More Tech Sucks!

Broken Cellphones Photo by Jan Antonin Kolar on Unsplash

Introduction

So, I had planned to spend a lovely evening watching the returns in the Clacton by-election, but it seems that there are a few things I need to address on the topic of technology and voting with your wallet. (I actually did take a break and watched the results of the by-election on stream.) Gordon responded to my post with A rebuttal to a response on Tech Sucks while Michael Harley has entered with Re: Tech sucks? Really?, and both of them have made points that are worth addressing.

Calling the Relationship Abusive

I will defend this point. Plain and simply the language in use is that of an abusive relationship. I think I documented that pretty clearly in my original post. And it is language I’ve heard others use before, and do so without the recognition that they are describing their relationship with technology as abusive.

Saying that people are in denial doesn’t constitute me assuming a conclusion I am trying to prove. This is pretty fundamental to abusive relationships, people often stay with their abusers because they are unwilling or unable to see a different path. This is something that is well documented. The only issue is whether the victim chooses to recognize they are in an abusive relationship, or if someone can get through to them so they can see it.

Incomplete, Incompatible, or Impractical

The majority of these concepts harken back to the fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) practice of Microsoft dating all the way back to the 1980s or 1990s. This also incorporates the embrace, extend, extinguish practice found in internal documents from Microsoft in the early 2000s during a lawsuit. And, it finally this is using the most recent concept of locking-in users.

All of which are known fallacies. The way to deal with them is to find methods to undermine the fallacy, and provide better options. I know this isn’t easy. It’s especially complicated when facing some of the barriers that are thrown up by others.

The lock-in concept creating the “socially impractical” issue is the most difficult one to navigate. But, I think the way to navigate it is to be a leader, set the example, plant seeds with as many in the group as possible, and work with them to bring them along. The trickiest part to navigate is not forcing things, as that will often backfire. (I talk about this more below.)

You asked the question:

But what I really wonder is why the barriers to leaving it are so high for so many people.

Hopefully what I have laid out in this section answers the question. People have been manipulated by decades of FUD, EEE, and lock-in. The barriers are there because people believe the fallacies they’ve been fed, because the fallacies don’t appear to be illogical.

How Do We Move Forward?

First, individual choice still matters.

It does matter. And it matters most that people are informed, and that the fallacies are dispelled. The biggest issue is how to frame the choices so that they are meaningful to people? That’s the issue that I see: most people tend to make choices based on either popularity or perceived convenience, primarily because the idea of meaning hasn’t been presented to them significantly.

Secondly, we shouldn’t pretend individual choice is sufficient.

No, but we also shouldn’t undermine individual choice. Some people don’t like to make choices, but others don’t like choices being made for them. That’s why I don’t focus on the “go where” concept. When you start telling people where to go you lose them. However, when you present multiple options and empower them to make a choice there is a higher likelihood for success.

This doesn’t mean you don’t provide reasons for the choice you’ve made. Showing someone the options, and telling them why you’ve made your choice is the way to help others with making a choice. It also helps to say why you didn’t choose an option.

Third, we need to change the incentives. Regulation, competition law, interoperability, data portability and open standards can do far more to constrain companies with this level of market power than any individual consumer can.

This basically requires organizing political campaigns to exert pressure on politicians to make such a change. Or it requires unearthing and exposing things about these corporations that will garner political attention. At least that’s what it takes in this country. And I think we all know how effective that is. Look what it took for the UK Software Sovereignty concept to take off. It basically took Donald Trump being such a gigantic prick that the UK grew concerned about our government using our Tech companies to spy on the EU.

Google has (basically) laughed off fines from the EU. Apple has complied with some rulings, but has a tendency to do so maliciously.

And, how certain are you that if you go the route of political engagement is going to end up going favorably? Look at the state the EU trying to force age verification on the internet. Look at the state of the W Social platform.

I think the best form of incentives are going to be the ones that get the people to start moving of their own accord. It’s likely to be slow, but I think it is likely to be more effective in the long term.

It is making it possible to leave without losing your data, purchases, social connections, hardware investment or ability to communicate with everyone else.

Maybe you aren’t aware of this, but some of this is already possible. All these platforms are required to make it possible for you to download all your information. I’ve done it with Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, and others in the past. Recently I download all my information from multiple WordPress sites to migrate to new sites. And about a month later I migrated from write.as to micro.blog. ;)

But, I take the larger picture that you are presenting here. What you are looking for is interoperability between platforms. (Sorry, I am using my tech knowledge here for a moment.) Unfortunately, the likelihood of that happening on the big platforms in our lifetime is fairly slim. Why? Because all of these platforms were developed separately and don’t really have a common structure or framework to build such functionality. That’s the technical level.

On the social level, there is no one, not even all the customers on these platforms that could force these companies to do something like this. It would take a mass exodus of users that would make all previous exodus events look like a Sunday stroll. The companies can’t be incentivized because they want their users locked in, that’s their business model.

This is the kind of activity that would take Government intervention to make happen, and I am not altogether certain that it wouldn’t be an overreach by any government that did this. Why? Because there would be a need for some form of compliance oversight, which would put the government in the middle of regulating commerce on a level that would be seen as interference.

If this were China or a similarly closed economy, I could see it happening. But in the West, I don’t see it.

Therefore, the best option we have is to build on the new technologies that we are working on now. ActivityPub and ATProto have the possibility to enable some of this as we speak. And, in fact, some of it is possible already…but it takes knowledge and effort. I’ve migrated multiple times without losing a contact, or any information. It wasn’t the easiest migration, but that will come with time.

A piece of technology can be genuinely transformative while the company behind it behaves badly.

Technology that is not developed in the open will always be corrupted by the companies behind it. This is something we have seen over and over since the 1980s. Companies are only incentivized by profitability, and that incentivization leads to FUD, EEE, and lock-in. I could start listing the government lawsuits against companies related to these bad practices, but that would take days.

We don’t have to reject the technology in order to challenge the business model.

We have to reject technology that is not one hundred percent developed in the open. Think about all the platforms we have been talking about: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, Amazon, Google, etc. While they may open parts of their technology to public scrutiny, they keep the core of their technology proprietary and secret. And what do we often have issues with? Changes to the core technologies that we cannot see:

• Facebook / Twitter changes their algorithm, and user posts suddenly lose visibility.
• Facebook changing the way publications can make their content accessible via their platform - manipulating publishers into relying on their platform.
• Amazon abusing authors and their customers with the Kindle Unlimited program.
• Or the way they manipulate customers into the Amazon Prime program.
• Google changing the terms of search conditions behind the users back.
• Google changing the way pages are ranked based on signals that only they control.
• Don’t even get me started on Twitter/X specific issues.

The list is nearly endless here. Yes, we have to reject this technology. The next one coming down the pipe is AI. These companies are making a small portion of their technology available, but you know there is a large portion of it that they are keeping private.

Again, the only thing that incentivizes these companies is profit. The profit motive leads to FUD, EEE, lock-in, and customer abuse.

But let’s not turn that into a binary choice between “escape” and “denial”.

I don’t think I claimed that it is a binary concept. However, the arguments I put forward can make it seem like that.

There is a concept in modern medicine / public health practices known as harm reduction, or harm minimization. My stance is that we need to help others to understand the abuses of these technology corporations and the technologies they develop, and how it is directly damaging to them. Making the case that they are being made victims of these companies, helping them to see the options for reducing this harm is a greater good.

I think this may be the most succinct way I’ve found to express my thought process on this topic so far. Now on to take up a few of Michael’s points.

Michael Harley’s Post

Let’s start off light with a quote:

These tech giants have effectively created a cartel, which severely reduces consumer choice. I personally think they’ve won. The “war” has been fought and lost, and no one really acknowledges it.

I will refuse to acknowledge defeat until I am on my deathbed. ;) I won’t be the zealot / advocate I have in the past. I won’t be the one screaming from the rooftops. But I will plant seeds wherever possible, and try to be an agent of harm reduction.

Whatever we’re doing to vote with our dollars is choice theater. We should vote with our dollars; I just don’t think it moves the needle until everyone is doing it and there are actual viable alternatives.

It has to start somewhere with someone. If not with you, now, then who and when?

Does it matter if Pixelfed has feature parity and maybe even is cooler and better if your friends and family will never join you there?

Are you certain they won’t, or have you just not found the right way to plant the seed that makes them ask the questions? Have you maybe not found the way to show them that these companies are abusing them? Have you considered that Pixelfed might not be the best choice for them and shown them a range of options? Have you put them in a position to ask questions and make a choice for themselves?

It’s the App Store vs the Google Play Store. Are the people who make my Litter Robots going to publish their app to whatever repo/Linux store that my not-yet-invented Linux phone will use?

What about taking smaller, incremental steps? For example, there is an alternative store for Android called Aurora. This allows you to download the apps from the Play Store without a login, and without being forced to have Google services on your phone. Most apps will work fine without them.

Personally, I don’t keep any banking information on my phone, and I especially don’t trust bank apps. If I really must do something with my bank on my phone, I use my browser and I never save my password. It may seem like an inconvenience, but it’s kept my finances secure.

IMO - I haven’t ventured into Linux phone land yet. What I have done is stripped most of the Google stuff out of my current phone, and use Aurora and F-Droid for my apps. Whenever possible I use an open source application instead of choosing something from the Play Store. This isn’t a perfect solution, but it has reduced the amount of abuse I accept from Google.

Eventually I plan to try one of the de-Googled Android builds that offers some extra security features (like application containers). I’ll only get apps from the Play Store if forced, and I’ll use open source applications whenever / wherever possible.

Final Takeaways

I look at this topic from a perspective that appears to be somewhat different. I see the harms and abuses of the technologies produced by tech companies and can’t stand aside without calling it out. Gordon in particular triggered me by using abuse victim / survivor language in his original post.

I gave up the role of advocate / zealot a long time ago. Now I see the role as being similar to someone trying to practice harm reduction. I plant seeds, try to get people to see the abuse. I let them ask questions, and show them there are options. That is, I believe, a key: don’t try to push a solution, don’t take away their choice. Show them the choices, and let them ask more questions and empower them to make up their own decisions.

The “socially impractical” or “network” lock-in issue is the most difficult to deal with, and I don’t believe I’ve successfully navigated that one yet. The only idea I have on that is to try to plant the seed in multiple people in your group. Try to get them talking to each other about the issue. Don’t let them make you the focal point, be there in more of an advisory role to answer questions. Hopefully the group might start wanting to change. But honestly, I haven’t really tried this approach… Yet.

It may not seem that one person voting with their wallet is going to have an effect. But, if you can make a move, and help others to see the harms and put them on the road to voting with their wallet then eventually companies might start seeing the effect. And, honestly, I think that’s the only way they are going to take notice. The only thing that drives a company is profit, and if their profits are affected, then they (or their board) will notice.

Michael: I just wanted to ask you more questions. You’ve made a succinct statement that is quite clear. But it does beg for more questions. As for my Android stuff, I offer it as an example as to how someone can think about it. Basically, I’m using my thought process as an example, I don’t expect it will fit for you or anyone else.