Please don’t flame me too bad, I understand that although privacy and libre software are important to many in the Linux community, my opinions may be outside the scope of consideration for some and I respect that.
Personally, conscientious consumerism and privacy are some of the primary reasons I use Linux. I prefer community>private business>corporate when I am choosing products and services.
-System76
About 8 years ago I purchased a laptop from System76, the customer service was incredible and the machine exceeded my expectations in build quality and performance.
Recently I’ve been in the market for a smaller machine, like a Thinkpad X1, StarBook 14 or System76 Lemur.
Last week, when I visited the System76 website they used Plausible’s open source analytics on the home page (which is a great alternative to Google’s proprietary hardware fingerprinting algorithm), but once I added the laptop to my cart to checkout, I noticed the third-party trackers, apis.google and ajax.googleapis load on the webpage. Google’s reCAPTCHA was also required to complete the purchase. Hell, even Discord has switched to hCaptcha at this point citing their laughable “Gamer Privacy First” policy.
IMHO, I find it hypocritical that System76 does so much great work disabling Intel’s IME and contributing to coreboot, but chooses to embed proprietary tracking software on their website when open source alternatives are readily available.
- Reaching out to System 76
After completing 14 reCAPTCHA’s I was finally able to get a dialogue with Stetson at System 76. He said that “System 76 takes user data privacy and security extremely seriously, but they would continue to use Google services.” His recommended solution was placing the order over the phone if I wasn’t comfortable having third-party tracking during checkout.
This is not a solution for me because I don’t want to do business with a company that monetizes user data for profit. In my experience, companies that monetize data (Alphabet, Meta, etc…) offer web services cheaper than competitors that don’t, in exchange for access to user data. So, if you’re getting a commercial service cheaper from a company that sells your user’s data, you’re also profiting from the sale by paying a lower premium for those services.
Personally, I do not think you’re taking user privacy “extremely” seriously if you’re running third party trackers and choosing reCAPTCHA (not a privacy respecting service) over hCaptcha on your website.
I really like System 76 and I want to support them with my next purchase, but presently I feel like they are saying one thing and doing another and choosing privacy respecting libre software some of the time when it suits their marketing, but proprietary anti-consumer tracking services when it’s more profitable.
They just resell Chinese laptops anyway, or used to. I opted for a Framework laptop this time.
I got the Pangolin, and have no regrets, but yea if I was in the market again I too would be going with Framework
Man they look awesome but I can’t drop $2k on a laptop. We don’t all have US software engineering salaries ;)
Even we who are in US software engineering don’t always have US software engineering salaries
There’s still a business, and they need to be profitable, so they’re doing things a business does to stay profitable. But they’ve stayed very true to their philosophy.
Is the use of these APIs during the checkout process enough to make you go to a different company? What company would you go to that doesn’t use any trackers?
Yes, as I stated in the beginning of my post, personally I value privacy and ethical business practices and imo, if you sell hardware, make money on hardware while not additionally monetizing your customer’s data through discounted web services. So the fact that they use services monetizing user as a way to increase profit margins is enough to make me choose another company. The only company I know of that sells a Linux Laptop not partaking in this sort of thing is Purism and they have very little selection. I’m open to other suggestions if someone knows of another company?
They’re using Stripe, and they require it if you have any sort of carding attack, or other fraud attempts. They’ll disable your account otherwise. And, this isn’t just Stripe, I’ve encountered it with all payment providers I’ve implemented.
Ecommerce pretty much requires it these days, and yes, most gateways require Google’s as it’s the “industry standard” at the moment.
System76 does not make any profit from use of Google’s reCAPTCHA service. You can’t be seriously trying to insinuate that. You keep mentioning Purism, so are you actually a Purism customer, or paid by Purism? Very sketchy comments.
I’m a System 76 customer, as I stated in the initial post I made, which you apparently didn’t even take the time to read. Receiving Google services at a discount in exchange for access to System 76 user data is profiting from using Google’s discounted reCAPTCHA, versus competitor pricing models. Don’t think linking Google’s privacy policy that promises not to track your users is of any relevance, Google is currently under more litigation for violating their own privacy policies than any other company in Tech (research the case with Epic Games), not to mention the DoJ’s anti-trust lawsuit currently underway.
Have you been to business school in the last decade Sir? Surveillance Capitalism is a mandatory subject in the contemporary world and I believe you’re pretending that isn’t Google’s primary revenue stream. Please have a look at he link below expanding on Alphabet Inc’s business model.
https://telegra.ph/How-Big-Tech-Revenue-and-Profit-Breaks-Down-by-Company-12-09
What a nothingburger. How do you people navigate day to day life?
My real question is how do they keep in touch with their friends and family
Purist, hard-line stuff like this will honestly just get you nowhere in 2023. I get where you’re coming from, but it’s simply not realistic. This is what browser extensions are for.
I don’t understand what’s not realistic about expecting from a company that markets itself as privacy focused to not add surveillance fascist services to their website. It’s not like they demand system76 to implement something crazy difficult. Quite the opposite, they just want them to not do something. That shit doesn’t add itself to a website. So just don’t fucking do it and you’re good. What’s unrealistic about that?
Well, we’re here on a web site discussing it, and the top two recommendations are “build one yourself from parts” and “buy a used one in cash”.
Seems to me that it’s the very definition of unrealistic if the real world has almost no examples that do it.
Exactly. uBlock Origin exists for a reason. No one can block everything, but mitigation tactics exist, and to not use a product just because the website contains trackers, I don’t understand why one would do that if the product itself doesn’t contain trackers, but hey, people are different
You’re worried about Google trackers on their website but you were gonna potentially buy a Lenovo Thinkpad? Lololol
