In the janky old vehicles I had back when that was a thing I would do stuff like smear some heavy grease on the edge to block the wind. Bottom dollar cars get bottom dollar fixes.
Blockchain! NFT! Toss in fediverse of course and you can make up all the should we build it buzzwords in one...
The very nature of the fedi is personal ownership and communal development. Attempting to stuff commercial platforms into it is contrary to the whole premise.
Funny enough my dad used to mention about 4*80 ac in the car for similar reasons, which makes me wonder if there where a lot of speeding tickets at the time.
Yes, but the price now is hardly more than that. Cheap tech leftovers are plentiful and I'm certainly not the only one who had a WiFi only phone for a while. Spend $40 for a cheap functional handheld and you can get all the apps if inclined. Can probably even find plenty for free if you look about.
The practice existed long before smart phones, they used to call them loyalty cards or memberships or something like that. You can go to pretty well any chain gas station for some kind of perks membership card where you get a free coffee for buying gas or whatever. The switch to it being done by apps is in part because it's easier, and they get more realtime and personal info.
Little free digital libraries if you like. It'd be possible to do once the DRM is gone, if only there was a platform that made selling without the locks a major part of the pitch...
Functionally though it is possible, ebook lending exists already, but from what I gather proper libraries pay some sizable fee for the right to do so. There's no reason other digital media couldn't do the same.
Here's a bet that it's another of those TikTok charades like where they had people make reports on the abortion narc lines or such. Throw enough bullshit out there and it at least frustrates someone and possibly makes a point. In this case just getting enough people to download an alternate app was enough to have someone write a story that might make a few people realize how futile it is to try and block a massively popular app.
So I can't help but assume this is some kind of Stephen Colbert style satire character. The problem here on Lemmy is there are so many legitimately over the top people that it runs into the need for /S everywhere.
Persecution complex always at the ready. I did see one story where some segment of them had been told to avoid places with lots of Trump signs, but the reason was for the worker safety because of the hostility by the right wing. So basically in that case they created a self fulfilling prophecy.
It's a sad state of affairs that this kind of news is so unsurprising, but if Democrats said screw the people in Florida who got flattened by a hurricane it'd be the story of the month...
In the janky old vehicles I had back when that was a thing I would do stuff like smear some heavy grease on the edge to block the wind. Bottom dollar cars get bottom dollar fixes.