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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

#141

Post by lrvick »

lelanthran wrote: post #80
lrvick wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When all my peers were using AIM, and Yahoo instant messenger on Windows, I was on Linux communicating via online forums and IRC learning from mostly adults willing to mentor me as an anonymous username on the internet. I was homeschooled and moved every 3-6 months growing up and in spite of all these "handicaps" I still learned to make several IRL friends within a week or two of every new city I ended up in. I would…

> When all my peers were using AIM, and Yahoo instant messenger on Windows, I was on Linux communicating via online forums and IRC learning from mostly adults willing to mentor me as an anonymous username on the internet. Right, and that was before all the kids were on facebook, or twitter, or whatever. You're talking about a time when the only online-networking being done, was being done on a desktop computer. IME,…

I used to help run after school programs, and mentor quite a few Gen Z people in software engineering, sysadmin, etc.

Also, I used to be a kid.

Not every kid needs to conform to social norms.

To your point, plenty of kids will be successful with and without smartphones, but I would argue those that don't will likely be less prone to endless hours of doom scrolling on apps literally designed with casino-like dopamine drip algorithms to keep them addicted.

I choose to believe someone is not a shitty parent for trying to delay a child from having constant in-pocket access to addictive and harmful things.

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

#142

Post by ruune »

b112 wrote: post #111
KptMarchewa wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Being socially excluded was the bane of my life in school, and I'll be damned if I'm going to be a contributing factor to my child becoming a pariah. As someone who had similar experiences, thanks for letting your children be in control of at least some part of their lives. You're doing the good thing.

While this may backfire, I would say installing tracking software on the phone, then doing many subtle things which gives this away, would be an awesome learning experience. "Creepy?! What? Google, Facebook, etc do it. What's wrong?" I feel like hacking the phones of parliamentarians, then setting up a website showing their daily activities, would be excellent. Double effective if it just keeps happening, even when y…

Nah definitely not. Privacy is important. When you give your data to Google, you're one in a billion database entries. Google doesn't care what porn you're searching, they care about selling you stuff. A real human being, someone close to you, knowing what you are doing on your phone is something completely different

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

#143

Post by lrvick »

raverbashing wrote: post #84
lrvick wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Smartphones are harmful" is the new "Smoking is harmful". Smoking and football were once both pretty much required if you wanted to be popular, but time eventually revealed the interests of the cool kids often ended with lung cancer and brain damage. Teach a kid to build computers, write software, design and solder their electronics. They will be miles ahead technically of most of their tiktok scrolling peers.

The analogy doesn't stand. Some uses of social media can be "as harmful" as banging your head on a wall, but a smartphone is much more than that. > They will be miles ahead technically of most of their tiktok scrolling peers. Life is not only about technical skills. And I've had plenty of these "technically minded" people spewing complete BS about vaccines here on HN, so I guess they think they're technically minded…

When I say I would not give a kid a smartphone, I am saying I would not give them an iOS/Android device which is what everyone today thinks when they hear "smartphone".

They would certianly have access to a portable device with a web browser like a small form factor linux laptop or tablet.

I also don't have a problem with the concept of social media. Neutral social media and messaging services that has no profit motivated data harvesting and behavior manipulation algorithims like Mastodon, Matrix, etc, I have no problem with. I would never allow a kid to use TikTok or a Meta/Facebook product however, as doing so is literally allowing strangers to pay to manipulate my kid towards any desired behavior change. That is just lazy parenting, IMO.

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

#144

Post by rglullis »

2000UltraDeluxe wrote: post #118
rglullis wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, it is not an either/or situation. If teachers want to use WhatsApp for their personal communications, fine by me. What parents are perfectly entitled to do is to go to the school board and say "*We don't want to use WhatsApp. There needs to be a proper messaging platform for school communication"

There is one. It's just crap and both teachers and pupils avoid it when they can. Government IT is funny that way. Not to mention the fact that if I somehow managed to get them to ditch Whatsapp, I would be held responsible for it. I'd like to keep my business running rather than be known as the local tosser -- being famous for being a technophobe won't attract new customers. And yes, that's what being against Big Te…

> if I somehow managed to get them to ditch Whatsapp, I would be held responsible for it.

No, think of it as a grassroots movement. You won't be doing anything by yourself, you'll be gathering just enough support to make it become a collective action.

It doesn't even to be a majority. Just a small group of parents saying "anything but WhatsApp" will at least get people to look for an alternative. If their excuse is "the current system from government is bad", the group can respond with "here is a list of messaging providers that use open messaging protocols."

It does NOT have to be a crappy app (e.g, Conversations XMPP is actually quite a polished client) and it does NOT have to cost a lot (I know that I can provide a fully managed service to schools for $0.10/user/month and still be profitable). All it takes is a small committed group refusing to take no for an answer.

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

#145

Post by urlwolf »

em-bee wrote: post #112
that_guy_iain wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He doesn't need to prove his anecdote but prove that big tech is bad. The whole "I got recommended something that was actually related to me so I'm avoid big tech for the safety of my children" implies that him being recommended something that was actually related to him was dangerous. This is almost the same as "I was talking to someone about wanting to buy a gaming PC then I saw ads for gaming PC. They must be list…

i think the point was that it is scary to know that you are getting stuff recommended based on location. that means that you can assume that more recommendations are from nearby which implicitly reveals the location of the people in the videos. having my kids be seen 100 random viewers world wide is one thing, having the same video shared with all my neighbors is quite another.

Yes, and also that even if you make 'reasonable efforts' to stay off the radar, algorithms will build a shadow profile of you from other people's interactions with you they track. For example, if you send an email to a gmail account, google has access to that text you wrote even if they don't have you on gmail.

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

#146

Post by BlueTemplar »

lelanthran wrote: post #80
lrvick wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When all my peers were using AIM, and Yahoo instant messenger on Windows, I was on Linux communicating via online forums and IRC learning from mostly adults willing to mentor me as an anonymous username on the internet. I was homeschooled and moved every 3-6 months growing up and in spite of all these "handicaps" I still learned to make several IRL friends within a week or two of every new city I ended up in. I would…

> When all my peers were using AIM, and Yahoo instant messenger on Windows, I was on Linux communicating via online forums and IRC learning from mostly adults willing to mentor me as an anonymous username on the internet. Right, and that was before all the kids were on facebook, or twitter, or whatever. You're talking about a time when the only online-networking being done, was being done on a desktop computer. IME,…

> less than 1 out of every 100 children in 2000 were actually using desktop computer

Depends if you're talking about pre-teens or teenagers. ICQ alone had 100 million accounts in 2001. And I would expect teenagers to be amongst the first to use it.

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

#147

Post by grapeskin »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #65
reader_x wrote: post #20

My 14yo daughter came home from binging 80s movies with friends and wistfully told me, “I wish I’d grown up in the 80s.” I said, “Why??” She said, “Because everything was a lot like it is now, but no smartphones.”

And I'm seriously hoping you corrected her romantic view of the past. Sure, the movies make it seem simple, but... you know, AIDS. It sucked even more if you were queer. "Crack babies" that weren't (that was just poverty we were seeing). Regan starved people with the 'welfare queen' stuff. Misogyny was so much more open. It wasn't the same. It wasn't better. It was different.

I think young people today wish we could be back in the days of AIDS panic instead of covid panic.

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

#148

Post by DoingIsLearning »

Freak_NL wrote: post #71
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I'm seriously hoping you corrected her romantic view of the past. Sure, the movies make it seem simple, but... you know, AIDS. It sucked even more if you were queer. "Crack babies" that weren't (that was just poverty we were seeing). Regan starved people with the 'welfare queen' stuff. Misogyny was so much more open. It wasn't the same. It wasn't better. It was different.

Smoking. Smoke, everywhere.

You say it as if it was all in the past. I remember visiting Austria not so long ago (5 years maybe) and being shocked at the restaurants which still have smoking areas. Whereby the non-smoking area still smells exactly the same! You just don't have someone smoking directly on you.

I remember when the restrictions started in many countries and everyone saying it was draconian, but having experienced the benefits of the restrictions, I can't imagine going back to it.

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

#149

Post by rglullis »

lelanthran wrote: post #81
lrvick wrote: 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. I get the feeling that your worldview is extremely limited, and you have not experienced the world of kids. We choose schools based on how successful their graduates are. The more CEOs, doctors, etc that…

> The more CEOs, doctors, etc that a school produced means that that school is more successful.

Or it means that the elites managed to self-select themselves around that particular school.

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

#150

Post by BlueTemplar »

If you're in the EU, taking a stance against the GAFAMs is getting ever easier.

Since you have pre-teens, being a role model is probably the best you can do - boycott them in all your life. Yes, it's hard to refuse to use both Android and iOS, Slack, Github, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, Zoom, TikTok, LinkedIn and their ilk even in your work - but at some point one has to take some responsibilities !

Especially that there's an opportunity for someone in the infocom industry these days with the rebirth of ("real") Linux smartphones.

(Note that this doesn't remove all the issues with social media, just most of them.)

https://degooglisons-internet.org/en/

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