This is not a real human, it is an "AI Model". Meaning, a computer generated image/persona. And this "model" has over 120.000 follows on Instagram. The creators of "it" are making thousands of euros a month from advertising products via the "model". Basically generating new images with the same creature, but wearing different brands and so forth. (source)

Many people are aware of this, and yet still "follow" these "AI models". Probably humans are already used to live in a fake online world where even the humans are so filtered you can rarely depict any reality from their online lives.

This insanity can be easily understood and predicted if we understand this trade-based society where everyone is forced and incentivized to trade. Every piece of technology will be used for trade purposes. In the process a lot of waste and idiots are being created. Unfortunately.

It is all about trading this for that. This gives rise to consumption, to privacy invasive devices, to pollution and slavery, to what many call as capitalism. But the word "capitalism" gives too much credit to this primitive society where the main practice is that of trade. This is why we avoid to use that term in our TROM materials. It is deceptive and loaded with preconceptions.

#tromlive

This November Facebook is rolling out a subscription model for EU. Their options: pay 10 Euros a month and you will not see ads on Facebook, or as they say it:

People can refuse to pay a subscription and continue to use Facebook for FREE while seeing ads.

Let's quickly unpack this shitshow.

For the past 10.000 years humans have used a practice to move stuff around the globe: trade. You take care of my sheep, I give you cheese. In time it evolved into specialized work, the notion of debt (trade for it later) and the invention of "currency". A worthless resource that humans imagine to have value. Such as gold, shells, coins, etc..

You do not have to build houses for others in return for some clothes and food, you will get a currency in return for your work. In time humans started to lose track of what is really happening in this society of trade and then believed that they work for the currency itself. Like you work for money. Despite the fact that not a single human works for money, they work for what money gets them (food, comfort, access, power, etc..).

Therefore, from economists to regular workers, journalists or historians, everyone got tricked and confused by the ways the trade practice mutated over the past thousands of years.

Nowadays it is even more confusing because one can trade their attention (watch ads) in return for accessing some digital content. Or agree to let their data being mined in return for other services. Therefore a currency is often not needed, but the practice of trade is the same as it was 10.000 years ago.

So today humans somehow think that if something does not cost money (or other currencies) that something is FREE. This is almost like saying that someone is not dead unless it has a death certificate.

If we were to understand this simple fact of life, we could cut through a lot of the crap that is raining down in today's society. We could easily ask the question: What Am I Trading? Like: what do I have to give in return for using Facebook?

And the answer is simple: you need to give them your attention (watch ads), your data, and your currency to either pay to reach your followers and so forth, or pay for a monthly ads-free experiencing.

As you can see in no scenario Facebook is free. NONE.

This is what TROM is trying so hard to make visible: the invisible part of our society. The fact that TRADE is at the core of how this society works, and how this force of trade is making us all complete jerks, charlatans, and abusers. We need to understand what the problem is, in order to come up with any solution.

Understand first!

#tromlive

Transportation.

In Germany they came up with a plan: pay a monthly fee of about 50 Euros and have access to all of the public transport across Germany. Lately they proposed that if you are to "surrender" your driving license, you can get access to all of that for free. (source).

Now this, if properly managed and made even more accessible for everyone in Germany, can severely cut down the use of cars. Why would anyone want to buy a car, maintain, take care of, repair and so forth, if they have access to an affordable and good transportation system that is efficient? If people are to use a lot less cars, then we need a lot less roads. Thus you can transform the roads and parking spaces into green public spaces. Add bikes to the mix and you can create much better places for people to live.

Think about how much space cars take:

And the fact that the more lanes we make, the more traffic there is:

And the fact that most cars transport only 1-2 people. A massive waste of space...

And of course, how polluting they are:

Did you know that most of the microplastics in the air is due to car tires? It is true.

So of course it makes total sense to ditch this outdated practice. Paris, Barcelona and other places are trying do to similar schemes. Some cities are restricting the access to cars in some areas.

This is one of those massive problems that we can easily fix even within this bullshit trade system. And the solution is simple: make the public transport very cheap (or free), and efficient. Plus restrict car access to many areas. The goal should be to make it trade-free, so that it will become a lot more efficient. No more tickets, no more ads in the buses or any of that crap. Because what many seem to not realize is that advertising is a massive drive of consumerism (of course, that's its only purpose), and that in turn creates the destruction, waste, pollution and all of the crap we see.

Therefore the way forward is to aim for a trade-free transport system in different parts of the world. No currency, no data trading, no ads, no bullshit. And this will create a much better environment for people and nature.

Restoring nature... and a good life....

Doable now. Happening (little by little) now.

Healthcare

In USA the healthcare is private and thus trade-based for its citizens. Therefore USA has the most expensive healthcare systems in the world with a life expectancy of just 76. (source 1, 2) - In short the people in that tribe pay more because companies decide what's the price of this drug, that surgery, and so forth. And their incentive is of course to charge more and more.

In other tribes like Spain where the tribe members do not have to pay anything, the government is the one negotiating the prices with companies, and thus they are able to get a less expensive deal. And overall a much better organized healthcare system. The life expectancy is around 83-84 years, almost 10 years more than in the USA. (source 1, 2).

It is obvious that if you create a healthcare system that's free (or trade-free if you can) then people live longer, healthier, and you spend a lot less resources on that.

Conclusion.

In both cases, the evidence is clear: if we make these services free (and aim to make them trade-free eventually) then we see a lot of positive outcomes. And as you can see it is not only doable, but happening. However we need to push for more of these, in more parts of the world, and inform people about trade as the origin of most problems.

Let's stop dreaming about hyperloops, round cities, futuristic 3D nonsense. These are fantasies. We need to focus on realistic solutions that can have an enormous impact, while keeping an aim in sight: that of making this trade based society obsolete.

#tromlive

TROM Search (searxng), and Translate (lingva) are trade-free (TF) interfaces for trade-based services. And they may or may not work. Now we make sure people understand that:

We have removed TROM Bird (nitter - a Twitter TF interface) because for one it rarely worked since the billionaire introduced new rules, and second we do not see it relevant. We have the Fediverse where anyone can join for free.

Bibliogram (TF for Instagram), Teddit (TF interface for Reddit), and Invidious (TF for Youtube) were also removed in the past, because they either didn't work at all, or it was nearly impossible to keep them functional.

All of these TF interfaces are either a pain to develop, deploy and maintain, or they do not work anymore. Our server IP is getting limited or blocked by these big companies, so it is not a good idea to try and host them. Simply put these companies want for people to use their platforms to see ads and collect their data, or sell shit to them. If you still use them, then you should considering ditching them!

In the end these are not alternatives to trade-based services, they are interfaces for these services. So for example we rely on Friendica instead of Facebook, because Friendica is a true alternative. A different social network! Same when we rely on Peertube instead of Youtube. Or Nextcloud instead of Google Drive, and so forth. These and more, are the true services that we provide via trom.tf/ !

Yes, most videos are on Youtube and it will take a long time until we could match that on Peertube, so for now keep calm and use FreeTube (local TF interface for Youtube), and keep on posting on Peertube!

Yes Reddit has a lot of interesting content. So use an ad and tracker blocker! And give Lemmy a try!

In the near future we will replace the TROM Translate with a proper Translation engine that we run on our server. As for a search engine it is damn tricky....we do not know what alternative there is.

And please consider supporting us here tromsite.com/donate/ so that we keep on providing real Trade Free alternatives to what has become a cancer of the Internet world: Google, Facebook, Twitter and the like.

#tromlive