I'd bet the number of open-minded consumers, if anything, is growing and is bigger than it ever was. The problem is the number of not open-minded consumers is perhaps growing faster.
The usual "most people don't care" argument aside (which is debatable, IMO, but a tangential issue), consider the literature— a lot of this open world has been written, discussed and built for the english-speaking world. How can a user begin to care if they are never exposed to alternatives, or don't find the support they need in these communities due to language barriers. All of this is just my own guesswork, and I hope I'm wrong, but as the web grows worldwide, the percentage of open-minded consumers with knowledge of these alternatives will probably keep diminishing unless more active work is actively done in making it available to them.
One interesting search engine is https://millionshort.com/, you can choose to exclude the most popular sites from search results. It would be good if Google etc did this with a subset of returned results, e.g. show 2 out of 10 lesser ranked sites at random in the serps.
> a lot of this open world has been written, discussed and built for the english-speaking world.
That's true on the software side, but on the hardware side, China has a much more vibrant hacker culture, mainly because they're not afraid to defy draconian US intellectual property laws. And they speak the second most popular language in the world.
in this case, this benefits the local establishment because it supports the various manufacturing industries it is adjacent to, so in some sense it isn't really 'countercultural' or proof of 'openness' at all
Your comments are insulting to people who actually do not care and just want to use the same popular platform that all their friends use. A few nerds telling them they are not enlightened won't work. It's the same bunch of nerds telling them to run Linux. Can't the masses just see how wrong they are... yeah, right.
I run Linux and use the open web BTW, I'm just old enough to know that insulting people you are trying to convince of something usually backfires. And, most importantly, you should know that they may not want or need your help. You calling them uninformed/ignorant/closed minded/etc. will just get you kicked out faster.
I doubt the people who don’t care, will care what some nerd says about their tech practices.
Advocating for some rando normie to use Linux is arguably malpractice.
Advocating for a software enthusiast / developer / privacy wonk etc to use and create open systems and tools is completely reasonable and potentially impactful.
It’s the people who create stuff that need to take the moral stand. The unwashed masses are, uh, the unwashed masses.
Sorry if my comment sounded insulting, I didn't mean it to. I use open-minded as a term to refer to the type of user the original comment was alluding to, for the sake of consistent terminology. I didn't call anyone ignorant, and apologize if you interpreted my comment that way. I use many of these services myself, and too think this attitude of them vs. us, right vs. wrong, is the wrong one to take.
I'd bet the number of open-minded consumers, if anything, is growing and is bigger than it ever was. The problem is the number of not open-minded consumers is perhaps growing faster.
The usual "most people don't care" argument aside (which is debatable, IMO, but a tangential issue), consider the literature— a lot of this open world has been written, discussed and built for the english-speaking world. How can a user begin to care if they are never exposed to alternatives, or don't find the support they need in these communities due to language barriers. All of this is just my own guesswork, and I hope I'm wrong, but as the web grows worldwide, the percentage of open-minded consumers with knowledge of these alternatives will probably keep diminishing unless more active work is actively done in making it available to them.