Digital Fiefdom (aka walled-garden) Required 🏰
This community collects stories, cases and situations where people are forced into digital colonialism via walled-garden to carry out a public transaction or essential task of some kind. As governments impose a digital transformation policy with no analog refuge, people are forced into becoming serfs in a technofeudal system that is subservient to lords (Microsoft, Cloudflare, Google, etc).
Well-known walled gardens include (but are not limited to):
- Cloudflare
- Microsoft LinkedIn
- Microsoft Github¹
- Paypal
- Amazon
- iOS
(note I do not say X or Meta above because I do not recognize or promote obnoxious and detrimental trademarks)
¹It’s somewhat unlikely that a gov would impose Github, but it is listed as an example because some govs do have git services. E.g. the EU has a public-facing self-hosted git instance.
Somewhat related communities:
- !email_required@lemmy.sdf.org
- !smartphone_required@lemmy.sdf.org
- !netneutrality@sopuli.xyz
- !degoogle@discuss.tchncs.de
- !right_to_unplug@sopuli.xyz
view the rest of the comments
When such happens, one has to wonder, is the sovereinty discourse genuine, or just made to spite their enemies?
And if tracking, validation, etc., is truly needed, it's not hard to shove those into a standalone APK and (I'd imagine also) whatever format Apple will allow once they add external installation support. This makes the situation even more glaring, me thinks.