Reporter Kashmir Hill spent six weeks blocking Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple from getting her money, data, and attention, using a custom-built VPN. Here’s what happened.
To the extent that she did? Hell yeah. Between AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud I can't even begin to guess how much of the internet you'd lose. A lot. I've done some annoying stuff to test out how dependent I am on various services and I definitely wouldn't bother. But I think we should be more mindful about our internet and electronic usage. It's good to be aware of where our information is going and what it could be doing. Your information is used to inform search results and ads. It curates your social media feeds and changes product recommendations. It's not inherently a bad thing, but if you're not cognizant of the way you interact with these technologies then the internet starts turning into a bubble that specifically acts to reinforce what you like and want to spend money on. And that's a dangerous rabbit hole to crawl into.
I think this may have been more effective if she was open to more fundamental lifestyle changes instead of trying to change as little as possible about her life while getting rid of products from these companies. If the reason she's interested in cutting out products from these companies is because they're addictive, pervasive, too powerful, and bad for you, it implies that we've centered our lives around them. So effectively getting rid of them means lifestyle changes, which this reporter seems to have little interest in. Things like lack of constant music, being harder to communicate not in person, and not using the easy but allegedly unethical services, are all part of the point. It doesn't make sense to question if these products are good for us without honestly asking what a good life looks like without them. With rates of suicide and depression rising over the past decade, especially in teens, instead of asking what to replace Instagram with, it makes more sense to explore what life is like replacing Instagram with more personal and meaningful connections.
I think her point was not so much our addiction to social media and technology etc but that we need more options from more companies and especially more options that allow us to have privacy. Which is its own important topic. For those who can’t completely not use these tech giants services (which is probably most or at least a lot of us), we can at least see how pervasive a problem it is. I honestly hadn’t realized a lot of this myself. I think she wasnt focusing on lifestyle changes because ive seen that discussed plenty of times but this was from the perspective of hey, we don’t even have options if we don’t use these companies. But that being said i agree with you that the other important topic this brings to mind is how all these products/apps/websites etc influence our lives often in negative ways. I definitely think it can be very unhealthy and negatively impacts a lot of us. Esp social media. I mean i guess she did touch on that in the end when she mentions not picking up her phone right when she wakes up and living in the moment.
Uh, yeah? Why would you do that to yourself? It's like saying "I tried cutting out the Big Four macronutrients from my diet, and I got hungry".
Some of these points are salient, esp. when the author gets into the weeds of web hosting issues; other aspects of this piece just sound like some spoiled rich kid who's totally lost without her fancy toys. esp. tone deaf: Boo hoo. Followed immediately by: The author just described how my wife and I regularly plan and then pay for our date nights. It doesn't really suck that much.I have an old Canon point-and-shoot digital camera, but I find I don’t take many photos this week—because without Facebook and Instagram, I don’t have anywhere to share them.
Sometimes I just can’t find a digital replacement. Venmo won’t work without a smartphone, so I pay our babysitter in cash. I start using a physical calendar to keep track of my schedule.
I think you're missing the point. The article is about how hard it is to avoid these companies, i.e. how ubiquitous they are and how much we rely on them. It's not about some spoiled rich kid complaining that she can't access her instagram. It's ironic that you can't see that and post about it on a site like this that's an escape from things like reddit.
No, I can see that. I get it the point. Hence opening with the part about appreciating the article's "salient points." But whinging about how there's no impetus to take pictures if you can't put them on instagram, or trying to illustrate how difficult life is without google and amazon because you need to carry cash and write on a physical calendar still comes off as absurd. It's almost as if... as if there could be several takes on several aspects of the same article! Crazy, I know. What the article isn't about: reddit, or alternatives to reddit, or my choosing to post on hubski. So I guess the real irony is scolding a stranger for "missing the point" of the article and then capping your response with a remark that truly doesn't at all address the content of the article. Additionally, now that you mention it: when I joined hubski with my FIRST account well over five years ago, it really did feel like an escape from reddit. People seemed more interested in getting to know each other before jumping into debate mode. It was nice. There were, and still are, some great folks here. But now I lurk more and don't comment or post frequently; the people I knew don't seem to be around as much, and I'm far more likely to be pecked at by some guy who just joined an hour ago and immediately resorts to the same lazy, reflexively adversarial tone that makes reddit such a trash heap. So thanks for the remind, I guess
Your first post is definitely missing the point of the article and you're cherry-picking things to be annoyed about. You yourself jumped head first into "debate mode". This second post is now hostile and "adversarial". I think you're in a shitty frame of mind and projecting it onto me. I literally joined a couple of hours ago, contributed once and my first reply is some aggressive gate-keeping and newbie-shaming and calling reddit a trash heap with the obvious implication that I'm part of the problem. You're demonstrating exactly the kind of crap I just signed up here to avoid but now I'm not so sure I wanna stick around. So thanks for the welcome, I guess
Fair enough, man. Yeah, I'm in a shitty frame of mind today. It's unfair to take it out on you. I don't believe that choosing to focus on one facet of an article constitutes cherry picking; nor does it demonstrate anything about my grasp of the article. It was just a comment I made when I woke up and decided today was the day I'd speak up on hubski after some silence. Ultimately, my point: while the author makes good arguments about how all-encompassing these companies have become, it doesn't serve her argument to belabor minor inconveniences like not getting to share pics on instagram and having to carry cash and having to buy a paper calendar. At best, those arguments just make it sound like she's trying to make living without those services more inconvenient than they are. Which she doesn't need to do. At worst, they sound like some upper cruster sneering at the hoi polloi: "who has to pay their babysitter in cash anymore? What's the point of taking a picture of your child if you can't easily quantify how much people approve of the picture?" It's one quibble with one part of the article. Never meant for it to be anything other than that. You are welcome here, as I was when I wandered over, as is anybody. I encourage you to dig around a little and get to know people before jumping in.
All good. We all have off days. I wonder if the author was trying to represent the reader who would object to what she's trying to do with the complaints you pointed out. Is she trying to answer those questions by showing that she had similar issues, etc.
It's almost a rite of passage for tech journalists to do the performative cold turkey thing. Meanwhile most of the civil libertarians are all about "if you don't like Facebook, get off of Facebook." I myself have said "our lives would be no worse without Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Netflix." Articles like this point out that the hydra is so multi-headed now that you'll never cut them all off.
🎶 Why can't we be friends, Why can't we be friends 🎶 I agree - fuffle can be snarky (not nearly as snarky as me but still). And I agree - the article is about the ubiquity of the services we use and how even if you try to eliminate them, you have to eliiminate far, far more than you intend. Getting a photo out of a camera and to a friend on the Internet is tricky. Instagram is seamless. Playing music these days is tricky. Spotify is seamless. I mean, I listen to audiobooks from my public library and if Overdrive isn't on AWS, it's on Rakuten. And while paper calendars are great if they work for you, my wife and I are running twelve google calendars. For that matter, both of her EHRs (Electronic Health Record Systems) run on Google calendars and an iPad.
Playing music isn't so bad if you just bought a pair of Klipsch Cornwalls hooked up to a nice little stereo tube amp and you sister in law is staying with you for a godamn month so the only thing you want to do is hide in your basement and pour through your old vinyl collection. Just butting in to speaker brag... Sister and law broke all the ground rules for staying with us two days into her visit. Thank God for the speakers or I'd have gotten drunk and became the "angry unreasonable guy," and made all the women cry by now. I like the Cornwalls way better than the LaScallas or the Hereseys.
Your comment made my day! I spent 30+ years looking for my "perfect sound", I put it in quotes because I feel it's just as subjective as my favorite food. I ended up with a pair of Cornwalls, a handmade tube amp by this guy John Hogan and a VPI Scoutmaster. I smile every time I listen.
I've listened to the whole Klipsch line up and the Cornwalls are my favorite. I've heard some kick ass JBL's but for the price people are asking I never seriously compared them. I need a better amp. I've got a little 25 watt tube amp but it has a low buzz that makes me crazy. The buzz disappears at any volume but... I should probably sell off or try to trade some music gear and see what I can get into. It will probably be a long while before a gather up the bread to upgrade my Technics 1200, it's good enough for now.
Oh man, i miss my Cornwalls. Awesome speakers. I had to part with them many years ago due to financial hardship. Life is good now, would be better with some cornwalls though.