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If you believe that normies deserve computing freedom (this doesn’t seem to entirely be consensus in the scene), it ought to be a goal to explain the benefits of it in a way that they will understand. Some may still not care, but my experience is that a good part actually does. If nothing else this is good leverage to influence change for one‘s own interest.



The benefits are incomprehensible to "normies" and they have no power to effect change. They're just going to use whatever software gets put in front of them. All the progress - which has been substantial, free software is basically everywhere and does everything - has come from highly motivated and technical individuals who are anything but normal.

That follows a basic pattern for any effective change, normal people pretty much always just whinge and achieve nothing. They're lucky to even be allowed the pittance of political power that is voting, historically speaking.


Most people just want to be able to access media easily with no effort- which they already can do with cheap streaming subscriptions. They have no interest in owning the rights to use it forever, or in downloading or copying it. They wouldn't want to take the time to figure out how to do that, even if they legally could when they can already just click and play.

I think if you want people to care, you need to find a real world case where they are being blocked from doing something they really want to do- the abstract philosophical arguments about freedom are total non-starters.

Possibly an alternative media supplier that was fundamentally less hassle, faster, and more reliable because it didn't have these systems could get people to switch. But good luck getting the digital rights owners to let you put their content on your platform.

Or maybe convince people they can get higher quality media that way. I have a newish Mac with an amazing HDR screen, but few of the streaming sites are willing to stream the HDR content to my device.




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