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[return to "The Absent Silence (2010)"]
1. baerri+qMd[view] [source] 2025-12-06 14:48:33
>>dcmint+(OP)
She says so eloquently what is such an obvious crime against consumers that we tolerate because we must. Modern serfdom is when “trust” turns to “must”.
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2. simtel+aXd[view] [source] 2025-12-06 16:11:22
>>baerri+qMd
In that context, what leads you call yourself and the rest of humanity primarily "consumers" in response to an essay? I think this has become uncomfortably (to me) normalized, and it begs the same question that Le Guin asks about whether we understand what we are doing when we are defining ourselves. A citizen and a person doesn't have to be defined as what they consume, do they?
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3. the_af+43e[view] [source] 2025-12-06 16:59:04
>>simtel+aXd
> A citizen and a person doesn't have to be defined as what they consume, do they?

I find this is at the core of Stallman's criticism of the term "content". We speak of media "content", of "content authors", etc, as if movies, articles, books, etc were just that: content, ready to be commoditized, packaged and sold. And some of it is! But we've conditioned to think of everything as "content" to be "consumed", which is depressing.

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4. johnny+aEe[view] [source] 2025-12-06 22:18:22
>>the_af+43e
Less and less people have the option to male "art" and need to make "content" to simply survive. Art has historically been reserved for the elite privileged and it seems the world is heading back towards old norms as wealth consolidates.

In a similar breath, that may be why we don't heat much of the next generation of Stallman's and instead hear of a looming crisis in FOSS as the old guard retires. Less devs (if they are even pursuing that path down the line) will have the free time to choose FOSS as a path, unless big tech is paying for it to bend ot to their will.

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