"But the time of "making people care" about things is gone. They don't care. They never will with all this noise going on."
Tragically, that's very true. But society and societal issues being what they are nowadays we should not expect anything else.
Most of the world's addicted users would be bereft and suffer severe withdrawal without their regular dose of Social Media. Same would apply if those 'amazing' apps provided 'freely' by that wonderful magnanimous benefactor Google were to disappear or ever be under threat.
Any notion that their treasured online ecosystem could be disrupted or their 'free' apps might be replaced with FOSS equivalents would cause outrage. With their attention spans already severely reduced, uses would never stop to consider the true benefits of FOSS, instead they'd actively fight against it.
Like a parasitoid wasp taking control of a catapillar's mind/body to benefit its offspring, Big Tech has parasitized the minds of much of the world's population before anyone realized the fact.
That this outrage has actually happened without any effective opposition is a true tragedy, to expect FOSS to reverse the situation without some cataclysmic event intervening is just a fanciful pipedream.
not to mention that ... there are simply more important things.
from climate change to a landwar in Europe, or simply spending time with loved ones (or the loneliness epidemic - which might be a measurement artifact, but just as with starvation, tuberculosis, measles, even one person is too many).
FOSS is a good amalgamation of ideas, it needs a bit more work on sustainability, but public goods provisioning is a well-studied field (note, not a solved one!)
we might not like it, but probably wrapping the problem in national/geopolitical security terms and civil and social infrastructure concepts is required to make progress on it. (providing a public safe baseline, then standardization and productivity cooperation, but all this requires the underlying problems to be also considered in similar terms - and as long as education, healthcare, transportation, housing, construction, logistics and so on lack a public basic quasi-standardized option there's not much software can do.)
and where a common platform makes sense FOSS software capital is already being accumulated. (though of course the iron laws of amortization/upkeep apply to software too.)
Tragically, that's very true. But society and societal issues being what they are nowadays we should not expect anything else.
Most of the world's addicted users would be bereft and suffer severe withdrawal without their regular dose of Social Media. Same would apply if those 'amazing' apps provided 'freely' by that wonderful magnanimous benefactor Google were to disappear or ever be under threat.
Any notion that their treasured online ecosystem could be disrupted or their 'free' apps might be replaced with FOSS equivalents would cause outrage. With their attention spans already severely reduced, uses would never stop to consider the true benefits of FOSS, instead they'd actively fight against it.
Like a parasitoid wasp taking control of a catapillar's mind/body to benefit its offspring, Big Tech has parasitized the minds of much of the world's population before anyone realized the fact.
That this outrage has actually happened without any effective opposition is a true tragedy, to expect FOSS to reverse the situation without some cataclysmic event intervening is just a fanciful pipedream.