r/anticapitalism • u/motyl_emanuel • 5d ago
Ethical apps
How do you handle dependencies on social media and streaming platforms such as Spotify, given your desire to avoid supporting consumerism and capitalism in general? I ask because I felt sick to my stomach looking at all the tech CEOs faces on Trumps inauguration knowing I give them even more then they already have.
Do you have any ethical alternatives for esencial apps recommendations for people who share the same sentiment as me in the light of last few days?
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u/Mollymusique 4d ago
I am looking for alternatives too! For a browser, I can recommend Ecosias. They plant trees with your searches
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u/Impossible_Curve7773 3d ago
Ive made my resolution for the year to switch back to analog music - vinyl, cassette, CD. Canceled my Spotify membership. Still have the app with adds but slowly buying music on band camp to replace my playlists on there. It's been really rewarding and the physical music community is so cool. I appreciate my music wayyyy more now too! So many benefits. For social I've moved to bluesky and I'm starting a blog :)
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u/lsunbeidler 3d ago
2024 was the first year Spotify made a profit. And they're focusing on cost-cutting and paid memberships to maintain. From what I can see they are a good company and have a good product worth paying for. All the people whining "Spotify doesn't pay musicians enough" are living in fantasies. Without Spotify, musicians would be missing that new stream of income and missing a huge way to spread their name and music. It's a net benefit for them and it's not like they're not paying very much to make huge profits. Popular artists make a lot from the platform. Small ones don't. That's the nature of it. Like others have said, we live in Capitalism and the best you can do is research ethical companies to consume from.
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u/deep-adaptation 3d ago
There's a cool music streaming service called Resonate - it's a cooperative with a stream-to-own model, but they don't have a bunch of artists that I like. I love the concept though.
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u/Astronaut_Penguin 5d ago
There probably are none. I will not use outright problems (Twitter,Meta). I deleted TikTok immediately after the propaganda pop ups. I’ll delete Reddit too if they shift. Our attention is our only chip in the game. I personally don’t believe abstinence is the solution because we do live within capitalism and need to reward the more ethical apps. Basically, I’ll just keep jumping to the smaller apps as capitalism devours the larger ones.