Recently, realizing that my 7" and 10" tablets were over five years old and that the Android O.S. was no longer updating, I decide to replace them both.  They still work, and I am hoping to donate them, but I won't be using them anymore.  Even if I have to recycle them instead, I am done.

I decided to buy a Kindle Fire (7th gen – 2017) and a Lenovo Chromebook. I  realize that the Fire is already two years old, but I'll use it only to access media via my Amazon Prime account.  And at $49, it's darned near disposable even on my fixed income.  The Chromebook was something I hesitated over, because I don't trust Google.  "Don't be evil" and "Do the right thing" are the kind of mottos manipulative schemers say to make themselves look good.  I expect them to snoop and "customize" my experience just as they do search results.  I installed DuckDuckGo to use in place of Chrome.

Thinking about Google's manipulativeness, and how various social media deplatform people for "hate speech," I started to wonder how long before the Chrome browser acquires data to label my speech hateful.  Will the Chromebook cease working?  Why not?  If people have no right to be on a given social media platform, what's to stop Google from deciding that all their products should be off-limits to "hateful" people?  I expect that the hardware will keep working, but maybe the wireless connection will become undependable until it's too much trouble to use the device.  Maybe Google will afflict me with so many pop-ups that I drop-kick the device in frustration.  There are ways to make a device unappealing without making it entirely nonfunctional.

I've worked with computers all my life, it seems, but I would never be able to prove that malicious mischief had been applied to my Chromebook.  I get internet access via a modem and router from Mediacom.  I'm sure they would deny that anything is wrong with their service.  I could take the Chromebook to a café with wireless and find that my results are the same, but I expect that Google would also say its O.S. etc. are working properly.  They wouldn't consider that a lie, I'm sure, since the built in malice is by design, and so it is proper.  Really, what's to stop them?  Would Lenovo get involved in defense of its hardware?

I kept my old Toshiba laptop.  I have a USB drive with Linux on it and can install it on my old hardware, at least until it stops working.  It's two years older than the tablets.  I have a smartphone that I could create documents on if I have to, and the not too old Fire can also support that.  So while I have options to get around being silenced and totally de-accessed, and I'm obscure enough that no one will be looking to abuse me, Google has a wide net it can cast if it chooses to.