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Free and Open Source is an Anti-Capitalist Alternative to Big Tech

2025-08-06

The days are gone of the whimsical and unique early years of the internet. In my research into this pioneering age, tech was much more personal as people had the ability to mess with HTML to create their perfect passion project or to tinker with their electronics to prolong its life-cycle or make it run smoother. But in 2025, this is no longer the reality. Hardware like laptops and cellphones are filled with proprietary parts and mainstream software is becoming more restrictive than ever. Not only does big tech limit your ability to actually own your devices, but they have also become spies, consensually and non-consensually stealing your data and profiting off of the videos of your cat to push pet food advertisements. Like most things in our world, this mass sale of personal data can be linked back to none other than the big bad CAPITALISM. Without the profit motive behind the functions of our society, what would be the point in companies selling your data to advertising firms who will use that information to then sell you more mass-produced products made by an exploited worker that you didn’t even realistically need in the first place. Not only that but Microsoft will sell you a licence to Windows or Microsoft Office for an outrageously high price for what you’re actually getting while most of the profit made from these sales being concentrated in the top executives (starring right at you Bill Gates) who I doubt are actually producing any labour themselves. So, what is to be done (haha Lenin reference)? I believe that everyone should be adopting the usage of free and open source software to fight back against the exploitation done by big tech.

My Open Source Journey

I’m actually a recent convert to the open source lifestyle. Like most university students in North America in the 21st century, my main device for productivity was a Macbook. Don’t get me wrong, using a Macbook was fine and all, but I started to become disillusioned with Apple as a company when they started to cuddle up with the fascist Trump regime. Additionally, I hated when they started to introduce their AI tools because it literally reminded me that we are in the end times brought on my late-stage capitalism (maybe I’ll go into this more another day). Concurrently, my beloved YouTube God Pewdiepie posted a video about Linux and it got me intrigued. I had heard of Linux before but it was always an enigma, a computer challenge that was far too difficult for me to comprehend. But this video made it look actually easy! So I decided to boot up an old Lenovo ThinkCentre I had lying under my bed and it was nothing but fun (and a lottttt of restarts) from there. I had no idea that merely 6 months later I would be building my own server and tinkering with Raspberry Pis. As I learned more about open source and user rather than profit focused technology, the more I radicalized myself into the FOSS world. I bought a ThinkPad T480 (naturally), I built a gaming pc that primarily runs Linux and dual boots a cracked debloated version of Windows 11, and I even began to degoogle my Pixel 9a cellphone. All of these things I’ve done not because I was bored (well maybe), or because I’m afraid of aliens getting to me through my electromagnetic signals, but because I wanted to take more control of my digital life and not leave it up to the big mega corporations that only have profit in mind, not my privacy or freedoms.

How to Shift

The shift to the open source lifestyle is actually so easy. All you have to do is to be conscious of your data privacy and put a little effort into finding open source alternatives! You don’t have to completely engulf yourself in this world like I or many others have, but just slowly educate yourself about a cool open source alternative to you calendar app, notes app, word processor, etc. By doing so you can actively resist against the capitalist forces that are pushing you towards a life of monopolies and repression of any personal expression of creativity or individuality. By transitioning to open source, I have actively shifted the way that my brain sees the technology around me, and I am so glad that I did it.

P.S. Sailing the High Seas

Something that I came across in this journey towards a more democratic digital life was the concept of piracy. Obviously I would never promote piracy and I actually condemn downloading qbittorrent, librewolf browser and the ublock origin browser extension, heading over to the r/Piracy subreddit megathread, navigating to rutracker.org, signing up for a free account, searching for literally any piece of media you could think of, and magnetting the torrent to qbittorrent which you downloaded earlier and enjoying your favourite tv show for free – cause that would be such a terrible crime and you should never do this ;). Regardless of my extremely very strong condemnation of piracy, it is very true that streaming services are a plague on society. I do not understand how it has become such a mainstream aspect of daily life in the West that we are not meant to own things but to have to pay to use the servers owned by big mega corporations. Maybe the people should seize the means of producing online content so that it can be shared for the benefit of all people rather than the pockets of the ultra-wealthy tech bros :))))))))))). But anywho, don’t pirate its really bad – like as bad as murder according to our legal system (that sounds about right, doesn’t it!).

My Not-Heated-At-All Review of Eddington

2025-07-22

Letterboxd saw this one first :p.

I think my views on this movie were summed up when I was confused as to why the entire theatre laughed at that kid's dad using the r-slur towards him after he had just described the structural and systemic issues that minorities face in the West. This is just a centrist cope of a movie, continuing to spew the pro-status quo rhetoric of "hey guys look at this, both sides are bad!".

Aster points the finger at one side (where a select few might be performative but are at least fighting for a more equitable society by pointing out how our current socioeconomic system exploits people along racial, class and gender lines) and says haha these people are so silly aren't they, then points his finger at the side (who is literally the epitome of the current system fighting to protect capital rather than human lives) and says both of these guys are stupid and silly and it is because of them that we are feeling so bad today.

Also regarding the weird depiction of Antifa as this clandestine shadowy organization who want to kill everyone just to incite violence is just so disappointing. It speaks a lot about a person who would chose to demonize an organization who's goal is to make sure LITERAL FASCISTS (who, might I add, are the worst fucking people to ever exist) do not gain power. In fact, it has been proven that during the 2020 George Floyd Protests it was fascist organizations who infiltrated Antifa and tried to incite violence in order to provoke law enforcement to use weapons against lawful protesters. So I think we can all understand who the actual bad guys are here, but clearly Ari ASSter cannot.

Aster needs to get off of his performative high horses and actually make real societal critique that analyzes how our hyper-capitalist system that promotes profit over any kind of humanity just might be the root cause of these deep societal divides that were accelerated during COVID.

Anyways, fuck the police

Something I saw on Reddit

2025-02-16

On the r/ottawa subreddit regarding the question: "Can anyone explain to me why Canada First is racist?" from u/atticusfinch1973, u/funkme1ster replied:

"It's not "racist" in the sense you're thinking, it's nationalist. Nationalism is historically a more palatable branding for bigotry and xenophobia.

There's ostensibly nothing wrong with saying "Canada is a good country", because who doesn't think that? But the catch is that Canada isn't intrinsically a good country, it just is. Any good that happens in Canada is a product of the efforts of people in Canada who have gone out of their way to purposefully do constructive things.

"Canada First" (or any "[insert nation] first") has always been about emphasizing national identity as a point of pride, but also a point of division. It's a message that says "WE are good because we are Canadian, and we DESERVE good things because we are Canadian. People who are NOT Canadian are not like us." It celebrates a notion of intrinsic entitlement to pride by virtue of being something, not doing something. You may not have been responsible for any of the things people positively associated with Canada, but you're Canadian, and thus their accomplishments are necessarily your accomplishments.

When people start to believe they have an intrinsic entitlement to pride by virtue of what they ARE (some inalienable trait baked into them), they tend to focus on whether other people are the same thing they are to determine if they're "worthy". It becomes a very slippery slope to bigotry, mostly because that's the messaging the bigots were already using. Once people in positions of moral authority start echoing the same rhetoric the bigots were already using, the bigots stop being a fringe movement and begin being mainstreamed.

So the problem with "Canada First" is that it's a dogwhistle for xenophobia and a rally cry for bigots. It tells people they should be proud of what they are, not what they've accomplished, and that other people should be judged based on what they are, not what they've done.

Bigotry aside, nationalism is also just a shitty, dead-end philosophy. Societies are a product of the actions of people in society. Everything we have was only possible because people in the past persevered and overcame hurdles to build more than they started with. Once people are convinced that simply existing is enough, that there's no pride greater than being a resident of Canada, they have no incentive to try. If the single best thing you can ever accomplish is to have been born here, nothing you do will ever top that so why bother?

Nationalism is a philosophy for weak men who are too afraid to be judged by their feats, so they need to hide behind the safety blanket of national pride. For them, being born here was the greatest thing they will ever accomplish, and if that isn't the metric that society judges people by, they'll fade into obscurity. This terrifies them, and so they must ensure this is the only lens they can be viewed through."