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Approaching the "to google or not to google" question is impossible without stating your casus belli. If you care about opsec, there are many reasons why you w
by yuvadam 11y ago
Approaching the "to google or not to google" question is impossible without stating your casus belli.
If you care about opsec, there are many reasons why you would want to use google services: e.g. a hostile actor will have an extremely hard time stealing your emails from Gmail while there's a might higher chance you fucked up a config on your self-hosted setup. Usually, as always, it comes down to smart compartmentalization and using the right tool for the job.
Personally, the ethical perspective is a much stronger reason why to stray away from data behemoths like Google and Facebook. First of all I believe the "usefullness" of many of these services is over-exaggerated: Facebook noawadays is more of a brainwashing service to expose you to "content" that does nothing more than dull your mind and keep you mindlessly scrolling and endless stream of irrelevant advertisements. But even if this isn't the case for all online services, some come at a price I am personally not willing to pay.
We are entering an era of digital slavery where our entire lives are managed by data monopolies that are bound by no rules other than those they create for themselves. I don't care how convenient these commercial services are, if the price is giving up the sovereignty of my data, and the core liberties of my human existence. I make a conscious choice to not be part of this system, and we will all have to face this choice sooner or later.
For more on this topic, I highly suggest Aral Balkan's talk from re:publica this year [1].
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jh8supIUj6c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jh8supIUj6c
- zajd 11y agoYes, Facebook isn't very "useful", but I think you'd have a hard time making the same case about Google's services. Maps, Gmail and Android(assuming iOS/Windows Phone isn't an option) are all hard to beat.
- yuvadam 11y agoThey all have viable alternatives. I don't miss any of Google's services.
- thrownaway2424 11y ago"It is not the only useful thing" is a different statement from "It is not useful."
- mehrdada 11y ago> assuming iOS/Windows Phone isn't an option Well, they are options. If one judges every alternative that might include the tiniest bit of inconvenience as "not an option", any try would be hopeless. In fact, I would argue Android is the easiest Google product to replace, because it has a perfectly polished competitor like iOS.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- manigandham 11y agoUseful to you != useful to others. That kind of generalization does no good. These companies don't have billions of users because they produce nothing of value. If that value exchange doesn't work for you, just stop using it. But these strange posts about "slavery" and "liberties" just seem out of place. It's a corporation, like any other. What are you expecting?
- afarrell 11y agoYour second sentence isn't strictly shown to be true. Heroin has millions of users, but would you argue it provides value to people's lives?
- manigandham 11y agoIf you're going to bring it down to that kind of strange technicality then yes - those people are using it because it provides them value in whatever form. It's not up to you to judge what that value is and whether you think it's good for them.
- UnquietTinkerer 11y agoThis is just playing games with microeconomic terms. However you choose to define "value", using heroin is self-destructive and usually (always?) irrational. If you choose to include that kind of behavior in your definition of value then the word loses most of its useful connotations.
- manigandham 11y agoNo it doesn't - because that's the definition of "value". Anything beyond that is your subjective interpretation.
- adamlett 11y agoIt absolutely does provide value. Many (ab)users of illegal substances use them to provide relief from the emotional pain of traumatic experiences or mental illnesses.
- dredmorbius 11y agoA very strong second on Aral's talk. He hits a lot of themes I've been mulling in different contexts, mentioned briefly on my Ello. https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/9YU-Z4UJXUqQe5xOjexEjA https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/9YU-Z4UJXUqQe5xOjexEjA