Your smartphone tracks your location, listens to your conversations, and sells your intimate moments to data brokers.
The law pretends to regulate this, but lobbyists write the rules and enforcement is a joke.
Encryption apps aren’t enough when the hardware itself is designed to betray you.
The phone is a spy device marketed as a lifestyle accessory.
We need radical technical solutions, not incremental privacy policies that change nothing.
The surveillance economy depends on your ignorance and inaction.
Break the chain: use open hardware, de-Googled Android, or build your own tools.
#privacy #surveillance #digitalrights #antitrust
How much of your life are you willing to sell for a slightly more convenient map app?
However much is earned by time saved by that app.
I stopped using openstreetmap because it wasn’t reliable enough for me. I found myself going the wrong direction, or not finding what I wanted to find and having to swap back anyway.
I liked the goal but, it just wasn’t a valid tool for me.
The thing is changing your life to not need a precise maps app, instead of looking an app to fit your life.
To be clear, most businesses are in specific locations, not like a general area.
There’s a bullet proof old tech called communication, you reach someone in the street, or any business around there and ask questions about where the specific location you’re looking for is located.
Not having a map when going to a new location is one of the most anxiety triggering things for me. They have been lifesavers in helping me get out more.
But OSM provides a map. What exactly are you talking about?
I thought the problem was people depending too much on Google Maps because its privacy invasive data harvesting.
It often gives incorrect maps simply because of update schedule and them encouraging not reporting construction <3 months or whatever.
We have construction all over in Belgium and tons of detours such that it makes open street map pretty much unusable as it will just incessantly reroute you to a blocked path even after you are well on a different route.
You said precise maps apps and ‘an app to fit your life’, not closed source corpo map sources.
I’m fine with using open source if it’s capable of navigating me around without issue, I’m not fine with not having an app too fit my life or be precise.
Yea but the main thread of this comment is talking about:
Usually when people say that on a privacy perspective it refers to how impossible is to ditch Google Maps because of its live traffic things and other things like Android Auto.
So I replied saying you should change your life to not depend on such apps, not your apps to fit in your lifestyle.
Yes but I replied to your post, not a top level comment in response to the thread.
I firmly agree. It’s a give and take, I don’t have the time or energy to spend a couple hours mapping the local area on OSM that way it can be properly used. I did that for my home town, and then realized that outside of big corporate entities, it wasn’t done at all for any of the surrounding towns or even cities. To me having an accurate map with ability to give directions and traffic reports is worth more than my location data.