That's important context. Every chapter of Little Brother was dedicated to a different bookstore, which is a little different than "Hey Amazon, btw I love you."
Evidence suggests they would trade every one of their current users for someone completely new, chosen at random. Current users of Firefox forks are probably even less desirable customers.
I know it can be done, so it wouldn't shock me at all to find out that it does happen, but do you know of any manufacturers who have been proven to do this?
Keeping it offline some of the time isn't effective against passive data collection unless you're willing to take the inconvenient step of factory-resetting it each time you're about to use it. Anything it collects it can just hold onto until it next gets the chance to upload.
it downloads a file that you can then import into your RSS reader of choice
That's not how it works — the feed isn't a file that you download. You copy that feed URL and paste it into your RSS reader's 'subscribe' feature. Then your reader application will regularly check that URL for new posts.
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