a discount.”… no.
- “You need to download our app to order.”… no
- “If you download are app you can track your order to see when your package will arrive.”… no.
Say no. Fuck these businesses. If they have an app that is useful and you want it, ok, but if they are trying to push it on you, it’s a trap. Fuck em.
The 80s movie classic War Games has the answer:
STRANGE GAME…THE ONLY WAY TO WIN IS NOT TOO PLAY…
One way is to just lie and say you only have a flip phone. There are probably millions of old people that refuse to use smartphones because they don’t understand them and there no reason you can’t pretend to also have a dumb phone.
GREAT idea! I have both a flip and a smart phone.
The number of business that just expect that everyone has already downloaded and installed their app has become ridiculous.
Best Buy now demands an app be installed for order pick up. They are so sure you’ll have already done that there are no instructions in their parking lot for pick up that don’t include the app, no way to call them, and the lot employees say, “Just use the app and we’ll get your order.” It’s like the 20% tips programmed into just about every payment machine these days. No, I won’t leave you a 20% tip for handing me a receipt.
Even when going to Best Buy’s service desk the reps looked at me like I was crazy. “No, I won’t install your app to pick up an order” was met with confusion and open irritation. Fuck that.
And don’t get me started on ‘Reddit is better in our crappy Reddit app.’
Fast food is about 30% more expensive if you refuse the app.
Personal experience:
Tim Hortons
Wendy’s:
I ordered online and picked up in store at best buy without their app. I showed them the email they sent with the info. No problems at all.
Reddit is better in our crappy Reddit app.
Oh fuck reddit for doing that.
Jesus, it’s like they want you to order online from a third party instead of paying them.
Dude same here for the Reddit prompt ! I browse incognito without a profile just to see some headlines… and every ten minutes or if I got to a risque sub, it will stop me and ask for the app download or if I want to stay on the browser… if I wanted the app… I would have gotten it… I am on the browser for a reason…
Try to use “request desktop site”, stuff may be sized weirdly, but at least you don’t get that stupid pop up anymore
When something’s flagged NSFW, you can replace the “www” with “old” (e.g. old dot reddit dot com) to bypass :)
Just use third party apps. Oh wait…
Yeah… Miss boost for reddit…
Excited it’s coming out for Lemmy though. Right now I am on liftoff and it works well though
Weird. I can just go to the mobile Best Buy site, pull up my order from my account, and get the barcode they need to scan from there. No need for the app.
I can do the same with the desktop site.
Smart phones ruined the internet
I went to Buffalo Wild Wings the other day and they tried to have me download an app to pay my bill. I almost had my first Karen moment when I saw that.
And furthermore: Most of these shitty apps are nothing more than overblown API clients. Which means they didn’t want to build a website and operate a webserver, so instead you provide the processing power for the UI yourself. These apps usually can’t do anything on their own, if you are offline, becaue all the value is generated remotely by the actual server.
The modern software experience sucks much!
When you have a website, you also provide the processing power for executing JavaScript and rendering HTML+CSS.
Why they would prefer an app (that’s by definition less compatible) is unknown for me, but I can attempt to guess it’s simpler for some reason.
It’s about control. Websites cannot control the browser or browser addons. The browser makes it harder to track and control the user. An app by definition allows more hardware access, even if modern mobile OS can control it pretty good. But then again, most users allow everything anyways.
It’s not control as in “track and control the user”. It’s control as in “normalising the environment”… if the user can install your app then they can use your service - it’s not a weird issue with a browser add on or cookie or whatever.
If it’s proprietary then you can’t confirm what it’s actually doing or change it. Even if the uni has no intentions of being controlling they have unjust control of your computing.
Browsers work just fine. The add-ons they don’t like are the privacy ones.
They want your data.
A person’s music taste seems to crystalize at some point in their teenage years. The bands you loved at 15-17 are probably the bands that you’ll love forever.
Likewise, I’m finding that my relationship with information services as a whole probably crystalized a while ago, and the new era of “apps for every individual thing” is just wholly unappealing. Give me a web browser to interface with your information. If I can’t get it done with that, I’m more likely to move on to some even older tech and skip your product altogether.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m late to bingo. And get off my lawn.
Me: “seems to” “at some point” “probably” while making a minor, secondary point. Others: Severely Triggered
I’m doing my best to constantly listen to new music every week to keep fresh and malleable in my taste
yea, discovering is part of the fun
For me it depends on the mood. New stuff is fun, but stuff I know can be instantly trabsportative to moods or mental spaces and it feels good. New stuff can be too mentally engaging if I’m trying to do focus work or zone out. I think I listen to less new stuff now because I’m usually wanting to zone out with music more than actively engage with it.
RIP what.cd’s amazing music discovery spider web chart
I leaned hard on Waffles top 10 and also turntable.fm rooms after college.
Now in my 40s, I’ma little bit stuck in the LCD Sound System era of electro indie.
I HATED rap and whatnot when I was 12-19 or so. Apple too.
Now I’m constantly listening to clipping. and doneone and UGK (RIP Young Pimp C) on my iPhone.
That’s altogether BS. The bands I listen to have changed constantly since my teenage years. That’s just an excuse to become a ranting old man.
Nice bullshit armchair Freud u hating every change due to immaturity or unwillingness to learn doesnt mean we do too
Wait come back!! You dropped your cane!
An interesting experiment on the music thing. Top songs on your 13th birthday, at least for US/North Americans. https://www.birthdayjams.com
Wonder what they use your birthday for?
The bands you loved at 15-17 are probably the bands that you’ll love forever.
Thank god that wasn’t the case. Listened to some awful shit as a kid
Me neither. I wonder if that’s even true, because i see a lot of people changing tastes with age.
I don’t know if anyone growing up these days would actually like mobile app requirements if they took the time to think about why they’re required. Source: I’m one of them.
Most people young or old don’t think about it and don’t care.
I don’t think that’s true. I like what I liked what I was a teen but more in a nostalgic kind of way. I definitely didn’t like harder metalcore in my teens the way I do now lol.
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cut out avocado toast and Starbucks (sarcasm)
Dunno I can’t stand the music I listened to in my teenage years.
I WILL NEVER STOP LOVING THE BLOOD BROTHERS
I dont listen to anyone I liked as I kid cause they all came out as sex traffickers and pedophiles.
now I just listen to disney music, and waiting for the inevitable horror revelations with regards to those.
Well, it’s Disney so…
PWAs for the win!
Not necessarily… I grew up already in the era of apps, but have the same attitude. And I actually did actively use a smartphone during my tween and early teen years.
One of the credit card companies I use has a website that won’t work properly anymore in my phone’s browser.
My wife has a card through this company as well and she uses their app with no problems.
I have zero interest in installing their app so once a month I fire up my surface pro just to pay that damn bill.
It used to work just fine in the phone browser though.
Should probably just cancel that shitty account one of these days.
I’m finding that my relationship with information services as a whole probably crystalized a while ago
You are correct but it goes further:
Any tech that existed before you start school is completely natural and quite boring.
Any tech that is invented while you still care about new tech (this can be anywhere between 15 and 45 as it depends on the person) is exciting and cool.
Anything after that is squarely in get off my lawn territory and a bit scary and confronting.
Everything that’s normal between age 10-20 is just as it is.
Everything you get to know between 20 and 30 is the hot new shit.
Everything after age 30 is just another fad you don’t want to invest time to get to know anyway
I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
- Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
- Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
- Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
Oh cool, thanks for providing the source
Can’t agree more. And the issues go beyond data harvesting. For example, recently, I lost my phone and carried on for a while without it, only to realize we’re building a society in which we are slowly losing our citizenship rights if we don’t have a phone. I found myself locked out from many things, and having to go so many alternate routes, that I had to get a new phone quickly.
It all happened so subtly, and I saw it happening, but still, it’s hard to believe we came to this point without the people manifesting some sort of opposition. I get even more worried about the developing countries, where not everyone can properly afford a phone.
That’s the reason I stopped using a smartphone in 2020. Never has much problem thus far except for Steam, which required using their app for confirming the trades (even for simple items worth fractions of a penny). I now use an Android VM for this.
If Steam could just do that with standard TOTP already…
2FA is the only reason I’d need the app, but installing it just for this one feature? Not the only service I have this problem with. Just let me use Aegis ffs
Well, I didn’t use it until I started trading items (and these were cheap items worth fractions of a penny, mind you! The ones that drop for free all the time!) I really wish you could confirm such trades as well by just entering your TOTP code from Keepass.
I think we are the frogs being boiled in the pot of enshittification
I’ve been called a crazy conspiracy theorist since 2009 and my first Android. Hated all the sync/tracking Google was doing that was killing my battery then. Disable Google, and now I get a full day’s battery, back then.
People still don’t listen to me about this issue, 10+ years later.
Those google apps are also the number 1 reason of phones getting slower over time and leading people to buy new ones. Fuck google.
Yep. Currently setting up my next phone - Pixel 4a. It won’t have any Google services. Gonna just bite the bullet and move on.
I went to join Planet Fitness, they insist on an app. They watched me leave. Kroger charged more than advertised, ooooh it was a digital coupon only available through the app. I left the item with the cashier. Order out? Only on an app? I guess I didn’t want to eat that so much anyway.
Edit to add: I don’t know how we are going to deal with apps that are forced upon you, that feels really gross especially if you are younger, like at your school. Forced commodification should be illegal.
Not going to do it, it feels controlling and abusive and I’ve worked too damn hard to let that shit go on.
I’m totally sure all these shithouse apps adhere only to the strictest standards in regards to data security also…
Honestly its fucking annoying literally had to make several user profiles just for my work life and my other invasive activities
Are you using apple or android? If you are using android check out adguard. It runs a local VPN and filters that shit out. I’ve actually had to white list some apps like geico because it broke them and they weren’t using (as far as I can tell) any fb or other data collection trackers.
Trackercontrol is also pretty nice
While this is the recommended way for us tech savvy people to block trackers, it still doesn’t change this enshitification shift with data harvesting apps.
Not arguing that. I’m simply providing an option for those situations where you have no choice. Your other option may be to buy an old pixel or something and use it only for those apps that you can’t not use.
And as far as tech savvy? No, even the tech unsavvy to install it and set it up. Adguard isn’t pihole, you don’t have to run your own server, it does all of the work and if you can manage to browse tiktok or Twitter, you can use the app to white list any apps that need it to function properly.
I have seen maybe 10 ads in the past decade between adguard, noscript, etc. The times I’ve seen ads has been because I had to turn off adguard for a reason or forgot that I had a specific browser whitelisted for a reason.
I already use AdGuard DNS on top of Mozilla VPN on Android. But that is besides the point, it is just annoying how everything requires an app nowadays
Then why are you bitching about this? If you are already blocking the trackers, why the need for this post?
Duckduckgo app tracking protection is pretty awesome too.
I refuse to use services that demand you use their app.
Services only need a website for the most part, not only is this easier for development cost but it is simplier to create a mobile friendly website instead of creating an Android app, iOS app and a desktop app.
To be fair, there are frameworks like Flutter nowadays that let you build your app once in one language and it will build/compile an iOS, Android, and web app for you.
True, I am all for Flutter and Tauri. However websites are better for sevices since it is not likely the company will release a fully open source app or APIs for developers to build apps for the service. There are many web clients out there that are open source and allow for a good private web experience.
And even if a company does release a FOSS app, it is hard to get the company to release the app on alternative app stores like F-Droid.
Also I do not want a million apps on my phone taking up space, that could be running in the background and harvesting my data. Websites or PWA are like one-time apps you load in the browser, use and the close to discard, especially when you use your browser private mode.
Oh yeah, I definitely agree. Just pointing out it’s nowhere near as difficult/complicated to build or maintain apps for multiple platforms like it used to be.
instead of creating an Android app, iOS app and a desktop app.
Why do that when you can just have a buggy and crappy experience taylored specifically for each device?
