Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 6 October 2025
Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 6 October 2025
Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)
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App developers think that’s a bogus argument. Mr. Bier told me that data he had seen from start-ups he advised suggested that contact sharing had dropped significantly since the iOS 18 changes went into effect, and that for some apps, the number of users sharing 10 or fewer contacts had increased as much as 25 percent.
aww, does the widdle app's business model collapse completely once it can't harvest data? how sad
this reinforces a suspicion that I've had for a while: the only reason most people put up with any of this shit is because it's an all or nothing choice and they don't know the full impact (because it's intentionally obscured). the moment you give them an overt choice that makes them think about it, turns out most are actually not fine with the state of affairs
There are so many features of modern applications and platforms that I have to wonder why anybody would have thought it was a good idea, this is just one of them. Sharing your contacts shouldn't even be an option. As somebody else in this thread put it, it's not your data.
@froztbyte @jwz Not the biggest Apple fan, but you got to give them credit: with privacy changes in their OSs, they regularly expose all the predatory practices lots of social media companies are running on.
@fleg @froztbyte @jwz There's also the possibility that Apple is doing this for themselves, for example, I bet iMessage still has access to all contacts?
That has been Apple's model for a long time. Privacy restrictions for thee in my walled garden, but I am the benevolent overlord that sees all.
Still, in the current system Apple is the only thing holding back the floodgates? If there was no Apple in the committee to tell Google to go fuck themselves on their insane browser proposals we'd all be stuck in the all-encompassing Google walled garden. It's better for us to have two monarchs battling it out than one insane absolutist.
I have no idea what could be done to break this walled bullshit altogether, though, much less what any of us individually could do. Like a completely open-source (both software and hardware) smartphone that is actually usable and multiple bank robberies to finance marketing and sales for it?
@bullspit @froztbyte @jwz Well, it‘s the „SMS“-app on iOS, so it should have access to the contacts?
I believe they made their bet on privacy (since competing on features, UX and especially price is a loosing game).@fleg @froztbyte @jwz Yes, the "Only" allowable SMS app which also happens to replace SMS with rich and secure instant messaging, as long as you own an Apple device.
I believe Apple play the Privacy card as it's their best excuse to reduce intraoperatively and maintain their lockin/walled garden under the disguise of "we care about your privacy" (and don't want to compete on features, UX an especially price)@bullspit @fleg @froztbyte @jwz That's not the only reason: Apple is still very largely a hardware manufacturer, and given that Android is a freebie *from an advertising company that wants to harvest everyone's personal data* it was an easy way for Apple to differentiate themselves from the rest of the smartphone duopoly.
@bullspit @froztbyte @jwz Agreed. Let’s see what the EU will do about that.
@bullspit @fleg @froztbyte @jwz I mean, it better have access to all my contacts since it is the native SMS app, after all
Did Apple Just Kill Social Apps?
I doubt it, unfortunately.
sickos yes energy if true, sigh
@froztbyte exactly. I resisted for years using WhatsApp because it wouldn’t even run without full access to your address book (this has now changed). I mean, I have client contacts on my phone, I (and they) don’t want to share them with a random social network that will probably resell them. Also a dodgy legal situation, esp. re GDPR: those people in your address book didn’t give you permission to share their contacts with a 3rd party company.
@froztbyte @blakestacey
Let me play world's saddest song...@froztbyte I’m so unsympathetic to that notion.
Also, literally zero of my friends here came via my phone’s contacts.
@froztbyte @blakestacey they fat-finger it and regret it later
wut
@froztbyte @blakestacey I really need to get on the apple ecosystem