Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

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If everyone moved to open source non-profit solutions, the tech industry would lose billions (programming.dev)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm a FOSS (free and open source software) contributor and enthusiast. So I prefer to use such products (Lemmy instead of Reddit, Linux instead of Windows, Firefox instead of Chrome, Signal instead of WhatsApp, you get the idea). Was just thinking that if everyone moved to such solutions, the tech and ad industry would lose billions of dollars. That would translate to governments losing billions of dollars in tax revenue. Would such a move ever be encouraged then by the governments?

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't know the solution but I do know that we're losing what the internet was suppose to be.

I remember in the early days how we all thought it was insane and unethical to create scarcity in data.

We all knew data could be copied and shared almost limitlessly and so the internet was headed towards this new post information scarcity world were we could all collaborate and share information and knowledge and culture.

It seems like now we're putting up walls everywhere and charging for access to every bit of data we can. I think as an online culture that we lost a lot of that early 00s mentality of what the net would be.

I feel like we dropped that baton and the newer generation is almost pro data scarcity.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

I remember the general feeling you talked about, and the insanity of the idea when DRM was introduced.

It seems we vastly underestimated the ideas corporations can produce and implement.

For a short while it seemed as if with AI the field would be leveled again, but then I was astonished how quickly the EU moved with regulations first and foremost to protect copyright.