ATMs are a particular kind of cash machine, but cash machines are not necessarily ATM machines. The machine I describe at the grocery store enables customers to pay for their groceries without the cashier having to touch the bank notes. The customer can feed a €50 banknote in the machine, and get back change. The grocery machine handles any denomination. But it’s not an ATM (short for Automatic [bank] Teller Machine).

The answer is in what you quoted: cash.

There should always be an option to cash out when closing an account. The ATM can get all but the last €20 €19.99. It’s foolish and embarrassing that the bank cannot handle the remainder… that they are so anti-cash that they refuse to have some petty cash around for micro transactions.

Or the bank could accept a small cash deposit. If the balance is €18.45, a customer should be able to deposit €1.55 so that they can pull €20 from the ATM. But cashless banks refuse to accept even the tiniest of deposits.

It should be illegal. It’s a kind of “binding”, where a business requires you to use another business. People should have a right to exit the banking system, full stop. Forcing someone to open another account as a condition to exiting (in effect) is absurd and denies people autonomy.

Apart from that, if a cashless bank insists on being 100% balls-to-the-wall anti-cash in their war on cash, they /could/ give customers who close their account a prepaid credit card funded with their account balance. Customer still has the problem of spending an exact amount but at least they could deal with it later, without fees eating away at their balance. They could do the split restaurant bill at a time of their choosing.

Thanks for the insight; that’s quite helpful.

The concept of easements still exists in this area but it seems like easements are not being used for façades, which kind of makes sense. The dispute I’m getting into is over a telecom company that is not serving the whole public. They are discriminatory and exclusive. I consider it an injustice that they can arbitrarily drill into people’s houses to support a “public” service which they then exclude some people from access (including owners of the homes they are drilling). Property owners then have a burden of paying €10 per cable to give notice by registered letter to all telecoms using their façade whenever a homeowner wants to perform work on their own façade.

That’s why I am looking closely at this law. I found nothing in the law that requires telecoms to be inclusive.

Yes indeed… “threads” in the generic sense of the word pre-dates the web. And threadiverse is a few years older than “FB Threads™”. That’s what’s so despicable about Facebook hi-jacking the name. It’s also why I will not refer to them by Meta (another hi-jacking of a generic term with useful meaning that their ego-centric marketers fucked up)

What do you say? Am I too lazy or it is unpractical to stay away from big tech?

Laziness is what the surveillance advertisers are exploiting. It is everyone’s duty to resist the tyranny of convenience that Tim Wu articulates in a famous essay.

After a year I’m starting to think that maybe my data is not worth the hassle just to keep big tech out of my digital life… I guess Big Brother wins

Think of it as boycotting. Exposure of your personal data may not be worth the effort of protecting it, but the big picture is that privacy seekers are not just looking for confidentiality. Privacy is about power and agency. You are exercising your right to boycott a harmful entity. Boycotts are no longer simply a matter of not handing money over, because data is worth money. So boycotting now entails not handing your data over. Giving Google your data feeds Google’s profits.

So you are really asking, “should I give up the boycott”? The answer is no, because the boycott is not just a duty to yourself; it’s a duty everyone benefits from (except Google).

It’s not about the last €20¹. It’s about the last €18.45. How do you get €18.45 from an ATM?

Well, shit, that could be an answer too… cashless banks could have a special kind of ATM that has no denomination limitations. Even my local grocer has a cash machine capable of dispensing all small denominations.

So there are several reasonable things they /could/ be doing, but there is no pressure on them to be competent.

¹ I will edit my post to make this more clear.

(edit) it just occurred to me this is a human rights violation. A very minor one, but against international law nonetheless. You cannot deprive someone of their property. UDHR Art.17:

1. Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Indeed, and it’s useful to be aware of that… things like pinger numbers. But I certainly would not cut the bank any slack for their oppressive mandate that excludes people without a mobile phone.

Worth noting that some banks are pushing this transition in a more subtle way. By gradually removing options from their web banking and making functions that are smartphone-only.

It’s good news just considering that Peter #Thiel is a stakeholding¹ cofounder of airbnb. This is the same motherfucker who got Trump into power in 2016 by using Cambridge Analytica, Facebook and Thiel’s dark money contributions – which more recently got JD Vance into power. Also the same xenophobic scumbag motherfucker behind Palantir. The same piece of shit who cofounded PayPal (a surveillance capitalist). Thiel’s profits are detrimental to the world.

¹ to be clear he was a stakeholder ~10 years ago… not sure if that’s still the case.

Aion