This, if Meta can spend years ignoring ignore warnings that facebook is literally being used to genocide people I don't see why this guy expected them to heed his warning about child mental health.
Stuff like this should be great, but all I can think about is how capitalism will ruin it. Will they only make it an “service” available via subscription, and shut off your ability to walk if you don’t pay? Will it require expensive software updates, or only work if you’ve got wi-fi or a cellular connection? What happens to the patients if the company which owns this patented technology goes out of business?
Managing a chronic problem is much more profitable than curing it completely.
The change in people is amazing. That said your estimate is not far off for cost of just the implantable generators, plus the leads. Add on cost of surgery and doctors bills and hospital stays and your probably under estimating.
Not to mention typically it’s the last choice for pain treatment, so it’s a the end of typically years of pain. Also it only lasts for about a dacade due to the battery so you will need to repeat the surgery and buy a new device periodically.
It’s a pacemaker battery. They use induction charging. A cable runs down the neck to connect to it. The charger just kind of magnets on there. The charger is also where you connect to the onboard software and choose what settings you want. Dad’s had a specialized device for that. I can imagine a smartphone connection eventually, but with the security concerns I imagine that’s not likely to happen soon.
You are almost completely correct. It does have wireless charging but like your cell phone eventually the life of a rechargeable battery wears and needs to be replaced.
That you are wrong about the last part. Our latest two generations actually use ipads for the doctors and iphones for the patient. I don’t know too much about the security on them as that’s my area of knowledge. That said unlike a pacemaker our devices don’t keep people alive. They lessen movement disorders and reduce pain but people won’t die if they get turned off.
A large part of the American healthcare system is made of for-profit businesses. Capitalism and genuinely empathetic healthcare are mutually exclusive, and the parts that actually work for patients have only managed to do so because of a shit-ton of regulation. Regulation that corporations are constantly fighting and struggling to weaken. They buy politicians to help.
Pharmaceutical companies will claim that drug prices are high because R&D is so expensive, but that didn’t stop them from fighting for the right to advertise prescription drugs on TV. Last I read, only the U.S. and New Zealand allow that. Producing and airing those ads can cost millions. R&D is expensive, but apparently not so expensive that they can’t afford that. Capitalism does not have a conscience.
I’m a sad sack because I’ve seen (and am currently seeing) friends and family members get screwed by a system that allegedly exists to help them, but really just profits off their pain. I know I’ll probably end up being exploited, too.
Ok, but it's really nice that there's a new treatment giving a dude a way better quality of life and give hope to others.
We don't have to immediately turn everything into sadness. Sometimes stuff can be good, without a bunch of people trying to figure out why it sucks because everything sucks and woe is the world.
This kind of technology should be standardized so that if one company folds, you can use other companies to repair your existing one. Or it could have a state counterpart so that the technology will be available as long as the country’s government exists.
I can only speak to our experience, but the MD who put his deep brain stimulator handled his software (and hardware) updates. They were free. Dad was part of their trial (which explains the free part), but I can’t imagine the folk in the clinic what did his implant locking their patients into worse software just because they can’t afford their annual checkup.
My dad has hearing aid device and every time the battery runs out, he has to replace the battery then go to the brand shop and pay $30 to reprogram it.
Does Whatsapp connect to messenger like Instagram does? Not sure it’s any better though, since it’s still owned by Meta. I wish I could get everyone on signal
Of course it does? That’s like one of the main headlining features of both Signal and Telegram, and why people were looking at either instead of Whatsapp. And it was even louder than Telegram about it, since telegram uses (or used) a closed source encryption, while Signal was vocally using an Open Source encryption standard if I remember correctly.
Yeah, encryption and security is signal’s whole thing. They even removed the ability to send SMS a while back because they were prioritizing security over all else. Def check it out
i saw one person do something like this: messages JOIN ME ON SIGNAL(or anything not owned by Facebook and amazon) IF YOU DON’T WANT TO WELL WILL LOSE CONTACT SO PLEASE JOIN ME
im not sure on how well this will work but maybe exclude you’re family but try to get them to atleast WhatsApp but even better a private messager also consider xmpp/jabber and matrix for jabber i recommend calyx institute jabber server
Yeah but that doesn’t prevent them from snooping directly on the app. For example they can look at who you’re talking to the most, or extract topics of interest from your conversations (“talking about cats? let’s sell them cat food”)
Nope, you’re not. That’s a choice. I have no shortage of people using privacy invading messengers, crazy thing, when I send them a SMS/MMS… they get it, like everybody does.
You’re not stuck. Just leave, and make people talk to you over Signal. If they’re not trying to talk to me on Signal or Matrix, I will never see it. This not only got me off of services like Messenger, but also showed who gave enough of a shit about me to go through Signal’s simple setup.
Two way street indeed, I didn’t say all of them followed me or anything like that. I lost contact with many doing this, as expected and intended. But I got much closer to those who did move over. Most of them moved over without me even doing anything because they cared about their own data privacy and realized that it’s easier to setup Signal than it is to setup an entire Facebook account anyway.
Man… What happened to just texting your circle of friends?? I get by pretty well doing that. About half are on signal. The other half just text regular, which I’m cool with.
I don’t deal with any business that uses solely facebook as means for communication. I don’t miss them, the platform does a bit less and things get less enshitified. Craigslist isn’t that bad, I still use them all the time, people are much better than the flakes I used to deal with on facebook marketplace. There will be a federated classifieds soon, I’m sure, and the people will regain that corner of the market again.
That’s true, but on the otther hand, nobody GenZ or onwards checks for websites anymore. Most people will look up a business on instagram first, so I don’t blame them, especially small businesses, when they operate on social media primarily.
What? Myself and most of my friends are Gen Z and nobody I know does this. Google Maps is always the first place I look, and 70% of the time I click through to the business’s actual site.
That’s great then. I’m a musician so not a business per se, but I need to promote my music and act as a business in that regard. My anecdotal experience - Even though I have a linktree as my “website”, most people who look me up when I post my music search my social media profiles instead. From the business pov, it makes sense because getting a follow on social media means long term visibility and engagement, instead of viewing a website one time and forgetting about it; unless you have a newsletter people can sign up for (if they even bother). So I agree that websites should still be a thing, on the other hand I also understand how small businesses choose to operate on social media.
I took the phrase “small business” to mean places with an actual storefront (restaurants, small shops, studios, and so on) who use FB or IG in lieu of having their own site. For those places it makes particularly little sense because social media isn’t most people’s first port of call when they’re looking for somewhere to eat dinner or go thrifting.
If I could get all my friends and family to stop using it, I would. Unfortunately they and also several communities I’m a part of choose to continue using Facebook and IG and nothing else, and if I’m not on there I only learn about events and such by word of mouth several weeks later, after they’re over. I have tried to convince them to leave or at least cross-post on other communities but they look at me like a crazy person and don’t care.
I’m in a similar situation. I’m also in a town where I have no friends and I can only keep in touch with the friends I have via Facebook, and then a handful by other methods. My brother is also ASD and Facebook is his preferred communications medium. I really wonder if I’ll ever hear from him again if Facebook goes down. He’s never once called me or emailed me and I don’t know his phone number or email address.
I was in this boat too. Gave it some thought and realized that if my "friend" group was so uninterested in including me that none of then could be bothered to shoot me a text, then... they weren't really my friends in the first place.
Well in that case you have better memory than any human who has ever existed. Also they also have better memory than any human who is better existed.
So there is apparently 1,000 people out there who are freaks of nature and no one’s noticed.
Come on dude it’s literally impossible to remember 1,000 people’s names, even if you had met even half of them. Which you haven’t because you can’t meet 1,000 people in any real sense, you can see 1,000 people in a stadium perhaps but you can’t really interact with them in any meaningful way.
Just because it says there your friends on Facebook doesn’t mean they actually are your friends. In that you know them and would attend their weddings.
I've never been "friends" with thousands of people. If I had 100 people on Facebook, I maybe spent real world time with a dozen and we did have phone numbers so...
You study a college, everyone has a Facebook account so it makes sense for teachers to just notify students through Facebook. If everyone has a Facebook account and you dont, its your problem. Noone is going to message you via email just for you.
A different example, You go to an Office. There is a huge notice board. Its filled with notices and there is a huge queue. The office management has not made it digital so the staff members themselves setup a Facebook page and post the pics of notices. Because they know how to use Facebook and everyone around them use Facebook. So what kind of fool would reject that convinience in looking up notices and go queue up in there?
It’s not so much about Meta itself but a social network can be very useful. It just so happens to be that the most popular one currently is Facebook. If someone decides they want to use and would benefit from the services a social network has to offer then naturally they’re going to want to use the one that almost all the people they know are already using. No point using social network B while all your friends and family are only using social network A. That would be like wanting to party/socialise in the city at night but only going to empty bars and then scratching your head about why you have no one to talk to. You go to the bar that’s popular. The choice of which one is already made for you if that’s the kind of thing you want to do.
Don’t get me wrong, I spend about a minute on Facebook a month, I find it very useful for events especially. Given the convenience of the tools available, I don’t expect people to message me directly when they’re organising a medium to large gathering.
My best friend is planning her hens do and she invited me only on Facebook and didn’t reach out to me personally. Would you say she is an acquaintance at best?
Even in your example, absolutely no one forced anyone to use it as a “social media” app. If it is a matter of convenience to access the notices, or talk to teacher, then use it like how you would use school/work apps such as canvas/blackboard/slack/teams apps. Stop using it beyond it’s purpose. Which is to say, add “friends” if you have to so that you can access notices or messages from your teacher or whatever. But doom scrolling on clickbait and keeping tabs on Exes shouldn’t be done.
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