I currently use an iPhone, but given the recent attacks made by the US president and members of his administration on my country (tariffs, annexation threats,etc) I am loathe to support any company based out of that nation any longer. Obviously I know that it is likely impossible to get a functional mobile experience with zero US corporate involvement, but what is the least possible I could do and still be practical? A degoogled fair phone device? Something Chinese running a custom rom like lineage os?
I want to sell my iPhone and Apple Watch ASAP and get something that won’t have my sending money to the US via my app purchases (store cut), monthly services (iCloud), and my data being used/sold.
Thanks!
Can we be real for a minute?
The kind of companies involved in android may have started in the US, but they’re international.
Buy a Samsung, it isn’t like it only puts taxes into one country’s coffers. Same with Google, which is headquartered in the US, but their phones aren’t actually made here. So you skip pixel devices, and feel all good about it, but if you actually get enough people boycotting them, it isn’t the us that takes the hit. It won’t even hit the pockets of the shareholders.
Who would take the hit is the people at the bottom, making the hardware, and that’s going to be whatever country has people willing/forced to work for bare minimum.
Some things, yeah, you can completely boycott and only US companies take the hit, which still isn’t really going to hit a big enough company because most of them are an international conglomerate’s property anyway. It might fuck over something like Arizona Iced Tea since that’s still a family owned company. But anything that’s publicly traded? Nah, it’s theater unless you boycott everything that conglomerate owns, and it ain’t like any of the nestle botcotts have hurt their bottom line in the decade or so it’s been going.
Phones though? There’s nothing you can buy that isn’t going to enrich Google in one way or another, at least indirectly. You can get close. Pine phones, fairphone, stuff like that where you have the ability to cut them out. But even going with a pixel and cutting google out from out still has feedback effect into Google’s influence via the secondary market keeping their brand with higher values, making their hardware look better than it is.
I get it, the shit is stirring, and you want to slap back.
But the only real way to slap back for real is to abandon smart phones. Some of those, android free, you can cut things down and maybe avoid sending funds into us coffers. LG dumb phones still exist on the secondary market, and they were decent. So I don’t doubt there’s other brands out there making phones that are decoupled enough that it might only be pennies instead of dollars.
I think you might be missing a few things.
First, sure there’s probably some minor feedback but really, outside of luxury goods (which neither Apple or Google are at this point) more customers is seen as better by investors/the market.
Yes, the market is all theatre but amazingly, it’s theatrics to which a great deal of attention is paid. The more share prices of magnificent 7 stocks drop, the more that affects those who have actual power and influence.
Heck, forget abandoning smartphones, living in a cave would be the ultimate way to not contribute to America. But most folks want to balance their morals with a functional life, which for many includes a smartphone.
If you want to slap back, instead of trying desperately to convince maybe a handful of folks to switch to dumb phones over tarrifs, much better to help a lot of people make incremental but helpful changes.
I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything.
Well, maybe that the conglomeration of everything across the world into the hands of oligarchs means that tariffs are the lesser problem, but even that, I ain’t got patience to convince people of.
I’m just rambling and venting a little
Every comment can be argued to be an attempt to try to convince people of a certain viewpoint.
Including this one pointing out the comment posted was a long laid out argument trying to change someone’s perspective of current events. ha