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Kindle hackers and resistance via submission


Melanie Ehrenkranz, for One Zero, writing a community of people hacking Kindles:

Now when he looks over to his nightstand, Iman sees the covers of Marie Kondo’s Spark Joy, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers, or a collection of short stories from the fantasy card game Magic: The Gathering. In its way, this too can be a subtle act of resistance: Amazon offers slightly discounted Kindles that come with “special offers,” meaning they display advertisements when you’re not using them. Though you can disable these through a one-time payment to Amazon, some hackers circumvent the images through other means, replacing the stock wallpapers with their own.

You know what would be a real “act of resistance”? Buying an ereader that isn’t a Kindle. Every hacked-in featured mentioned in Ehrenkranz’s article is available natively on Kobo ereaders (and that’s just one brand).

Buying into an ecosystem only to hack your way out of it in a minor way isn’t an act of resistance. Ehrenkranz’s article and, to a lesser extent, this hacking community buys into the self-fulfilling prophecy that the Kindle (and, by extension, Amazon) is all there is in this space.

That’s not resistance or defiance. It’s acquiesce wearing a white hat.



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