TBH the only reason I used their service was to send pirated stuff to friends. I didn’t want to compromise my own/my primary cloud.

I don’t really know how they do it, but some do run newer Android versions like Android 14 (Meebook M8, Bigme B7). Anyway, the lack of Play store isn’t really a consideration in China, it’s only for foreign markets they have to include the Play store. This also means that China has many more Android e-ink brands than are available to us (which mostly are Boox, Meebook, Bigme or Hisense).

Still, e-ink is so much better than a regular screen. If one is really strapped for cash sure, but for one’s eyes sake I’d say e-ink is a worthwhile investment if one likes to read. A phone can’t compare.

To be honest I don’t really find them prohibitively expensive if you count the value you’ll get from them over the years. I have both a Kobo Libra 2 and an Android Boox Page, which I bought for different use cases. I see them both lasting me many years. My previous Kobo Aura One lasted me 7 years in itself before I sold it 2nd hand. My reading skyrocketed once I bought an e-reader.

The future sucks.

Lol. An e-Reader was actually one of the best purchases I’ve done. Started reading waaaay more than before. Also great that one can start digesting all those old out-of-copyright ebooks from like standardebooks.org, on a screen that resembles paper. I can never read a book on an ordinary screen.

No ads. Easy to buy. It you’re really concerned about privacy, just flash KOReader on it which is an alternative backend. The easier alternative is to never connect to the WiFi and manually transfer ePubs to the device through Calibre.

At the same time, China is a more united place than Europe which consists of various countries with their own economy and culture. And to be fair, some countries have had their fair share of tech giants, like Spotify, Klarna or Ericsson from Sweden for example.

What I find mad is that people are seriously depressed about this on /r/Tiktok. Yeah sure, I understand small creators now having a tough time having their business disappearing, but people are literally saying that TikTok was their only source of information and that they don’t know what to do now??