The soft revolution is coming!
I can feel it, the soft revolution is coming!
I can feel it, I think the changes in the world around me, I believe that the turning point in the fight for internet self-determination; the fight against censorship; the fight for freedom will come in the next 4 years. The year of the GNU/Linux desktop is coming.
What makes me think this? I am hearing people talk about enshittification like never before. Never before have I seen fellow students talking about the how unjust it is to not own software, to only license it. Never before have I seen my friends ask me about trying GNU/Linux. Never have I seen normal people care about this. The companies have moved too far, too fast, they have created an incredibly savvy youth who can recognize bullshit as bullshit, they have alienated their user base, they have shot themselves in the face.
Now we are seeing movements like EndOf10 who are will bring the largest loss of windows users, windows may be staring down into the face of the largest mass exodus from proprietary users. Microsoft have deceived themselves into believing that they have a monopoly, when really they have competitors - us. They want to replace 240 million computers that people owned, and replace it with 240 million computers owned by Microsoft * co. And that is such a monumentally expensive cost, normal people have looked it up, they have not taken it at face value, they have decided to switch. And at the same time, GNU/Linux distros are coming to meet the demand, coming to tailor to the demands of these operating system refugees. Operating systems like zorin or EU OS (based on Fedora Kionite) are optimising for these displaced people, they are looking to replace windows as the default desktop. They are looking to replace the default of corporate driven kleptocratic surveillance capitalism with FREEDOM .
And this is not just an isolated event, we are seeing people move off traditional, centralised social media to decentralised federated social media, to platforms like Bluesky and the diverse. And yes, these platforms need improvement (I would like to see Bluesky become practically federated) but this progress will come with more people. We are seeing mass campaigns against Tesla and Musk, we are seeing campaigns against the kleptocrcy, against the Trump administration. The people have woken up and realised that this is not them, enshittification is real. And with privacy becoming one issue that can unite across the political spectrum, people are taking action against this. The kleptocrats have finally shown their hand, and we do not like it. And the best part, they showed it too soon, we can and will stop them. They could have enshittified earlier, where we would not have had the savvy youth (that is one thing that AI brainrot has taught, that is not widely noticed, my friends are incredibly good at recognizing AI generated images) or if they enshittifed later, we wouldn’t have noticed and would not have fought it, they thought that privacy and human rights and enshittification was just an issue of the few internet freedom advocates - but NO it is a universal issue that unites all of us.
I am hopeful, that the soft revolution is coming, that freedom is coming.