upvote
General public is weird because everyone, yet no one, is the general public.

Fwiw I've started to see a shift in many non-tech circles I'm a part of. Especially when you take the time to explain the problems. Many do care, they just aren't made aware of the issues.

reply
GP typically means middle of the bell-curve. HN visitors and for sure commenters are at the edge of that curve...3-sta-nines away.
reply
The general public will do whatever their friends do. If there was an iPhone charger sized box they could plug in anywhere and have their own personal cloud that can interconnect with other personal clouds, and a celebrity said it was cool to have one, the general public will do it without giving it a first thought.
reply
There should be influencers or agitators (as named correctly) to tell general public what distro to install, what server to buy and how block tracking and ads
reply
In my experience just telling people to enable Google / Apple backup for photos is a chore at 5€ a month. And for general public this covers 90% of their needs.
reply
You mean like this?

https://freedombox.org/

It’s been around since 2010.

reply
Why didn't you tell me about this years ago?
reply
deleted
reply
Precisely. My uncle has been using the builtin Samsung web browser for years on his phone, just because it said "Internet" in the name, and "Chrome" just wasn't a familiar name to him. Most people are like this.
reply
and didn't even matters tbh

Samsung web browser uses chromium under the hood

reply
Digital rights are indeed important, but only a small portion of the entire concept of human rights. I can imagine general public places much more emphasis on wealth (re-)distribution policies.

A lumberjack may also argue GP don't care about environment laws if they had timbernews.

reply
True, most people get the full ad driven internet experience and it drives me nuts. Everytime I have to help other people with computer stuff I almost get an aneurysm when opening their browser...
reply
At some point I started just installing ABP/uBO without even bothering to ask/tell them, if I had the opportunity. So far my reads seem to have been correct regarding whether this would conflict with each person's typical web use, as I've never heard back about any trouble.
reply