• bbbhltz@beehaw.org
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    10 months ago

    I have done this before. And, yes, you can just delete apps from your smartphone and carry on…

    But, the fact is that McLuhan was right, the medium is the message. So, the having the smartphone will change your behaviour.

    A smartphone in your pocket is just a communication device, but it can be used to access content. As such, it is a medium that has a social effect; that is, a smartphone enables people to create spaces that would otherwise be moments of calm, socialising, rest, work, or boredom. A smartphone creates an environment by its mere presence.

    This person used a TCL Classic, which is a low-powered Android device. You can even sideload apps with adb.

    It likely also includes Google components/packages. So, if someone wants to use this to escape big-tech, data is still being collected. The keyboard app on these types of phones is usually Kika. According to exodus, there are 14 or so trackers built-in (see https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/kika.emoji.keyboard.teclados.clavier/latest/).

    Like I said, I tried this different times: I had a Nokia 800T, and 2 versions of the Punkt. phone. It is a fun experiment. I did spend less time on social media. I was more present. But, at some point, you do need a full smartphone for banking, work, and so on.