I’ve converted a ton of my older family to Linux, it does everything they need as far as web browsing and some basic office applications, and it offers a polished enough UI these days that most barely tell it apart from windows, some even prefer the UI more. Even 2/3 of our home systems have gone full Linux now too (no more dual booting) and handle all my own gaming, audio and programming needs. I really hope this message keeps getting out there and we can cut back on ewaste and forced obselence.

I have so many questions about this too… Commenting to come back later for the answer.

There’s some Facebook ‘buy Canadian’ groups with over half a million people in - this server occasionally comes up there too when people are looking for Canadian hosted discussion sites to ditch big American tech like reddit or Facebook groups.

Although I haven’t set mine up yet, I feel like RSS is the best way to go. There’s lots of news aggregation apps out there, but we need to keep in mind that those are all using some sort of algorithm to determine what surfaces to you, and that if you aren’t paying for the app that they need to make money somehow and keep pulling you back in - without knowing how the algorithms work, these could be favoring news that’s “engaging” which isn’t necessarily an even distribution of everything from the media outlets you like to follow. RSS gives you exactly what you put into it for feeds and you can determine what to read or skip over at least.

Having said that, even my 83 year old father can navigate his way to CBC, CTV and Toronto Star without issue, and he still gets a paper home delivered. He’s only ever gone to FB for family stuff, never news. I’m not sure how much effect Zuck’s hissy fit is going to have on most people.

I recently got a library card with comes with free access to PressReader. To be honest, I’ve found myself really enjoying reading digital copies of paper newspapers again through it. I can finally just read an article and not have to have it immediately followed by all the bullshit comments that social media and the direct news agency websites have. It felt so simple and fresh.

Something tells me Meta would be a-okay leaving the Canadian market if Trudeau tries to pull something like this.

Nature would finally heal itself. People would rejoice in the streets. I hope social media in it’s current form dies off in my lifetime.