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Comment on How difficult would it be to live in a modern-day developed country without a smartphone?

lime@feddit.nu ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

it’s not even about a smartphone, it’s about being allowed to access services with said smartphone.

when the ticket machine was removed from a train station in rural sweden and replaced with a note on how to buy tickets online, it instantly locked three types of people out: people who don’t have a smartphone, people who don’t have a payment card, and tourists. because it required online verification, you basically needed a swedish phone number and id to buy tickets.

this was about eight years ago, so smartphone penetration was lower, but i still think about the people i met at the train station while i desperately tried to order tickets over the phone and kept getting stuck in their automated phone tree. they were basically stuck there.

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Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Why would they lock out tourists from public transport?

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- lime@feddit.nu ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  it wasn’t intentional. they just didn’t think about how to implement it. took them four or five years to fix.
  
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- HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I guess it depends on how you needed to sign up to buy tickets, but I bought tickets on my phone in Sweden with my smartphone in Sweden with only a valid email address. The app even had an English mode.
  
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  - lime@feddit.nu ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    yeah it works nowadays. didn’t when they first introduced it.
    
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  - Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    And did you have a payment card that worked in Sweden? Or was it not needed?
    
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    HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    You needed a payment card of some sort.
    
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Valmond@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Sweden is so backwater in it’s tries to be forward thinking.

You can’t even buy a bus ticket with a visa card (nor cash ofc ofc).

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- remon@ani.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I bought a train ticket at a ticket machine with cash when I was in Sweden last year.
  
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  - lime@feddit.nu ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    they reinstated the machines on large stations. this one was tiny.
    
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  - Valmond@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Anecdotal evidence.
    
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- lime@feddit.nu ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  depends on the place. you can in stockholm, but not most places.
  
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