The only thing people should be giving up is their Amazon Prime subscriptions and AWS hosting. You’re very likely getting ripped off and overcharged if you use AWS. Also although I recommend ordering from other websites if you have no choice but to use Amazon you don’t need Prime for free shipping, just wait until you have enough stuff in your cart such that you’re over the free shipping threshold. Don’t order unnecessary stuff to get over the threshold.

This is good but no matter what I don’t think Google should have such a monopoly over the web.

Solution: cancel your Amazon Prime subscription. Remember that Bezos also funded Trump’s inauguration and he ruined the Washington Post.

This is the right take here. I’m sure without all the propaganda far less people would support Trump.

I know it’s tempting to mock people who are leaving MAGA but actually the better thing to do is seize the opportunity to educate them and hopefully get them to never vote Republican ever again.

Wow! That is so uncanny it’s scary. That is exactly what MAGA is doing. They have extensive propaganda websites and news stations that are very repetitive in particular emphasizing the “big lie” which is false claims the 2020 election was stolen.

You aren’t going to die fighting me because I would refuse to fight my friends and allies.

Also shouldn’t you at-least try to decouple focusing on the worst of the worst companies first?

I’m sorry I have only one upvote for you. I wish I could give you way more. You’re right about this overall!

I will mention though if you already own a device you paid for and it’s not making Apple any money you might as well keep it and use it until the end of its usable life.

I’m reading this and I’m disgusted beyond belief and terrified too. I try to do all that I can to help and others do too but we really need help. No matter what country you’re from you can help too.

What I hope is that you can do everything you can to ensure the far-right can never take over your country, advocate for media literacy, and ensure people boycott the biggest Trump-supporting companies in the US like Twitter, Tesla and Uline and encourage a faster transition to renewable energy because it’s the fossil fuel companies who’ve been longtime backers of Republicans.

Are you in? Would you like to help?

I totally agree with you. I literally made my username “BoycottTwitter” because it’s so important and so basic.

Russia has already being waging hybrid warfare against the West through a massive campaign of disinformation, bots and propaganda. In addition we do it to ourselves as well. In America we have so much propaganda, it’s insane. We have Fox News, Newsmax, so many conspiracy theorist podcast hosts like Alex Jones (who has ties to Russia), Joe Rogan and way more. We also have billionaires funding our elections and supporting Republicans. Of course Germany is a lot better than we are but they have the AfD which receives backing from Elon Musk. 30 years ago I guarantee you almost no American could predict we would have fallen so far and have a president who’s loyal to Russia instead of our country. Likely if you were to tell an American 30+ years ago about this they would explain why they are “exceptional” or different from other countries. But you can see we were wrong. Never assume it can’t happen where you are too.

One key mistake which powered this all: how so many Americans fall for this is because we didn’t do nearly enough to stop it. Our education is underfunded and we don’t learn media literacy and civics. Now I ask will other countries repeat our mistake or will they take action?

I urge you demand your politicians really strengthen and enhance your education system by adding media literacy and emotional skills like conflict resolution, emotional regulation, attention span and impulse control, give the next generation the skills needed to be resilient against Russia’s hybrid warfare against Europe. Public media can also step in and educate adults and there can be workshops and classes. Students should be urged to pass the skills they learn along to their parents and grandparents.

Some people don’t appreciate what they had until it’s gone. I hope people can learn to appreciate and understand what they have while of course working towards making things better too.

Good point! I fixed the sentence.

I think it’s time to make a serious push into getting people to boycott Microsoft along with OpenAI. Windows 11 is now a bloated surveillance operating system and Office 365 raised their prices to pay for an AI feature based on OpenAI’s LLMs. OpenAI donated $25 million to Trump.

Can anyone from Norway comment on this? I would tend to suspect the reason is perhaps language barriers or all the news about quality control issues for Teslas and all the evil Musk is doing hasn’t made its way to Norway but the problem with this idea is based on my very limited experiences with Norwegians they all know excellent English like native level and likely better than a lot of Americans actually and would be very informed about this. Maybe despite this it’s just not reaching them over there.

Maybe someone could start translating articles about all the evil things Musk has done and all the quality and reliability and safety issues with Teslas into Norwegian and do more outreach to Norway to help Norwegians pick safer and better EVs instead of Tesla and stop funding fascism.

It’s hard to avoid right now, particularly if you’re a user of Microsoft ecosystem products.

Solution:

Windows -> Linux
Office 365 -> Libreoffice to replace most of Office 365 and to replace Outlook consider Thunderbird or Seamonkey
Edge/Chrome -> Firefox or a fork of Firefox.

Some are moving to Bluesky. After this happened Bluesky experienced a surge in registrations according to https://bskycheck.com/stats.php

Keep talking about it and never give up! If you convince even one person it’s a victory!

Then what would?

We need aggressive action against this. Urge every politician you can to make media literacy taught in school. Students must learn how to identify disinformation and propaganda.