Well, yes, the end products of GAFAM aren’t designed to respect users’ freedom, but rather to control them. That doesn’t mean we can’t extract the good parts of what they do and create user-respecting alternatives. Standard Android sucks but we have LineageOS and GrapheneOS, for example.
A tool, like any human creation, is imbued with the agenda of its creators. The freedom to share and modify the tool is what allows the community to override the initial creator’s agenda. If free software comes with tracking malware the community will create a version without it. The community thus acts as a check against the power of the core developers.
This is why I’m against blindly rejecting anything that GAFAM has contributed to, as long as there is a freedom-respecting community version available.
Well, yes, the end products of GAFAM aren’t designed to respect users’ freedom, but rather to control them. That doesn’t mean we can’t extract the good parts of what they do and create user-respecting alternatives. Standard Android sucks but we have LineageOS and GrapheneOS, for example.
A tool, like any human creation, is imbued with the agenda of its creators. The freedom to share and modify the tool is what allows the community to override the initial creator’s agenda. If free software comes with tracking malware the community will create a version without it. The community thus acts as a check against the power of the core developers.
This is why I’m against blindly rejecting anything that GAFAM has contributed to, as long as there is a freedom-respecting community version available.