"You don't own your vehicle anymore"
Me: Does that mean you don't love me anymore?
Bike: Dude, you're talking to a bicycle lol
this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2026
389 points (97.1% liked)
Fuck Cars
15739 readers
234 users here now
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
Rules
1. Be Civil
You may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.
2. No hate speech
Don't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.
3. Don't harass people
Don't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.
4. Stay on topic
This community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.
5. No reposts
Do not repost content that has already been posted in this community.
Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.
Posting Guidelines
In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
- [meta] for discussions/suggestions about this community itself
- [article] for news articles
- [blog] for any blog-style content
- [video] for video resources
- [academic] for academic studies and sources
- [discussion] for text post questions, rants, and/or discussions
- [meme] for memes
- [image] for any non-meme images
- [misc] for anything that doesn’t fall cleanly into any of the other categories
Recommended communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Good to see rural truck bros starting to learn what supporting authoritarians will get them.
Theyre a little too late, actually a lotta too late
load more comments
(1 replies)
We were due for a new car, but because of all the data garbage wasn't keen on brand new. My wife found a 2004 car in mint mechanical condition and pristine interior, so went back in time.
Maybe a company somewhere will recognize this emerging market.
For tractor's someone in Canada has figured it out.
Getting ads for vibe coding on that article is so funny
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(3 replies)
Does it have a flux capacitor?
More reasons to own a bike, the government can't do shit!
What if car industry sponsored government doesn't allow bike lanes?
I wasn't asking for permission.
You don't need bike lanes to ride!
You need bike lanes to encourage more people to ride
Not many people are willing to take a lane
load more comments
(13 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
It cracks me up to see bike companies adding wireless electronic shit to bikes, like, shifting and turn signals. Those bikes will die while my 2008 trek hybrid keeps rolling.
The most advanced electronics on my light with 3 different modes that switch when you press the button.
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(3 replies)
Bicycles are vehicles. I definitely own it.
"acoustic lip reading"? Reading lips by sound waves wouldn't they just put a microphone in there?
Theres probably sone regulation against actually just recording the conversation...
load more comments
(2 replies)
Most states require two party consent to record audio otherwise it's wiretapping.
Acoustic ultrasonic distance mapping isn't counted as wiretapping. They aren't recording your speech, they're inferring your speech.
load more comments
(3 replies)
load more comments
(4 replies)
Just get whatever car you want, disconnect the cell network antenna, and connect that wire through a resistor to ground. The car will forever think it's outside of cell signal range and will operate with none of the connectivity features, none of the spyware, none of the 'emergency' controls.
There's maybe still a bit of concern about your car preserving data on its internal storage that you'd rather it not preserve, but other than that, this is a simple fix that solves all the 'car is too high tech' issues. If you don't know how to do it yourself, I'm sure you can find some independent mechanics who will do it for you.
Ah congrats, not only have you voided your warranty, but your insurance company now refuses to insure your vehicle, and it cannot be legally driven.
That is where this is headed.
Where it's headed? Maybe...
But that's definitely not where it is now. A small, reversible modification like this won't void your warranty in any meaningful way (unless you then go in to make a warranty claim about your connectivity features not working). And no insurance company is going to care whether you've disconnected the internet connection antenna -- even if they wanted to ... how would they know?
The insurance companies already have dongles that "give you a discount" (read: price-gouge anyone not using them) for snooping on your driving. I'm sure they're very excited for that functionality to be built into all cars so they have an excuse to make it mandatory for providing coverage.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I bet they got a failsafe for that too. Like 2 weeks to a month later, you get something of a hard fail error that shuts everything down and forces you to contact the manufacturer for maintenance...
Possibly, I suppose. Nothing is stopping them from doing that. Though it would be a huge dick move, and it might end up exposing them to a lot more warranty claims than they planned on if something goes wrong with that 'car kills itself if it goes too long without cell signal' system.
Like ... suppose a perfectly normal owner leaves his car parked inside an underground parking garage or a metal shed while he goes on vacation ... and then comes back a few weeks to a month later and finds out that his car won't work at all? Now the dealership is on the hook for towing fees, half an hour of technician labor to reset the system, and maybe even the use of a loaner car for a day. That potential cost seems to really outweigh the 'benefit' of preventing any owner from purposefully disconnecting their car.
Anyway, if you somehow end up with a car like that, then you might need to be a bit more creative in the solution: instead of connecting the antenna wire directly to a resistor, you'll need to connect it with a 2-way switch. One position on the switch connects it to a grounded resistor, the other position connects it to the original antenna. Then you just have to remember to occasionally turn the car's spyware on for a few minutes every month or two, just long enough to reset its internal self-destruct timer. (Though it is possible that it might be collecting data while disconnected and then sending that collected data once the connection is reestablished. In that case, this isn't a very good solution, though it would at least prevent them from fucking with you in real time.)
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(4 replies)
I mean you don't own public transit anyway so maybe this will renew a public transit push.
load more comments
(1 replies)
No surprise coming from a company that was founded by a nazi and also build most cop cars.
I have a 2020 model CUV. Bit after infotainment, but before the all-digital dash bullshit.
I will be driving it until the wheels fall off, or until gas is literally no longer available.
Big wins for mass transit between the pointless Iran war, and shit like this that car makers are doing.
load more comments
(4 replies)
Called it years ago. Snowden told us . we knew it would happen.
I've been riding motorcycles for a couple decades and now that they're all fancy and computer controlled, most bike have their ECUs cracked within a couple years. Granted most of the time it's to remove Euro-5 emissions controls 🙄, or remove speed limiters. But could this be an option to disable car surveillance?
I recognize car companies will probably retaliate by saying you voided warranty, but so far most motorcycle companies don't do that.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Why does this video feel like AI? Not trying to cast doubt on the content by any means - fuck car manufactures (and iirc Mercedes is already doing something similar), but the random speeds and weird inflections make this feel like AI slop.
Pretty sure it's slightly sped up, which might be giving it an uncanny feel.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Could we not just jailbreak these cars?
It should be possible and easy to jailbreak and set up self hosting solutions for the premium features
load more comments
(2 replies)
view more: next ›