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dublinben  ·  3118 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: How "normal" people use the internet, and how can we fix that behavior?

The obvious solution to illiteracy and ignorance is education.

However, this problem is structural and I place most of the blame for this situation squarely with us, the technologists and designers. We have created a world where it is acceptable to load a webpage with dozens of tracking scripts. We have designed advertising systems that are perfect delivery methods for malware and viruses. We have built competing browsers that are feature incompatible and have contradictory interfaces.

We have established a computing system (especially with Windows) that sets users up for failure, by default. It's time we technologists fulfill our responsibility to deliver operating systems and software that respect user rights and priorities. We should be proselytizing and installing GNU/Linux operating systems (Debian, Trisquel, etc.) that are not user-hostile by default. We should be educating users on the importance of being in control of your (free) software rather than being controlled by your (proprietary) software.