Not everyone can afford a smartphone.

[only_ohm@mas.to]

@mlanger @anon_opin @dbsalk

A great approach until it's a company that has a monopoly on something essential. I moved house in 2022, and the water company in the area I moved away from would accept the notification that I was leaving *only* via WhatsApp,

[vfrmedia@social.tchncs.de]

@only_ohm @mlanger @anon_opin @dbsalk

I think in many cases (particularly in my part of England) its landlords who would be doing this, hence renting out a location to a risky enterprise wihch is likely to fail? Or in other cases the business owners are old and going to retire anyway, so they don't have that much trouble showing the Council they *were* running the business.

OTOH I see the same thing happen in sectors like automotive where there is high demand and many businesses seem to be constantly busy (or at least give the impression of being so by being hard to contact by normal means, although this is often because they don't hire admin staff any more and the same mechanics doing the work have to field the customer communications)

[ajroach42@retro.social]

@vfrmedia @mlanger @anon_opin @dbsalk as a business owner (with websites) I tend to try to spend more time running my business than dealing with either social media or my website.

Both are huge burdens that are neccisary to doing business while actively taking time away from the business in which I am trying to engage.

And i say that as someone who is good at these things.

[vfrmedia@social.tchncs.de]

@ajroach42 @mlanger @anon_opin @dbsalk

thing is you still put in the effort, and have a physical presence which shows your businesses are definitely active - I can see that all the way from England!

Many businesses round here don't even do that, if you try and telephone them often no one answers, in some cases you could physically visit them but its not always feasible or worth the effort if they are some distance away...

[stacky@hulvr.com]

@anon_opin @dbsalk it’s also past time to regulate them as a utility!!!

[only_ohm@mas.to]

@vfrmedia @mlanger @anon_opin @dbsalk

Funnily enough, both the automotive repair businesses that existed in my youth in the village where I live have gone down the "shut down and sell off the land for housing" route - in at least one case, with the local council being decidedly displeased about it.

[zenia@mas.to]

@ben @anon_opin @drahardja but I agree

[zenia@mas.to]

@Tekchip @Rastal @anon_opin 100%

[only_ohm@mas.to]

@vfrmedia @mlanger @anon_opin @dbsalk

(and yes, both of those shops were always busy and in high demand)

[leeloo@chaosfem.tw]

@anon_opin
And the selection of smartphones is pretty small if you consider Android and Windows spyware and Apple fascist supporters.

[jane_jordan@dragonscave.space]

@anon_opin Also, quit making it hard to reach a human when you have to call a company, "I want to speak to a human" should take you directly to a human. You should not have to say "I want to speak to a pharmacist" or anything like that. Ugh.

[vfrmedia@social.tchncs.de]

@only_ohm @mlanger @anon_opin @dbsalk

A lot of automotive business owners end up burning out because their businesses are run so lean they don't have the money to invest in training or new equipment, and the "fun" jobs like performance, tuning and full restos of oldtimers you might see on YouTube are in reality rarer these days as many people with more cash get their cars on leases which forbid such mods, and the rest of the work is keeping peoples old sheds running which can often be thankless as few people are happy paying a garage bill..

[gekitsu@toot.cat]

@leeloo @anon_opin yup, on top of everything, that’s a real kicker: you can not gate entry to a service through the ownership of a device in an ecosystem that is, for all practical means, the exclusive domain of bad people who do as many bad people things as they can get away with.

participation in society can not depend on you having to buy into either weyland-yutani or cyberdyne systems.

[mdstevens0612@mas.to]

@mirabilos @dalias @zenia @anon_opin Yeah but poverty often excludes you from privacy protection, and dumb phones are either old stock or niche products while a mass produced truly bottom of the barrel android can be made for a few dollars and sold for $20 or less. If I had to choose between a dumb phone and a mobicel or whatever, I can bank, scan QR codes, install library and university apps, install an ad blocking browser... It's not a good experience but it does let me interact with society.

[w6kme@mastodon.radio]

@anon_opin p. I wrote a website for a non-profit once that was directed toward people potentially from very low income areas, so I optimized it for the ancient monitors on the computers in the local libraries. It was rejected because it wasn't fancy and modern enough.

[mlanger@mastodon.world]

@vfrmedia @anon_opin @dbsalk EXACTLY! All of this.

I ditched Facebook when I realized that I was not seeing all of the posts shared by the people I followed or "friended." I was seeing a lot of other stuff in random order.

I also got a real close look at how many of the people I actually knew IRL who had Nazi, fascist, or just plain idiotic political leaning.

The only thing that annoys me as a non-Facebook user is that FB Marketplace has pretty much destroyed the utility of craigslist.

[mlanger@mastodon.world]

@ajroach42 @vfrmedia @anon_opin @dbsalk I agree with you 100%. I did have social media for my businesses and abandoned it. I still have a website for my jewelry business, but it has become such a hassle to update my work on that site as well as my online shop site that now I just pretty much point everyone to my online shop.

I'd rather run my business, make new inventory, and have a life than try to keep up with social media for the one or two new customers it might generate in a month.

[mlanger@mastodon.world]

@only_ohm @vfrmedia @anon_opin @dbsalk It's worse in my area. They are closing up orchards and selling the land for data centers.

[vfrmedia@social.tchncs.de]

@mlanger @ajroach42 @anon_opin @dbsalk

both of you do still update both the indie website and the online shop regularly (accounting for the fact that hand made jewellery and toys aren't made overnight)
and even publish actual telephone numbers and physical addresses, which for many small businesses is becoming rare these days - plus you have genuine, high quality products which are verifiable.

I see too many businesses round here (especially linked to social media channels) where the owners are clearly drop shipping same stuff from Amazon and Ebay (maybe with their own branding), they never publish where their business is located, and make it hard to contact their customer service if anything goes wrong with shipments etc..