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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

#221

Post by rglullis »

yunwal wrote: post #209
rglullis wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethical violations happen no matter the economic system, and capitalism (market dynamics) at least provide a mechanism for self-correction. Your response may help you jerk off to your righteousness, but it does not give anything actionable and it does not provide any type of solution to solve the problem. Can you try again, please?

There are other methods of self-correction (e.g. social pressure) that have been much more effective over the long run. Now you might say, "there's nothing interfering with social pressure in capitalism, you can have competitive markets with social pressure". But often, companies must either accept ethical violations or be out-competed in a competitive marketplace.

> But often, companies must either accept ethical violations

"Companies" can not do anything, except be used by unethical people at the top as an excuse for their deeds.

This is not an issue of Capitalism, but of Corporativism. If you want to fight, at least we should be clear about what is the real enemy.

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

#222

Post by ectospheno »

stinos wrote: post #121

There's almost no hope of having privacy on the web This is the feeling I, and many others I know, have as well. You try to do some things here and there (using FF with UBO and DDG and no Google account and browsing FB in separate container and whatnot) and hope it improves privacy, but in the end you just don't really know whether it works or not. The way modern websites/apps/tracking/... work is way out of my field…

UBO is a great idea from a malware risk reduction perspective alone. Any privacy protection is just a bonus.

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

#223

Post by abledon »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #178
Gigachad wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of it is fine. Most of it is safe if you just treat it as music with no depth. But the culture and people behind it massively glorify crime and violence. So being actually in to hip hop and the people behind it is dangerous for children.

guess the moral panic has moved on from rock and roll

I didn't hear much classic rock and roll back then about murder gang shit though... lol [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWISiHcGoNg

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

#224

Post by urlwolf »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #210
urlwolf wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author of the book 'digital vegan', the most impactful thing I've read in at least a year, responded to my post. I'm fulfilled :)

For real? Stoked! I've kinda considered that one a "failure" and moved on to "Ethics for Hackers" for Routledge - which I promise will pull no punches. :)

I have recommended it to at least 20 people. I'm sure my girlfriend and close friends are tired of me bringing up the topic in pretty much every conversation.

You did something great with that book. Last time I recommended it I said something like "If you were impacted by Stallman or Lanier, this Farnell is deeper, more philosophical, and at the same time more applicable. It solves a real problem that _everybody_ has." They look at me with Dali-like eyes-wide-open :)

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

#225

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

devney wrote: post #207

The main point to remember is that the fones we carry aren't for us. They are data-gathering tools for various spy enterprises. Any utility we get out of our fones is largely incidental, or at best it's bait to get us into the trap. It's interesting that most of the replies here focus on the children aspect, while the same spy-device paradigm applies as much or more to adults. The bottom line is I just don't get enou…

The replies focus on the children aspect because that strips away the most challenging counterargument: why shouldn't adults be able to decide, as many if not most do, that they do get lots of utility out of their phones and don't much care about being spied on incidentally? It's hard to tell a story where smartphones are more dangerous than smoking, and despite being completely illegal for kids we mostly let people do it once they're old enough.

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

#226

Post by amrocha »

bigbillheck wrote: post #185
filoleg wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> items that are 100% toxic [...] like rap/hip-hop music Didn't expect to see this take on HN, especially in the age when the library of congress includes hip-hop records and a former president expressed his appreciation towards it openly. Ffs, it is just another form of art. It isn't some vice that they will unfortunately have to eventually be able to work around, like alcohol. There is genuine value in it. Same wit…

> Didn't expect to see this take on HN I'm not surprised at all, it's entirely consistent with a lot of other things you'll find on this site. At least they admitted it's music.

Considering how any thread about COVID here is filled with anti-vaxxers, yeah that sounds about right

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

#227

Post by abledon »

97s wrote: post #171

I have a son who is 11. All of his friends have smart phones. He will have friends over to the house and the friends will sit there and stare at their phones. My son who doesn't have a phone will be like, hey can you get off tiktok so we can play or go outside? It is rather sad to see this, they are hanging out sharing videos they find on their feeds through their phones. One time my son said, hey get off your phone…

> One time my son said, hey get off your phone and lets go scooter around the neighborhood, the kid replied, hey I think I am going to go home. He wanted to surf his phone more than actually hang out with his friend

That is so sad. Interesting to see that china has 'LOCKED' down screen time controls for their youth, but they 'strategically' let tiktok run unfettered in other countries

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

#228

Post by mechanical_bear »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #8
jedberg wrote: post #5

Seems like a bit of an overreaction. My kids are just a few years younger than OP's, but I'm not going to cut them off. I will teach them the dangers of being online and will force the phones to use a VPN through our house with PiHole installed. I may or may not go as far as putting a custom cert on the phone so I can monitor all the traffic -- that will depend on if I catch them violating my trust. My default stance…

I think the idea of monitoring the network traffic of your children is an overreaction itself. Sure, internet content is a bit more buzzing these days, but older generations who accessed unfiltered content survived as well. Normalizing being under surveillance for them is a lesson hard to understand to be honest. I don't know your kids, but at some point their technical abilities to circumvent the paternalism is like…

Monitoring children, not just in a technical sense, is part of being a parent.

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

#229

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

basedgod wrote: post #198
PeterBarrett wrote: post #10

I don't have kids yet but it is something that has been discussed about my nieces and nephews. As you say, you don't want your kids to become social pariahs but you also don't want to give them smart phones, in this day and age it looks like the two are intrinsically linked, which is disappointing. I would like to say that we can teach kids to have a healthy relationship with the internet and social media but sites l…

ah yes the whole "Coca Cola corp. says you can't just ban your kids from drinking and eating sugar !!! then when they turn 18 they'll fall off the wagon and eat nothing but sugar ! better to have them eat it throughout their childhood so they KNOW how to avoid it" do you people ever try to have an independent thought outside of the propaganda of big business ? what kind of nonsense of this, that children should be ex…

The key reason I'm okay with no-soda households is that there's few if any social contexts where you're expected to have a soda. You mention eating sugar, but I think banning that really would risk falling off the wagon - you're not gonna keep your kid from noticing that ice cream is tasty for 18 years.

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

#230

Post by lukeholder »

nickip wrote: post #177
lukeholder wrote: post #78

I got my 13yo son an Apple Watch with an eSim that is set up under my iPhone. It allows us to call and text together as family, and for him to communicate with friends via imessage and other authorized chat apps. He doesn't miss the social inclusion (invites to a birthday party etc) but also it has minimal addictive apps like tiktok, snapchat, insta. I can set access controls for it with Apples' parental tools. Oh an…

Trying to figure out how this works for him. Does he just use voice text all the time? He navigates everything on the tiny screen?

Voice to text most often yes. Doesn't need to navigate much, send a message with voice, and tap on notifications.
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