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I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

lof.flounder.online

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Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#101
post #76
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a teacher could not figure out how to communicate with a kid without routing those communications through Facebook servers, I would kindly teach them how e-mail, matrix, or other neutral internet protocols work. Honestly -most- of the time I tell people I don't have a phone they say something like "That is super cool, I wish I could do that. My phone has ruined my life. How would you prefer we keep in touch since…

> If a teacher could not figure out how to communicate with a kid without routing those communications through Facebook servers, I would kindly teach them how e-mail, matrix, or other neutral internet protocols work. Honest question, how many teachers do you interact with? I don't have kids, but I've got a few friends who are teachers, and most of their coworkers are completely tech illiterate. Getting them to use em…

The teachers are not the ones setting up the servers. All they need is to install a mobile app, and get a piece of paper that says:

  - Name of the server
  - Username
  - initial password, which needs to be changed upon login.
The element client is far from being perfect, but even my aging parents could start using it, join the family group chat and adapt.

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#102
post #36

My family operates virtually entirely on open source software, and we self host most of it. Surveillance capitalism is the new tobbacco and you really can live a rich (and even tech filled!) life without it, I promise. We also won't be giving any kids smartphones. Too many apps literally designed to profit by exploiting the emotions of children. We will however give them access to all sorts of entertainment their fri…

it depends where you are. i agree with your ideas, and i'd like to get there too, but here where i am it is literally impossible to keep in touch with people without a smartphone. giving up that smartphone would result in complete isolation.

but that doesn't mean i am addicted to social media stuff, just using messaging for the most part. but also, i grew up before smartphones and i learned to be somewhat disciplined about computer and tv use. my kids are unfortunately not getting the same experience.

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#103

This reads like prepper content - there are many legitimately scary reasons to control kids' access to the Internet, and "kids might be targeted by ads" is on like page 83. Think like a security dev and focus on threat modeling, kids falling into the right-wing / white supremacy pipeline and being exposed to predatory adults online are far more worrying.

I had a private investigator for a father, was once a professional magician, and am currently a full time security engineer, so I am pretty sure I think like one. All of this exposure has convinced me it is generally easier to hack a human mind than a computer, and modern social media is designed to do exactly that. You spend a few extra seconds viewing a white supremacist rant by an uncle on Facebook, and next thing you know that is all you see... until your views start shifting in that direction before you even realize it.

Dopamine optimized algorithims designed to put you in a false reality full of only content you are willing to engage with the most, is one of the most toxic and addictive propaganda tool humans have ever created... and it is sold to the highest bidder. Behavior changes as a service.

It isn't on page 83 on my list. It is number one.

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#104
This is less like being vegan and exactly like being Amish. The Amish, unlike what is usually believed, don't reject technology. They are very careful in adopting technology and seek to be deliberate about what technology to allow in their day to day life.

I think this deliberateness unavoidably leads to being a Luddite. The dominant force in human history is the continual development of new technology and it's integration into day to day human life, and human adaptation to that technology. We adapt to technology both quickly, via culture and training of children, and less quickly via genetic evolution.

Walking away from a technology that the vast majority of humanity embraces might be adaptive, both in terms of the individual and in terms of survival of the fittest, if that technology leads to the users becoming dramatically less fit. Rejecting the use of lead utensils is a great example of an adaptive rejection of a new technology.

Fine, you might rightly argue, this isn't about survival or evolution, it's about the quality of your life. It's hard to argue against that, and reasonable limits on the use of technology for children that can't regulate behavior to optimize their own health is certainly necessary. However, beyond that, abandoning technology in a more holistic way is no different than being Amish-lite. You are being deliberate about what technologies you accept into your day to day life, and this is admirable. However, it is also Amish-lite in that it is very likely to also be a form of freeloading.

The Amish are very much freeloading on their host society. They do not contribute to defense, nor do they utilize resources they control efficiently. Without the efficient utilization of resources of their host society, which allows for such things as large standing armies and fighter jets, they would have long ago been killed or displaced and their land taken. Rejection of Tik-Tok seems very unlikely to lead to any significant freeloading, but rejection of something like 'owning a cell phone' certainly does. As the rest of the world adapts it's culture and day to day life to what having a small pocket computer networked to every other computer unlocks, dramatic new ways of doing things will be unlocked, and new efficiencies will be found which will enrich everyone, including to some extent the Luddites, who are not participating in it. If there are enough of them, old ways of doing things will be maintained to profit from them, whereas if they participated the old ways of doing things (for example calling a phone number to order a pizza, and many more things, and things we haven't anticipated yet) could fall by the wayside.

Certainly you have a right to be a digital Luddite, but I don't believe there is any reason to think that this will give you a better outcome, by any measure, than just participating in the societal evolution would, and if done in a large scale way it is just being Amish with a different default threshold date for acceptable technologies.

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think children will be more successful at outwitting nefarious companies' behavioural scientists than adults are? It is widely acknowledged that companies are successfully applying methods of grabbing and retaining our attention in order to sell us things, so I'm a bit cynical that children, already not renowned for impulse control, will be any better than adults in ignoring that.

The earlier they make their experiences, the earlier they can develop a mature response to abusive stimuli - if taught about the nature of those stimuli . I'm not advocating for giving developing brains blind access to predatory products. I'm advocating to teach them a healthy-as-possible relation with them. And the reasons adults suck at this is just that: because we were never taught to deal with it, because our sc…

Those who are generally able to understand and then recognize the dangers will have the ability to do so from young age,

Which is why heroin addicts, quit when they choose, and have zero issues staying off the above.

Which is why after even a few doses, they never become horribly addicted, and end down a path of self destruction.

Addiction means logic, and choice go out the window.

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#106
Why do parents do this? What a waste of time. Give your kids the phone, show them exactly where all the stuff is you don't want them to see, and then let them rock out.

When my parents tried to shield me from stuff, that never worked. I would just ask a friend, 'Hey, can I borrow your phone?"

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even teachers use Whatsapp to communicate with pupils nowadays. Here in Finland, from 13 and up, it's pretty much total social exclusion and severely reduced ability to participate in school work if you don't have a smartphone. Teenagers without phones is pretty much uneard of, apart from in some religious circles. The thing about those teenagers is that they rarely meet outside school. Covid made damn sure parents a…

> > Even teachers use Whatsapp to communicate with pupils nowadays. There are messaging platforms that are not dependent on Big Tech. If communication via group chat is so key to the school operations, parents are more than entitled to ask the school to implement a proper platform for it. > Covid made damn sure parents are somewhat paranoid about social contacts, and having people over is still pretty rare. That is y…

> That is your first-order problem to solve.

Definitely. Personally, I've taken steps to remedy it.

On the other hand, other parents I discussed it with now consider me a luddite, and visiting friends is still a thing of the past for most of the local kids. I suspect it will remain so until the fear of Covid goes down and interacting with actual people becomes uncontroversial again. :D

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#109
post #102
post #36

My family operates virtually entirely on open source software, and we self host most of it. Surveillance capitalism is the new tobbacco and you really can live a rich (and even tech filled!) life without it, I promise. We also won't be giving any kids smartphones. Too many apps literally designed to profit by exploiting the emotions of children. We will however give them access to all sorts of entertainment their fri…

it depends where you are. i agree with your ideas, and i'd like to get there too, but here where i am it is literally impossible to keep in touch with people without a smartphone. giving up that smartphone would result in complete isolation. but that doesn't mean i am addicted to social media stuff, just using messaging for the most part. but also, i grew up before smartphones and i learned to be somewhat disciplined…

In Silicon Valley where I am, everyone tells me it is impossible to live without one here too but that is just not true.

I check matrix messages and emails and keep up with people and make plans to meet them when I am in my office, or in a stable location on a laptop.

When I am on in the car, taking a walk, at dinner with my family... I don't need to be reachable at that moment. Society teaches you you need to be reachable every moment of every day, but the people around you will adapt to your communication cadence. The few that won't are not worth your time anyway.

The world will get by without being able to reach you for a few hours at a time, and the mental health wins of not being constantly anxious checking messages 100x a day can't be understated.

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#110

I think we should embrace it. Take a step back and look at what happened here. Remember that for 99% of people, seeing a video of their friends is a happy interaction. It's the kind of thing an ML model would notice, even if TikTok didn't. As the author points out, of course TikTok uses wifi data to know. It's not even wifi -- it's "Both people connected to our service from the same IP. These people are related in so…

Well, cutting out "the entire future" is a bit dramatic. We may be building a better future by using smolWeb tech like gemini:

My browser with 20 tabs open is a game of 'kill the tab that is burning the CPU'. I have to have task manager open at all times. I'm effectively dual-tasking between work and managing browser tabs eating CPU. And I have a beefy laptop. This is with browser addons that block tons of trackers.

While in gemspace, I can open the same amount of tabs and never worry about CPU usage. And that's by design. I'm not saying that gemspace solves the same problems as the web. Of course not, we are talking about fully functioning apps here! But it lets me interact with content (what websites used to be) without worrying about tracking by bigTech nor CPU usage. It's a big win.

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