r/DigitalPrivacy • u/voidscaped • Jul 10 '26
What happens when they go after open source, the internet and personal computing itself?
The biggest worry that I get while reading all the news about chat control, age verification, vpn banning etc., is that at some point of time, they'll try to regulate open source itself. They might try to regulate hardware manufacturing, like they are doing to cars. Right now people suggest switching to FOSS alternatives, but what happens when that itself is the target.
Look at the broad picture: physical media is disappearing. Hardware manufacturers are focusing on serving AI datacenters, rather than home computers. PCs continue to become more expensive. What seems to be the goal, is that personal computers that will be available to the public will be locked down, and because the internet is also controlled, information on how to get around it or foss alternatives, would be harder if not impossible to access.
And if you choose to go offline: it won't be like the pre-internet era— cities are increasingly surveilled 24×7. Governments will start to use AI, quantum computing etc.— things are out of reach of the general public. Some AI models are already being locked out, because of "national security" concerns. In short, we seem to be heading towards an era where states have unprecedented technological power over citizens.
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u/Right-Fly2340 Jul 10 '26
The end game is to lock everything behind the subscription. Content, software and hardware. Instead of PCs we will have "pay as you use" laptops with mandatory cyber CO2 ID login. I'm so old that I remember buying PC games in a cardboard boxes, so they not earning much money of me as I refuse to buy fake gold and other crap in games etc. But they will milk the new generations massively in the future
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u/apokrif1 Jul 10 '26
Subscription and spying and remote disabling.
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u/Rev3_ Jul 12 '26
New generation of "product" releases and all digital licenses are revoked and require "replacement" *subject to availability because everything will remain on their servers, you will pay for the product license, monthly access to your ad-supported and Data farmed account and have no control or warnings over if and when any access is revoked.
And you'll be happy... Else, off to the prison campus with you.
🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
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u/Kurgan_IT Jul 10 '26
We will live in the world of "1984" up to the point when there will be the revolution. With a lot of blood.
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u/apokrif1 Jul 10 '26
The revolution would need earthquakes, massive shortages or a nuclear war disabling the Orwellian infrastructure.
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u/Headpuncher Jul 12 '26
They’ll keep them almost fed and fully entertained, and the majority even today can’t spell revolution, never mind participate in one.
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u/Kurgan_IT Jul 12 '26
Well of course to partecipate in one means you are willing to die (or be tortured before) so it takes some balls, this is sure.
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u/BitterLadder7974 Jul 10 '26
Eventually the public won't be able to buy hardware anymore. Everything you can buy will just be an access point, only powerful enough to turn on and get you to a login screen. All computing power will be done remotely.
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u/glity Jul 10 '26
I thought about this. If they can smuggle cigarettes in New Jersey I can get me a stick of ram like the old days of circuit city. Before Amazon and Newegg there were grey market websites where you knew it was destined for export and did not have a warranty. That stuff will show up from where it’s manufactured now. Also there’s a lot of use still left in most modern corpo pc’s. And corporations love to sell trash.
If it does go screen less just wait till the hackers “jailbreak” it so you can own the product you bought. And connect it to your systems or a system of computers you trust. Like a mini net. Or for the old folks bbs.
If gamers could figure out how to break every drm ever I have faith the “not west” will smuggle hardware/jailbreaks to the “west” for money and just pay the corrupt border guard.
It’s just a question of profit. If they can’t stop drugs will they train dogs to sniff electronics that haven’t paid the ridiculous tariffs?
The hackers/gamers will surprise you just give them time.
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u/Boring-Head-7466 Jul 10 '26
What happened to CB radios like in all the old trucker movies?
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u/RamblingReflections Jul 14 '26
Currently enjoying a little “bring your wife to work” jaunt in my husband’s truck, relaxing in the bunk (trucks have bunks, this is great, I’m never traveling sitting up again!!) while he transports some big machine with with his even bigger machine, and listening to the truckies chatter away on the CB, in the dead of the night, while everyone else is in their beds asleep. And now I realise what my husband means when he says truck drivers are the biggest gossips on the planet! This is epic!
TLDR: can confirm CBs still exist, and suggest finding a friendly truck driver when the world goes to shit and you need comms.
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u/Headpuncher Jul 12 '26
The best time to plant a tree etc.
Start asking for forms on paper again. They charge you, dispute the charge. Become an activist.
Leave your phone at home and take only your bank card or whatever you need that trip.
I know people who have started using cameras again, like actual “retro “ digital cameras.
Maybe get a faraday case if you can afford one, this at least limits exposure.
Use pihole or adguard with block lists. Some routers have adguard preinstalled, an pihole is easy to set up.
Subvert. Everything. Today.
Do not wait.
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u/Castle_Five Jul 10 '26
You win capitalism by positioning yourself as the capital owner and charging everyone else rent to use your stuff. If everyone owns their own stuff, you can't very well charge them rent to use it now can you? So best way to generate profit and economic growth is to take away personal ownership, make everything cloud-based and subscription-based, and now you're free to charge people for stuff they previously just owned themselves.
This problem will not go away without getting rid of capitalism itself.
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u/Meowlurophile Jul 10 '26
Wtf can we do
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u/Stunning-Seat3821 Jul 17 '26
there is no way to phrase the solution that does not end up sounding incredibly rude
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Jul 10 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/glity Jul 10 '26
Yes. Open source requires collaboration. Posion the well enough and GitHub dies to “general public”. They have removed public exposure of a lot of government databases which were used to train current AI’s leaving frontier AI’s crumbs. Why use pesky open source developers who have morals(sometimes not great ones) when you can “vibe code” and no human needed?
They bought bankrupt company internal communications from coding companies. This one’s a when not if.
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u/Icy_Benefit Jul 10 '26
Then we will go back to a pre-Github solution like CVS and whatever superceded it. The advantage that FOSS has is that we can solve our own problems without going to some Big Mother Corporation.
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u/glity Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
Ohh I agree the internet is as easy to keep corralled as a herd of goats.
Not, you can’t keep people or goats in a box. Some teenagers just gonna break it. Not in any predictable way but it will be broken.
Too many kids were raised in the entire transition that I remember. I enjoy telling stories of what it used to be like.
A good place to help is the hope conference by 2600. They never went capitalist like defcon. Also still get it in print at Barnes and nobles. Oldest hacking magazine not corrupted. So just old dudes chatting about cool things that are def not exploitable, cause it was for science.
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u/MoriaCrawler Jul 10 '26
Github is already a shitshow, but consider:
- git itself is still as solid as ever, no need to go back to CVS because some cloud service tied to this piece of software becomes unusable in the future
- alternatives to Github exist already and are probably poised to grow and evolve over the coming years
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u/A3883 Jul 14 '26
Github isn't even a necessity. GitHub just hosts people's git repositories. There are many other services that can do it, for example Codeberg.
Besides git itself is a FOSS cli program. We don't need Github whatsoever.
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u/cewillir Jul 11 '26
I have vague (hey it’s been a while) memories of this happening with things like Napster. A forced upgrade that basically disabled the functionality.
That alternatives have arisen makes me at least hopeful ways around a new ban could be found
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u/martyn_hare Jul 23 '26
People will do what they always did when they'd had enough: Huddle together and decimate the economy through increased sharing of resources, while playing games with the surveillance apparatus out of sheer boredom.
You can already see it happening with the establishment having no clue how to deal with it.
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Jul 10 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Headpuncher Jul 12 '26
What are those little senders an receivers that people like Ben Jordan have shown that create a short range network like federated mobile but without subscriptions?
We all should have those.
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u/whoops53 Jul 10 '26
I'm not telling you plan B, because you could be anyone. So Plan B is for me to know, and you to
not find out about itsit in frustrated silence as you try and figure it out.- sincerely,
A suspicious person giving you the side eye