I have recently started a new position and am required to use an app that has three Facebook trackers, one of them being a Facebook location tracker according to Exodus App Privacy in order to get your food when it would literally work perfectly fine ordering to a real cashier or shit even a website rather than having to download an app.
I have also read many stories of people that live in apartments that require them to use a mobile app for god damn LAUNDRY. All you need, is a card reader, and it will work perfectly fine like it has been for the longest time.
Privacy concerns aside, it is just annoying that you need this app and that app and this app and that app and it just clutters space on your phone. Security concerns too as now they have all of this additional info on you online, such as your phone number your email your real name, instead of just your credit card info like a card reader would have. And I am willing to guarantee that their security model is absolute horseshit because they have such a small team of engineers working on the app and the servers.
Literal enshitification
Magne
A person’s music taste seems to crystalize at some point in their teenage years. The bands you loved at 15-17 are probably the bands that you’ll love forever.
Likewise, I’m finding that my relationship with information services as a whole probably crystalized a while ago, and the new era of “apps for every individual thing” is just wholly unappealing. Give me a web browser to interface with your information. If I can’t get it done with that, I’m more likely to move on to some even older tech and skip your product altogether.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m late to bingo. And get off my lawn.
Me: “seems to” “at some point” “probably” while making a minor, secondary point. Others: Severely Triggered
I’m doing my best to constantly listen to new music every week to keep fresh and malleable in my taste
yea, discovering is part of the fun
RIP what.cd’s amazing music discovery spider web chart
I leaned hard on Waffles top 10 and also turntable.fm rooms after college.
Now in my 40s, I’ma little bit stuck in the LCD Sound System era of electro indie.
For me it depends on the mood. New stuff is fun, but stuff I know can be instantly trabsportative to moods or mental spaces and it feels good. New stuff can be too mentally engaging if I’m trying to do focus work or zone out. I think I listen to less new stuff now because I’m usually wanting to zone out with music more than actively engage with it.
I HATED rap and whatnot when I was 12-19 or so. Apple too.
Now I’m constantly listening to clipping. and doneone and UGK (RIP Young Pimp C) on my iPhone.
Dunno I can’t stand the music I listened to in my teenage years.
I dont listen to anyone I liked as I kid cause they all came out as sex traffickers and pedophiles.
now I just listen to disney music, and waiting for the inevitable horror revelations with regards to those.
Well, it’s Disney so…
I WILL NEVER STOP LOVING THE BLOOD BROTHERS
The bands you loved at 15-17 are probably the bands that you’ll love forever.
Thank god that wasn’t the case. Listened to some awful shit as a kid
Me neither. I wonder if that’s even true, because i see a lot of people changing tastes with age.
PWAs for the win!
Everything that’s normal between age 10-20 is just as it is.
Everything you get to know between 20 and 30 is the hot new shit.
Everything after age 30 is just another fad you don’t want to invest time to get to know anyway
I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
- Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
- Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
- Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
Oh cool, thanks for providing the source
Wait come back!! You dropped your cane!
That’s altogether BS. The bands I listen to have changed constantly since my teenage years. That’s just an excuse to become a ranting old man.
An interesting experiment on the music thing. Top songs on your 13th birthday, at least for US/North Americans. https://www.birthdayjams.com
Wonder what they use your birthday for?
One of the credit card companies I use has a website that won’t work properly anymore in my phone’s browser.
My wife has a card through this company as well and she uses their app with no problems.
I have zero interest in installing their app so once a month I fire up my surface pro just to pay that damn bill.
It used to work just fine in the phone browser though.
Should probably just cancel that shitty account one of these days.
I don’t know if anyone growing up these days would actually like mobile app requirements if they took the time to think about why they’re required. Source: I’m one of them.
Most people young or old don’t think about it and don’t care.
Not necessarily… I grew up already in the era of apps, but have the same attitude. And I actually did actively use a smartphone during my tween and early teen years.
I don’t think that’s true. I like what I liked what I was a teen but more in a nostalgic kind of way. I definitely didn’t like harder metalcore in my teens the way I do now lol.
Nice bullshit armchair Freud u hating every change due to immaturity or unwillingness to learn doesnt mean we do too
I realize you may just be venting but consider complaining to your college administration either via your student council or by yourself.
It should not be the norm to have to tell a stranger where you are to eat food.
You are paying for your education even if you are doing so via a loan and that gives you the right to tell them how you feel about them invading your privacy. In college and in jobs authority figures routinely try to control you and it is worth learning to take a stand against such abuses.
They literally could not give one fuck less. They are probably being paid or otherwise are getting some other kind of kickback to push these apps. Colleges are…I hesitate to say greedy, but let’s call it “capitalistic”.
I agree with the sentiment, but if no one ever complains things are guaranteed to not change. At least this is, at the very least, an exercise in explaining your own viewpoints and understanding the workings of an institution. That is a skill and lesson that is valuable in the professional world.
via your student council or by yourself.
This is literally what the student council exists for! Also, OP could join student council! As a graduated student government nerd I highly recommend it!
Worth noting the college probably did it because they want to appear to be technologically advanced. As part of Student government I visited a campus that had no public water fountains but did have a gigantic touchscreen map about the size of a normal printed map that conveyed no extra information that a printed map would. It was very clear what motivations were behind those decisions
The number of business that just expect that everyone has already downloaded and installed their app has become ridiculous.
Best Buy now demands an app be installed for order pick up. They are so sure you’ll have already done that there are no instructions in their parking lot for pick up that don’t include the app, no way to call them, and the lot employees say, “Just use the app and we’ll get your order.” It’s like the 20% tips programmed into just about every payment machine these days. No, I won’t leave you a 20% tip for handing me a receipt.
Even when going to Best Buy’s service desk the reps looked at me like I was crazy. “No, I won’t install your app to pick up an order” was met with confusion and open irritation. Fuck that.
And don’t get me started on ‘Reddit is better in our crappy Reddit app.’
Dude same here for the Reddit prompt ! I browse incognito without a profile just to see some headlines… and every ten minutes or if I got to a risque sub, it will stop me and ask for the app download or if I want to stay on the browser… if I wanted the app… I would have gotten it… I am on the browser for a reason…
Just use third party apps. Oh wait…
Yeah… Miss boost for reddit…
Excited it’s coming out for Lemmy though. Right now I am on liftoff and it works well though
Try to use “request desktop site”, stuff may be sized weirdly, but at least you don’t get that stupid pop up anymore
I find that many desktop sites scale just fine, and as you stated, the most common issue is simply that the elements may be sized a little strangely. The desktop sites tend to be way more functional. I miss my old Windows Mobile PDA with the stylus that could tap the smallest of links without a problem. With most phones I’ve had in recent history being at least 1920x1080, there’s no reason a site shouldn’t be able to display in desktop landscape mode.
When something’s flagged NSFW, you can replace the “www” with “old” (e.g. old dot reddit dot com) to bypass :)
Fast food is about 30% more expensive if you refuse the app.
Personal experience:
Tim Hortons
Wendy’s:
That’s always the case in the beginning with those apps. And once they have market dominance and/or the shareholders want their ROI, they increase price and hope people still use it. See Uber for example.
This is why I hope to god when I’m living in my own we never get to the point where apps become 100% required to purchase shit from a store. I’d rather starve and miss a day’s worth of meals than order off an app.
Grocery shopping and food prep is always an option. Cheaper and healthier too.
If you have time to browse Lemmy, you got time to throw some shit in an air fryer/insta pot/slow cooker.
That I can totally agree, as someone who actually enjoys cooking. If I could get my family on board, I wouldn’t mind getting their help making and freezing meals on the weekend for days when we just don’t feel like cooking or my mother’s back is bothering her or whatever.
My bachelor days I’d make a tray of lasagna or a pot of beef stew and I had meals for almost 5 days. I will say that I was really sick of lasagna or beef stew by day 4 though.
Looks like you’ll be foraging for food in the woods
Yeah, I hate that. At an old job, sometimes people would go around and take lunch orders before running to Wendy’s, Hate Chicken, or Chipotle. I’d way rather give my coworker cash and let them have the bonuses and discounts and crap while I maintain the privacy afforded to cash-only Chads. It’s still an L though because we’re still giving the companies money.
Jesus, it’s like they want you to order online from a third party instead of paying them.
All the best buys I know of are shutting down. Doing the ol’ circuit city.
Weird. I can just go to the mobile Best Buy site, pull up my order from my account, and get the barcode they need to scan from there. No need for the app.
I can do the same with the desktop site.
IMO people should not have to know a company’s policies and go through their website to make a purchase. Anyway, it would have been nice if they put that information on the sign in their pickup area, or their pickup reps or desk clerks mentioned it when I told them I didn’t have the app. Instead they made it clear that everyone should either already have the app or install it because they said so.
Way, way too many companies and organizations (like the OP’s) are pulling this kind of crap.
Reddit is better in our crappy Reddit app.
Oh fuck reddit for doing that.
I ordered online and picked up in store at best buy without their app. I showed them the email they sent with the info. No problems at all.
Could it be there’s more than one Best Buy?
My goodness, you’re right! 😁
I thought all best buys had the same policies for everything? Or do they differ between Canada and the US?
Policies and practices are often very different things.
I went to college before it was app everything and our student id’s were smartcards. Dining plan associated with the smartcard. Just stick it in the reader when you show up and you’re good. You could put cash on your card then use it for the vending machines or laundry or any little incidental on campus. If you needed cashed added to your account, your parents could go online and do it, or you could. That was the only online component. The entire system just worked without any fuss or privacy concerns or anything.
Almost without any privacy concerns. When I went to college around the turn of the millennium, I worked at the main food court on campus. We had a card system just like you’re describing. When we swiped the student’s card to pay for their meal, their student ID would come up on my screen. Their student ID was their SSN. Back then the first three digits of a person’s SSN was based on the state they lived in when they got their number assigned. For most people that was when they were a baby or at least very young, and for most people that’s the state they did most of their growing up in. I used to have most of the codes memorized, so when I’d swipe someone’s card and see that they had an SSN from someplace that wasn’t the state where the university was, I’d mention it. “Oh, hey, you’re from Ohio? My aunt lives in Ohio.”
Yikes! That was a privacy nightmare. We were fortunate that the university assigned a personal ID on enrollment. I think the only place that had access to the social was the front office. Of course some of the students worked at the front office. I hope they were required to sign an NDA.
Yeah it worked this was in the late 90s except your ID was a swipe card and it really only worked on food. You also had to go to the business office with a check to deposit more funds. Online was still dial up for most people.
I like this too because it doesn’t require you to turn on NFC which I feel like drains power.
I mean, it does. But it’s such an insignificant amount you’d never notice.
If you got an hour of use out of your phone for instance, you’d only lose about 18 seconds runtime.
Huh, today I learned. I’d always assumed it was like Bluetooth or location.
Yeah, same but they also worked as bus passes.
That’s still how it works where I am, but the little devices to renew your card every semester are broken half the time, so yay
My apartment complex wants me to download some third-party app just to pay my rent, instead of using their perfectly serviceable web portal. I assume they’re getting a data harvest kickback that’s buried in several layers of fine-print legalese, which will be used to send me targeted spam and junk mail. And that data will be sold and re-sold to other parties ad infinitum. Whatever they can collect about my personal life, for sale to any asshole with enough cash in their pocket. Fuck that. I shouldn’t have to deal with this bullshit just to keep a roof over my head.
I was visiting family in the city I grew up in and we decided to go to this place that now charges for parking. It’s a city lot. I figured I have to get this app to park. The city app.
First, it was a nightmare of horrible bad UX and half-assed customization. Second, it took about 15 minutes of bs to pay for parking (time outs, a couple 2fa’s, we need you to use a social but we haven’t set up that login path correctly). Finally, get parking paid, my wife is losing her mind thinking I’m an idiot because it took so long, and then the spam calls started. I literally wasn’t into the building and I was getting spam texts and robo calls. I’m not talking “goods and services I might like” , this was “Canadian border services has determined you have unpaid fines” voicemails and “hi, i just found your number again can u text” type stuff. Just wild.
That’s terrible. So much data harvesting out there. It’s crazy. Cities and companies hire out to contractors that also do shady shit to the code to also harvest that data. It’s wild.
Yes, agreed. It’s not like it’s a big city but it’s big enough that it was obvious this was either a blatant cash grab or complete mismanagement (laziness/incompetence). Guessing the latter.
Oh I feel this in my soul. I am pregnant and have a two year old… I was and am a huge customer of pampers (and enfamil formula for when my two year old was little) the apps have kick backs… and against my better judgement z I broke down and got these apps for the kick back… I regret it… my email is overwhelmed with spam suddenly… an email I worked hard to get all the spam out of a few months ago… I am also getting random calls and voicemails for services I would never use. It’s so frustrating… I just wanted to the points for the products I normally buy to save a few pennies… but can’t do it with out my data being harvested and being spammed with crap
Does your lease precise you have to use the app or own a smartphone ? If not, get a cellphone, like those new 3210. Call them, ask them how to install, or visit their office. Play it dumb. Of they tell you to get a smartphone, tell them to provide you one.
Or use your bank’s bill-pay service. They’ll mail a check or send it electronically (which is effectively the same as using a debit card).
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And furthermore: Most of these shitty apps are nothing more than overblown API clients. Which means they didn’t want to build a website and operate a webserver, so instead you provide the processing power for the UI yourself. These apps usually can’t do anything on their own, if you are offline, becaue all the value is generated remotely by the actual server.
The modern software experience sucks much!
When you have a website, you also provide the processing power for executing JavaScript and rendering HTML+CSS.
Why they would prefer an app (that’s by definition less compatible) is unknown for me, but I can attempt to guess it’s simpler for some reason.
It’s about control. Websites cannot control the browser or browser addons. The browser makes it harder to track and control the user. An app by definition allows more hardware access, even if modern mobile OS can control it pretty good. But then again, most users allow everything anyways.
It’s not control as in “track and control the user”. It’s control as in “normalising the environment”… if the user can install your app then they can use your service - it’s not a weird issue with a browser add on or cookie or whatever.
If it’s proprietary then you can’t confirm what it’s actually doing or change it. Even if the uni has no intentions of being controlling they have unjust control of your computing.
Browsers work just fine. The add-ons they don’t like are the privacy ones.
They want your data.
My favorite barber was booked out recently, so I just walked into the next one across the road, which looked new and had no customers inside. Asked for the haircut, and he said sure, what’s your name and email address? I was confused and asked why he would need that, and he said it’s for his app to book appointments and charge customers.
I walked out without getting a haircut.
Good, that’s the only way people like that will change
That may be why he had no customers
Same thing but with a phone number. They were baffled that I didn’t want to give my phone number for a haircut.
Hell, I get annoyed at being asked my first name at the counter in fast food places.
Like, give me a break… I’ll be the guy who looks like me standing right fucking there waiting for it… We don’t need to be on a first name basis… We ain’t friends.
“Mork”. And you know it’ll be unique.
I’ve thought about giving them Darth Vader … lol
Give a fun fake name then! My wife and I did that when we ordered sandwiches on off days and they actually drew fun doodles on the sandwiches to go with it a couple of times!
Lol ok Boomer. Just say I’d rather not give that info
Well yeah, and his response was “sorry sir, but without an account we cannot serve customers…”
Then I’m an idiot.
Cute insult. Got any more you’d like to use?
Nah, it was a throwaway comment. Half a joke but it sure did make people mad.
That what he did, Zoomer… lmao 🤣😂
An app in itself isn’t a bad thing… it’s the requirement that is wrong. Everything these days does seem to be geared around data mining and control. That well has to be getting awfully dry because it’s getting worse and worse.
You can’t even use many products without having an app that needs to be connected online so it can read your contacts and searches and such. Sites are getting harder to use if you have a DNS ad blocker or VPN on. Not sure where it ends…
I can only speak from the experience of one app at one company, but data we collected was for troubleshooting. Mainly because customers will email us stuff like “your app doesn’t work!!! Worst company ever!!” And absolutely no identifying information whatsoever. To make matters worse they’ll email with an email that they didn’t give us as a customer so how in the world are we supposed to help‽
So we collect enough data so whoever in the company might need to help them can actually do so.
There’s a lot of “this app is impossible to use!!!” That we find out with enough data collection is just them refusing to hit the GIANT button in the middle of the damn screen that would solve their problem. I hate users.
I believe we answered questions in the Apple and Google stores that says that we collect information and send it to 3rd parties (because analytics platforms are technically 3rd party) but not to sell it. I don’t know if that distinction is clear on the stores though.I used to work in a job where we had a niche ebook reader app in the major app stores. My favorite review that someone left?
1 star, Worst game ever.
Collecting data relevant to the app is ok and logical. It’s collecting unrelated personal info I gave a problem with.
And i can sympathize with you regarding users. I design control system interfaces and sometimes I go to extremes to make it good for idiots. And i still get calls at 7am, have to drop everything else and drive 40 miles just to point out the giant red ALARM text i specifically put there to make things easier. It’s on the first fucking page!
It’s nice that remote access is easier now but some of these facility managers… i don’t know who puts their pants on for them because they don’t seem to be able to navigate treacherous logic and reason.
I hope I didn’t just quote your whole post, still trying to figure out boost hah
Can’t agree more. And the issues go beyond data harvesting. For example, recently, I lost my phone and carried on for a while without it, only to realize we’re building a society in which we are slowly losing our citizenship rights if we don’t have a phone. I found myself locked out from many things, and having to go so many alternate routes, that I had to get a new phone quickly.
It all happened so subtly, and I saw it happening, but still, it’s hard to believe we came to this point without the people manifesting some sort of opposition. I get even more worried about the developing countries, where not everyone can properly afford a phone.
I think we are the frogs being boiled in the pot of enshittification
I’ve been called a crazy conspiracy theorist since 2009 and my first Android. Hated all the sync/tracking Google was doing that was killing my battery then. Disable Google, and now I get a full day’s battery, back then.
People still don’t listen to me about this issue, 10+ years later.
Those google apps are also the number 1 reason of phones getting slower over time and leading people to buy new ones. Fuck google.
Yep. Currently setting up my next phone - Pixel 4a. It won’t have any Google services. Gonna just bite the bullet and move on.
That’s the reason I stopped using a smartphone in 2020. Never has much problem thus far except for Steam, which required using their app for confirming the trades (even for simple items worth fractions of a penny). I now use an Android VM for this.
If Steam could just do that with standard TOTP already…
2FA is the only reason I’d need the app, but installing it just for this one feature? Not the only service I have this problem with. Just let me use Aegis ffs
Well, I didn’t use it until I started trading items (and these were cheap items worth fractions of a penny, mind you! The ones that drop for free all the time!) I really wish you could confirm such trades as well by just entering your TOTP code from Keepass.
I insist on doing as much as I can on my mobile browser to reduce the number of apps I have and only use apps that I feel are useful. Forcing me to use an app for trivial things just means I won’t use your service at all.
Works pretty well, and one of the things I like about Lemmy is that the mobile browser experience is perfectly fine, it’s good in its simplicity.
Yep. Firefox > Desktop Site > Add to Home Screen. Not perfect but works fine in most cases.
Smart phones ruined the internet
No. The corporations have ruined the Internet
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Exactly why I don’t even bother with mobile games. That market feels so oversaturated with paywalls, scams, microtransactions and ads.
No, greedy people ruined the internet.
The internet ruined the internet.
no, the ̴͕͓͐̑͂̚͠}̷͚̰̄"̵̱̬͎̫͉͕̅̆̈́̌̏́̋̕͘:̷̷̡̢̗̰̯̜̗̫̩̙̹̱̋̓͗̊̓͆̀́̾{̸͚̥̮̹̠͕̖̞͈͈̉̐͗̉̈́̑̃͂̑͂̿͛̕͜͝͝ͅͅ:̶̛͔͈̭̜̮͓̍̈́̃́̐̅̉̊̊̚"̷̢̪̲̱̺̪͚͉̙̟̼̮̒̋͝ͅ?̵̭͙͙̤̤̦͈̳̻̜̯̫͓͕͛͐̓̓͆͜͝≯̨͍̠̞͈̌̌̕:̴̶̸̢̛͓͍̩͕͓̺̣̼̼͍̜̻̅̆͌͂͑́̎̎̈́̅͌͒̍͒̓̇͌͌̐͘̕͠ͅ"̵̢̢̰͔̬̭͉͔̪̘͖̀̇̾̽̉͜͜͜?̷̯̭̣͕͙͗̒́̔͐́"̸̨̜͔̲̄̓͋}̵̠̯̲͎̬̟͒͐̈́͗́̿̔̈̔̐̐́̑̐̚{̶̻̋̈̄̎̊͌͑͐͛̈́͆̀͋ ruined the internet.
Yes and
Both are responsible
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Capitalism ruined the Internet
Capitalism ruined humanity
People ruined capitalism
Money makes pretty much everything worse.
I’m sure we’ve all experienced this…
Go to example.com
“Ooops! It looks like you’re on a mobile device, which we for some asinine corporate reason don’t support on our desktop site! No “enable desktop site” won’t make this message go away because we make an unreasonable effort to deny you access to our site. Go to mobile.example.com instead.”
Goes to mobile.example.com
“Just kidding! What, you think we were actually going to let you access this without installing something? No, fuck you! This page is literally just a full screen ad for our app and has no access to any other part of platform, download it and agree to it’s fifty permissions before we’ll even give you a glimpse of our content!”
Funny you mention enshittification, I just watched a talk from Cory Doctorow who coined that term and he pointed out the reason for insisting on an app is that it means you can’t block ads without violating the DMCA. Browsers can have adblocker extensions, apps cannot (unless you hack them.)
it means you can’t block ads without violating the DMCA. Browsers can have adblocker extensions, apps cannot (unless you hack them.)
I imagine this is just going to lead to more people using DNS ad blockers. My phone literally can’t access your ad server, sorry.
Private DNS FTW!
On Android:
- Swipe down and select settings (the gear)
- Search for: DNS
- Select Private DNS.
- Select Private DNS again.
- Select Private DNS provider hostname.
- Enter: dns.adguard.com
- Select Save
- Enjoy most ads being blocked in apps.
- Might work poorly on public wifi (Walmart wifi for example doesn’t work with a private DNS set).
On Apple:
- Fuck if I know.
Everytime I use this my WiFi stops working on my mobile.
Have you tried other private DNS servers? Curious if your Internet provider is blocking specific servers or DNS over HTTPS.
For me it works 95%, then throws that error randomly.
Not sure why that would be. 🤷
Same here… I had to go turn it off… why is that…
I heard there are security concerns with this as adguard cannot be fully trusted. Anyone got the scoop?
Ed: as in didn’t adguard get bought by some questionable company?
Your traffic is going through them instead of your ISPs DNS. Which do you trust more?
You are doing the lord’s work
Thanks!
As an app developer some people just get hard for an app and don’t know why they would want one.
It’s rarely some big plan just an ego thing
Unless someone makes a router that does that in firmware, there’s a lot of people who won’t bother.
Eero does but you have to pay a subscription fee and it’s an Amazon product.
So, blocks all ads but Amazon ads?
Honestly, the thing keeping me from rolling it out to my family is that it isn’t easy to override when you do want to see a site. Folks understand turning off uBlock Origin (or clicking proceed). I’ve only used Pi-Hole and NextDNS, but they really need a browser extension that will provide a better error message and an option to allow with a DNS cache clear.
If DNS ad blockers get popular enough, there are easy enough workarounds. The workarounds have tradeoffs such as security or stability, but they’ll serve the ads for at least the current year.
This one? It came up as the next post on sync:
That’s the one!
oh noo not the dmca. i love following the dmca with all my heart
That’s why I use the browser for pretty much everything.
Yes, this is a trend I’ve been commenting on for…well it seems like a very long time.
It’s clearly enshittification in nearly every single case; the more clueless johnny-come-lately tech-trendsters want to label me as just being old-fashioned or something when I bring it up. Trying to explain to them what is going on is usually a pointless exercise, as they have been steeped in a new==better mindset that is nearly ironclad and since they didn’t use reason to get themselves into that position, but instead, emotion, trying to reason them out of it is not going to happen…
And they get bombarded by app developers and consultants telling them they MUST have an app or all these bad things will happen to them.
A while ago, I started keeping a personal library/journal/etc. using Logseq. I could fire up Logseq in any browser on the planet, connect to my notes, and jot down whatever idea I had in the moment, all in a FOSS journal that stored my notes in plaintext markdown.
Then … I don’t know what happened, but 100% of their effort went into building an app, which then required them to build a (paid, proprietary) sync service, all rather than just releasing a self-hosted build of the web interface so I could spin up my own note-taking server. (Please don’t suggest alternatives; I’ve probably tried them all.) To “preserve privacy” and promote “local first”, I had to download an app and rely on a closed-source backend to do something I could trivially accomplish on my own. If my platform doesn’t support the app, no notes, unless I rely on the increasingly unmaintained web “demo” that does exactly 100% of what I need from the service, despite dozens of features missing compared to the app version.
But the kicker is that I cannot install things on my work computer. At all. Not portable apps, nothing. I will get a phone call from infosec if I even try, because we are a heavily regulated company. So if I have a bright idea at work, a thought I want to preserve, find a good article, etc., I have to go to another device. I have to interrupt my workflow, change my focus completely, and, probably, lose half of what I wanted to capture.
The thing is, I don’t think they’re data farming. I think they’re running a really good project! Users were begging for an app. “When are you going to release an app?” was a common question forever, because a whole generation of dingleberries cannot be bothered to go to a website that does the same thing, faster, and better than any app.
I’m still going to mention Zettlr and you can’t stop me.
Though it doesn’t have mobile apps and you’d have to use your own method of syncing the files, so not really what you’d need anyway.
There really isn’t a lot of FOSS apps than can replace Obsidian, while also being local-first and usable without an account, is there?
Logseq is really, really close. It’s basically a page I can start writing on, forcing minimal organization through bullets but otherwise freeform. Backlinking, plugins (meh), plain markdown. It’s just so good. It doesn’t require me to do anything other than write. It used to be entirely browser-based, syncing through a github repository. They could have released a self-hostable version of that and I would have been over the moon. Or, alternately, a self-hostable version with non-local storage so I could store my notes on a notes server I control. But they went with the app + sync service route. Understandable but sad.
So I just rolled my own sync through a git server and it works fine (other than iOS, which requires a maddening setup, but that’s not logseq’s fault).
I looked at Zettlr once or twice (thank you for mentioning it). Obsidian makes me crazy with all the UI fiddly bits and configuration. I tried. Oh how I tried. But it just didn’t work with my brain. (It’s the exact same reaction I have to KDE – there’s just TOO MUCH and it sets me off in unproductive directions, and that’s not a criticism of either project as such.)
I tried Logseq after looking for an Obsidian alternative, but I already failed at understanding how to import my notes. Can’t you just point the app to a folder? The import function seemed to only work for single markdown files, but maybe I was just missing something obvious.
That was a lot more straightforward in Zettlr, so I just kept using that, since it already does everything I need
Sort of, but the notes aren’t organized in the filesystem. So you point to a location where the files will live and it creates, e.g., journals and pages folders into which journals and pages are dropped. Each is one flat directory (which seems like a scaling problem after a while, but I’m nowhere near that being an issue).
Because logseq doesn’t do freeform markdown by default, you cannot just open any arbitrary markdown file in it. Or, rather, it will give unpredictable results if you do. If you’re used to a free-form editor that organizes files hierarchically, that is going to seem very, very strange and may not be what you’re looking for. My preference is to spend zero time organizing files and organizing text, so logseq’s choice to make both a non-issue is an absolute godsend. Open the app, start typing. It’s great (for me).
Yeah okay, no wonder I couldn’t warm up to it. I need that order and hierarchy in my notes
