I don’t really understand the outrage. The status quo is that companies didnt support it for years. So 99.9% won’t notice any change.
But a mail CLIENT is a Web App not a static documents site. If Wikipedia would require JS I would kind of understand it from a technical point.
But big corporation tries to reduce cost by shutting down scarcely used old service happens monthly.
While the organization might do good work, I see far too many red flags in their demands. They are lobbying against end-to-end encryption for chat messages. The argument is that child abusers can hide behind encryption. While this is true, a ban would lead to no privacy for everyone.
The real-life equivalent would be mandatory microphones for everyone so authorities could catch child molesters more easily. Good cause but horrible methodology. And of course, if they succeed, criminals will move to other, maybe their own-built, messaging systems that still have encryption.
https://www.thorn.org/blog/encryption-trend-threatens-child-safety-gains/
Good thing they abandoned this. Rare case where consumer won. And this is getting more and more rare!
In Europe good connected homes (basically cities) can have a ping of 10-20 ms. Most people won’t notice mich of a lav when they casually play on their couch.
Cory Doctorow has written a great article about this phenomenon a few days ago: https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon
Basically we move back to a feudalism world where you don’t own anything anymore and you have to pay recurring rents. And as you don’t own it they can fuck you over by increasing rents or disable features when you can’t pay.
I don’t understand the Google selling data argument. I thought Google was an ad broker. Someone goes to Google and says I want to play ads on YouTube for my awesome baking book, play it for people who are into baking. YouTube has the watch history of people and is able to tell who watches a lot of baking content. That’s not selling data to someone in my books as the advertiser does not receive any personal details about the people where the ad is played. He is just buying impressions. Or am I missing something?
Ah the advantages of going to a cloud. When it is down again at least your IT admins are not sweating.
I think this is not the way.
It’s like with dental care. The solution is not to don’t care and think that someday technology will fix it. Instead you should brush regularly, don’t eat much sugar and visit the dentist now and then. It’s prevention.
We currently don’t have any technology that will save us and time is running out. Why bet on a tech wonder that needs to be mass ready in no time?
Sorry but there are so much more things you have a way bigger impact on climate than website requires a little bit JavaScript.