Seems like I’m fucked. Being Chinese-American means the US government is constantly suspicious of me being a “CCP Spy” and also the CCP has overseas illegal “police stations”, I’m getting fucked over by both sides. Just perfect

You trust China more? The State-Capitalist Authoritarian regime? They country that developed the spyware known as Wechat, which is currently monitoring most of the overseas Chinese Diaspora? LMFAO. Spoken like a westerner who never stepped foot on mainland China.

Why are people always being campist lol. Just because you think “your side” is is bad, doesn’t mean you should just blindly support the “other side”.

But you literally mentioned linux phones, why add that you’ll use “iOS out of spite”? Lol

Hey don’t mind me, I’m just gonna whip out my steamdeck (that I already have) to watch a youtube video using the desktop firefox. (Yes I know its 720p, but whatever lol, its good enough for gaming, its good enough for youtube)

A $200 phone in 2015 is not the same as a $200 phone in 2025. I know from experience.

Those phones in 2015 were awful, but in 2025, they feel more like mid-range phones.

Edit: And $600 is pocket change? Sound like someone lived a privilaged life.

Because the cheapest new iPhone is $600 and you can get a cheap new android phone for around $100-$200 and get 6 years of security updates (Galaxy A16 for example)

If a smartphone is no longer a computer where you can install whatever you want, why bother investing so much money on a very locked-down phone? You can use the hundred of dollars you saved to spend on a small portable PC or something to run any software you want.

They are converging to become the same thing.

Its not any better on iOS, fyi, they too require Apple’s final approval.

There is a “firefox” but its just a re-skinned safari basicly, because Apple has some weird requirement of using their “webkit” or whatever, and no extensions allowed on the “firefox”. I used an iPhone before (because I was a young adult and iPhones looked shiny) and I was so sad to find out I couldn’t use uBlock Origin on it. And then finding out torrent apps are non-existent just made me cry.

Yes they do have “adblockers” like Brave or those Adguard thing on safari, but those are dogshit and they broke like half of the time, and many ads get through anyways, especially on youtube (where as uBlock Origin only break sites like 5% of the time).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIJavqEzEIw (sources in video description)

If your phone isn’t manually approved, its assumed your phone doesn’t support 4g/5g, therefore, blocked.

4G/5G phones have already been blocked

Fairphone isn’t certified in Australia, Pinephone also isn’t, nor Librem 5.

Custom ROMs on an approved phone might work for now, but they could potentially start verifying OS in the future if the autocratization trend continues. Also, manufacturers could starts start locking the bootloader.

The best realistic way forward is have two devices, one is the “normie” phone, the other is your own pocket PC running a Libre OS.

It used to be a pocket computer, now its just a mini-prison-cell.

If anyone is using currently using a flagship phone, when your phone dies and you need a replacement: consider just getting a cheap $100 android phone then spend the rest of the money you would’ve spent on a flagship on a portable PC instead

Lol, that’s like saying “my country became a dictatorship, so I’m gonna support another country’s dictator out of spite”

Look up Australia’s whitelisting system.

If you phone isn’t manually approved, it won’t be able to connect to a cell tower, not even for emergency calls.

Tbf, you can a very cheap android phone for around $100 USD, the cheapest iPhone starts at around $400 (edit: Actually I got curious and looked it up, apparantly the iPhone SE is gone and the cheapest new iPhone right now seems to be the 16e which start at $600). Also, Apple developer account cost $99 per year, Google developer account cost $25 one time fee, so the cost is gonna trickle down to the user, sometimes you find free apps on google play and then you look at apple and it cost a few dollars, its most likely due to the recurring costs to maintain a developer account.

Also, Apple doesn’t allow torrent clients, You can’t use firefox with ublock origin on iOS.

(But then again, these advantages could also go away in a few years… 👀)

Before modern era, they used to do lobotomies and lock up kids that are neurodivergent

Ted Ed, Vsauce, CGP Grey.

Any mainstream social network is very very soon going to be completely useless

Still fun for entertainment, grab popcorn, read comments, enjoy! 🫠

Holy shit, someone actually advocating Martyrdom/suicide on the internet. Jesus christ lemmy.

There are more land with its people voting republican, but that’s population density, California has more population than 20+ states, but don’t just visit those 20 red backwards ass states and be like: “See, 20 red state states vs one California”

WW3 be like:

Breaking News: Newsom Strikes new deal with the republicans in state legislature on Gun Control despite democratic supermajority, New Gun Control laws will not apply to rich people.

(Okay I made that up, but wouldn’t be surprising if that happens)