There was a golden age when computers were something you owned, not like before when they were big machines your employer or university would give out access to, nor like after when they went to the cloud, you bought what was essentially a thin client and every software became a service.
At least in the olden days the computers weren’t forced into every single damn part of society!
Now in order to talk with most of your friends and family, you have to sell your soul to every one of the thousand ToS’s. It’s impossible to meaningfully use your personal device you bought with your own money without the internet, as every app and their mom needs to call home for some reason. For some reason, it is morally acceptable for a company to prevent you from being able to have someone you pay to replace parts of your device with third-party components you bought with your own money!
Now, of course, you can simply install some Libre operating system and use Lemmy, or Mastodon or whatever. But computers are so embedded into society that it is simply impossible to go without these services unless you want to get yourself isolated (and potentially in trouble with the authorities).
Besides, from prior experience, most people are unwilling to use technologies unless it is physically placed in front of them, whether through social influences, advertising or word of mouth, which generally corporate services do better than Libre alternatives.
It used to be that computers and programs were made for the end user. Now they are simply tools for ad and data-collection companies to extract every byte of personal data and force every second of advertising on others.
I’ve been seriously considering to remove computers from most aspects of my life, but as paper slowly disappears from our lives, this becomes harder and harder. Now you would likely be fired if you refused to use Teams or Slack or whatever your company uses. No one uses fax or writes mail or watches live TV anymore.
The only other alternative is to take back computers and make them personal again.
Eh, I think it’s totally feasible to quarantine the problematic parts of tech and retain control. For example:
Have you tried? I stopped using Facebook over a decade ago, and I refuse to use anything else Meta has touched. I still keep in contact with those I care about. It turns out that if people value a relationship with you, they’ll work with what you’re comfortable with, provided you’re willing to compromise a bit too. For me, that means SMS and email is my main form of communication, though I’d prefer more private alternatives like Matrix and Signal. Maybe I’ll push my loved ones to switch eventually, idk.
Nor should they, it’s absolutely insecure and shouldn’t be used by anyone. Period.
Mail is great, many of my friends have old-school watches, and while I don’t understand it, I have friends who watch live TV. None of that really interests me (though I’ll watch the Olympics OTA sometimes).
What’s stopping you? Do it one step at a time, and make adjustments as you go. I switched to Linux full-time something like 15 years ago, and it’s all I use today. Since then, I have:
Do the easiest stuff first, and keep going until you feel like you’re in control. Your direction will probably look different than mine, and that’s great! But waiting for someone else to solve your problems is what got us into this mess, so do something, and ideally do it today.
graphene and debian make me happy 👍
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I’ve been surprised by how effective it’s been to say, respectfully, “this is important to me,” maybe adding “here’s why.” Got all my siblings, mom, SO, and best friend on Signal, that’s a vast majority of my online conversations.
reddit is orders of magnitude bigger then lemmy, but I find lemmy high quality and has more people with similar values- more than i could ever keep up with.
Back when Adobe went subscription-only, I stopped using it on my personal work and devices even though a lot of my previous work depended on it. Had to switch to different tools, but now there are better options. Not only has Adobe stagnated, but they caused an even bigger exodus when they messed with the ToS to train ai on user data.
I switch to linux a few years ago and now when I have jobs that use windows I realize how clunky it actually is, and it’s only getting worse while linux has been getting better.
I’m fully degoogled (also a graphineOS user). It took me years to eliminate each service, but I was sick of these giant companies that could never give me the things I wanted because in interferes with what they want (ad revenue). The only thing you can do is take it all back. Participate as little as possible. These companies will not stop getting worse while people continue to use them.
It can be inconvenient, time-consuming, and hard, but there are options, and it is a lot easier now than it was a decade ago. I see no reason why it wont continue to get easier and more accessible. That’s why it’s important for tech savvy folks to do what they can, now, and make it easier for those who come after them. Personally, I’ve done a lot for myself, but need to learn more about hosting securely so I can offer close friends and family better alternatives that they can easily access.