This feeling of being defeated by and trapped inside the “machine” and seeing the “truth” is exactly what the “machine” would want you to do. The actual red pill is that there’s no “machine”, there’s only people and shared social constructions held together by our compliance and they’re contingent.

we also lived through

owning digital books => renting/subscribing

owning digital games => renting/subscribing

owning digital music => renting/subscribing

owning the right to repair => renting/subscribing

Vehicle ECU's => TCU's that share data with 3rd parties

I'm sad to say that I tend to agree with echelon.

I fully agree with you, and I find bonkers to see devs screaming how they got x times more productive, observe rewrites from major FOSS products, and still they assume their employer is going to keep the whole team employed.

Also on the other subjects you mention, I got distracted with convenience during the last years, however apparently it is about time to save what is still possible to keep computing open.

Indeed. When are we going to wake up and stand up to this? "Freedom?" This is not freedom. Liberty? Nope. This really is techno-serfdom. Power and capability for me (govts / large corps) but not for thee (us, the serfs).

Almost always, the future ends up being bad, but not in the ways we think it will.