‘The tyranny of apps’: those without smartphones are unfairly penalised, say campaigners
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Can confirm. Brother had his phone stuck in LA for 2 weeks.
- Hard time signing into some sites as they only had text for 2 factor
- Modern alarm clocks are awful, you only get two options and must be plugged in, so if you want 3 alarms while you're outside of your house? Fuck you.
- Harder to track public bus routes as not only can you not call dispatch, you can't check with the app.
There's probably more but those affected him the most. Genuinely weird that in 2025 alarm clocks are stuck in 1985.
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Yeah multiple layers of s***; I'll be honest I never figured out how to use the digital coupons for the second layer of discount; seems like it's not in the Kroger app but some other scammy telemetry scamming 3rs party. I paid the $2.99 for the ice cream I stead of 1.99
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Managers probably sold apps as a cost cutting measure
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Presumably they’re expensive and someone needs to manage them.
My company’s approach is “we’ll pay your phone bill if you use an Authenticator app on your phone.” Cheaper for them, plus they don’t need to buy company phones or fobs, and who’s going to complain about their phone bill getting paid?
A previous company tried similar but required putting your phone under enterprise management. A lot of us disagreed with that
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Plus the even simpler: apps are like browser “toolbars” because they’re just a veneer to collect more data, add more tracking, appear to be useful without actually benefitting the user over a simple web page
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They're not expensive at all.
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Risky click of the day.
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My job does this too. It’s literally just cost cutting. The fobs expire and need to be replaced every so often but the app lasts “forever”.
IMO the fobs pay for themselves because what they are spending on fobs is the same as what they’re spending on IT members answering calls all day for employees that are having login issues with the app.
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Well, you're technically correct lol
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I recently shared a meal with a female friend. Imagine how I'd look if I wasn't able to get money transferred from her, because of not having a mobile banking app.
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We're talking of what is, technically a bank (Moey), that entered my country through another bank. What is even stranger is that you can't even go to one of those banks and make a deposit on you account.
I use the services of what you can consider the most de-materialized bank in my country, which has less than twenty physical locations in the entire country, but they have a very robust help line and you can use the locations of another bank in the same group to deposit money to your account.
But Moey? Either the money is wired in or your stuck.
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I don't know what Cashapp is but I'm going to take the risk and say it's a fintech that handles direct money services. How off am I?
But I'm talking about a bank. The institution only exists through an app. Let's say you do a odd job and you get paid cash. You can't deposit that money: there is no place or way to do so.
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I hope you can see that, as an owner of a Android flip phone, it is annoying to see people use "flip phone" as a synonym for "dumb phone". BTW not all dumb phones were flip phones, only the final wave of dumb phones generally were.
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@btaf45 @nossaquesapao thank god someone had pointed this out because I'm old and I've been getting confused. Nokia 3310 all the way
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I have no smartphone and am unable to access any of my college resources or email from home because you need a security app for remote login.
I've got in trouble a few times for it but idk what I'm supposed to do. I wasn't able to access my Exam Timetable because of this and had to ask some friends when the exams were because my teachers didn't know (somehow). It's very annoying. -
I worked a job where I had to have an app that tracked me wherever I went. I finally had to tell my boss I couldn't use it anymore because it was killing my battery in like 3 hours.
If I was still working and a job wanted me to put an app on my personal phone I'd tell them to go fuck themselves.
Just another way capitalists thieve money from its workers.
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fintech that handles direct money services
Even more succinct and accurate than how I would have described it lol
Cashapp is also sort of an entirely online pseudo bank. There are places that let you deposit and withdraw cash, but they're like two steps above Bitcoin ATMs
I do know people who have these fully online banks though. It's so much worse than just using a credit union. Imagine having to pay to pull cash out of your bank account
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Y'all not heard of cash?
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You could install an android emulator on your personal computer then run the authenticator from there.
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The authenticator requires you to be in the college's network to set it up for the first time and I don't have a laptop.
