I am a 20+ year veteran of FAANGs. I studied compsci at the best schools and personally had a hand in shaping a lot of the tech that powers features used by billions of people. I’ve refused to work on projects that track people just to use them as the product. I refuse to work on products that are purposely designed to be addictive. I won’t let my kids near this stuff. Let that sink in for a moment.
I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself
291–300 of 305 posts
Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself
#292This 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 integ…
cellphone != smartphone != smartphone with Android / iOS / whatever Huawei uses != ALSO using the worst apps like TikTok I'm not completely convinced by your argument either : what happened to the hacker ethos ? Why do you assume that this time progress is going to come from big sclerotic companies rather than from the usual free (including free-loading) fringe groups ? (Speaking of which, if we fuck up our civilizat…
The legal system and a stable non amish government keeps them safe. In a collapse they will sadly be overrun by desperate people who aren't pacifists and who use guns.
The history of the amish is being chased from place to place. I think they are admirable and very special, but they would not fair well in a period of serious instability.
Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
thank you, those examples are very helpful to show what you mean. now my argument is that i don't see this as a bad thing. yes, maybe some people get an advantage here without contributing themselves, but the alternative is that we stop improving our lives for fear that someone might get a better life without contributing themselves. that kind of thinking seems to be very common in the US and it prevents a lot of pot…
to spin the argument further. what exactly would we gain if the amish started using cellphones? i don't think it would matter at all. on the contrary, they now serve as an example that life without cellphones is still possible. but the same argument that works for cellphones also works for other things. life would be so much easier if everyone would use the same tools. but that ends up arguing against diversity. what…
I think you are right, society as a whole will basically have no effect from smartphone Luddites, my main point was that it is just yet another arbitrary rejection of technology, and that the majority of society will adapt to it.
The Amish decided that technology developed after 1600 or so was dangerous for humanity and needed to be carefully avoided. None of us agree with that. 200,000 years ago some of our ancestors' relatives were probably terrified of fire. In 400 years the idea that it is somehow dangerous to use whatever they have on whatever their equivalent to our smartphones and tiktok is will seem rediculous to them, just like you disagree with the Amish that it is important to avoid buttons on clothes lest you become a slave to vanity.
Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
> > 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…
good luck being the only parent asking for that when everyone else is fine with whatsapp. it's not just the school you need to convince but every other parent too.
I'm already the parent and "that guy" in various settings who refuses to join the Whatsapp group and it hasn't had any meaningful effect on my life.
Most of the time people already were sending out emails as well, and they (perhaps begrudgingly) continue to do so to accommodate people like me.
The signal to noise ratio in these Whatsapp groups is extremely low.
Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
cellphone != smartphone != smartphone with Android / iOS / whatever Huawei uses != ALSO using the worst apps like TikTok I'm not completely convinced by your argument either : what happened to the hacker ethos ? Why do you assume that this time progress is going to come from big sclerotic companies rather than from the usual free (including free-loading) fringe groups ? (Speaking of which, if we fuck up our civilizat…
The legal system and a stable non amish government keeps them safe. In a collapse they will sadly be overrun by desperate people who aren't pacifists and who use guns. The history of the amish is being chased from place to place. I think they are admirable and very special, but they would not fair well in a period of serious instability.
Weren't they chased by state repression ? They would be in the situation where they're the most state-like entity. Or do you assume that they would stay pacifist and not use all weapons available if threatened ?
Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
So your neighbours can see your kid in Person but seeing a video of them is off? You don't want a friendly neighbourly vibe
there is a big difference between seeing something, and having a permanent recording of it. also, only a few people see what the kids are doing at any given time, and none of them see anything happening at home except the friends coming over. so when something embarrassing happens the difference is between a few neighbors seeing it vs all of them. there are enough examples of nosy neighbors in the US calling the poli…
> if an algorithm amplifies local activities to everyone around, then the wrong kind of people will find out.
Who are the wrong kind of people?
Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself
#297You have to raise your kids for the world that will exist when THEY become adults, not the world that existed when YOU became an adult.
These things exist and they aren't going away. Kids need to be familiar with them in order to understand the world they will live in. They need to build up tolerances and cooping strategies for spam and online teasing and addiction to it. If you just ban them from it, they'll have no familiarity and no immunity to its temptations. As with everything, moderation is the key.
Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
there is a big difference between seeing something, and having a permanent recording of it. also, only a few people see what the kids are doing at any given time, and none of them see anything happening at home except the friends coming over. so when something embarrassing happens the difference is between a few neighbors seeing it vs all of them. there are enough examples of nosy neighbors in the US calling the poli…
> if an algorithm amplifies local activities to everyone around, then the wrong kind of people will find out. Who are the wrong kind of people?
the kind that call the police when they see kids playing unsupervised in the park.
Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
The legal system and a stable non amish government keeps them safe. In a collapse they will sadly be overrun by desperate people who aren't pacifists and who use guns. The history of the amish is being chased from place to place. I think they are admirable and very special, but they would not fair well in a period of serious instability.
Weren't they chased by state repression ? They would be in the situation where they're the most state-like entity. Or do you assume that they would stay pacifist and not use all weapons available if threatened ?
I think pacifism has been a core belief of theirs for hundreds of years, and they seem to be quite good at maintaining their core values despite pressure to change.
Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
to spin the argument further. what exactly would we gain if the amish started using cellphones? i don't think it would matter at all. on the contrary, they now serve as an example that life without cellphones is still possible. but the same argument that works for cellphones also works for other things. life would be so much easier if everyone would use the same tools. but that ends up arguing against diversity. what…
I think you are right, society as a whole will basically have no effect from smartphone Luddites, my main point was that it is just yet another arbitrary rejection of technology, and that the majority of society will adapt to it. The Amish decided that technology developed after 1600 or so was dangerous for humanity and needed to be carefully avoided. None of us agree with that. 200,000 years ago some of our ancestor…
well the danger of depending on technology is that we get stuck when it stops working. i just had this experience today. thanks to covid here it is frequently necessary to have a smartphone with a camera to scan a code at a location that updates your health-status. now i understand the point of contact tracing, but without a phone i would have been denied service. in my case the camera stopped working so i could not scan the code. it was fixed with a reboot of the phone, but imagine if it wasn't. i'd have been stuck. i might not even have been able to buy new phone or get it repaired because those places might not let me in either.
our dependency on technology is so absolute and deep that any failure can have serious consequences for an individual.
we need that minority that refuses or avoids certain technology as a test for our fallback options.
i was also told to pay using the phone, which i would not do either. that was more of a communication issue, the person at the counter asked me to hand her my phone so she could initiate the payment, presumably because she felt that it was to complicated to tell me how to do it. when i refused, she sent me to another counter where i could pay in cash, which effectively caused me to verify that a fallback system that didn't rely on a phone was available and working.