As someone born in the early 2000s, I can only say that there will be a divide of the informed and the uninformed. The true tragedy of my generation, to be honest, will be the people who have the tools and information at their disposal to actually understand the world, but opt instead for the comfort food of AI, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon’s services.
I am an electrical engineering student, hopefully about to graduate in the near future, and I can tell you that some of my peers have the same thought process you and I have. We’re willing to do the research, understand the pros and cons of convenience, and adjust our lives in the best ways we can. I switched to the FOSS ecosystem as much as I reasonably could. (Barring LTSC windows 10 for some program compatibility)
The majority don’t care, however. In non-technical fields it’s worse, many following the “I have nothing to hide and nothing to fear” argument. They use ChatGPT on a daily basis, are more than happy to upload photo after photo on Meta’s suite, and complain about Windows 11 without bothering to consider alternatives. Any attempts I’ve had at explaining the reality of their “free” services gets just a weird look and them walking away.
The irony of ironies is that I was born, raised, and educated in Silicon Valley, ground zero, and will likely graduate into working at a company that makes this issue worse. But at least my private life, my friends, and those I’ve helped will have a lifeline.
As per the license, such products can be forked and inspected regardless - adoption by such corporations is helpful if not necessary to both snowball the initial stages of development into a product palatable to the mass market, alongside bringing as many eyes as possible to fulfill Linus’ Law.
The FOSS licensing system, at it’s core, allows you to pick ANY fork, and the root source cannot be contaminated, only upstream forks can be with corporate enshittification. All the user needs to do is hear word of mouth about a fork that takes away the problems that you mentioned - Ungoogled Chromium, GrapheneOS, Librewolf, etc… are examples of software one can use without “checking the source three times over”, even if they are partially built with labor contributed by proprietary means.
For as long as the user has access to the hardware, there will always be those who analyze, defeat, or create alternatives to the existing status quo of software. The FOSS movement was created from the collaborative efforts of hobbyists, and through shared interest in the same goal (avoiding the restrictions of existing software), it will further grow and develop.
A closed loop system like North Korea could feasibly be a way to defeat such a system, but the vast majority of the world is too decentralized for that to happen. Used hardware that can be modded is already saturating the markets, as seen by people keeping existing systems rather than mass adoption of new ones.
For those who are not interested in learning and developing understanding and skills to escape the realities of survailence capitalism, we cannot help them. If we can convince others who are willing to adapt, then control can be maintained for the users as a whole (see our decentralized social network, ActivityPub)
The barrier is not hardware. The barrier is not laws. The barrier is ignorance, and only through informing and educating others can a brighter future be paved.
Edit: also, homebrew and custom hardware will always exist, irrespective of mass market trends.
I don’t use AI since I prefer learning, but from what I’ve heard, it’s self-hosting or bust.