Agreed, I'm currently moving my digital life to free software to escape that bullshit.

While everything else seems to be caught up in enshittification, free software is constantly improving.

Things aren't as bleak in Europe :)

Wouldn't google's DRM be considered a monopoly? Not in the US, but don't they have laws and regulations against this type of stuff?

Technology creates fiefdoms where rentiers extract value from the rest of us. But I’m not losing hope

Graphene OS does a great job of protecting your privacy. Although, since it doesn't rely on google services, unless you want to sandbox some, most of the time you don't get push notifications. Which isn't that bad.

And in terms of actually owning things, instead of relying on subscriptions services, that's what Web3/NFTs are trying to solve. Despite the fact that everyone loves to shit on them, and they're in their infancy, their utility far exceeds overpriced pictures. Right now you have to indefinitely subscribe to Netflix or Prime to access movies and shows you've already paid for, but if you bought an NFT of the movie, no one could gate keep that media from you. Musicians could cheaply disburse their songs to people and not be price gouged by Spotify, and any digital asset you bought would truly be yours, including video games and their skins/weapons/pets/etc, with the ability to resell those as you saw fit. As well, there would be an incentive for the studios that create this media to make them into NFTs, because unlike with physical copies, they would make a cut of every single sale that happens. So, they'd make money on the initial sale, and then a cut of you selling to a friend, your friend selling to someone else, ect.

What I think it, ultimately, comes down to is people getting, too, complacent and just accepting any ToS that's thrown in their face, because they can be dozens of pages long, and we just want to use the service right then and there.

digital anything was never a thing you owned. it's a thing you lease.

if you want to own things buy physical copies.

no idea what you are on about the phone. I buy moto phones for like $150 unlocked and they are great.