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Individually, you have a choice. But not using e.g. WhatsApp needs to be a collective decision or it won't work because everybody else is still stuck in there.

IggleSniggle 7y ago
I know some of this is regional, but despite the myriad chat services, I quit them all and have been doing just fine with email and SMS. Can't use phone numbers since it's all spam all the time, tho.
mikro2nd 7y ago
There is no such thing as a "collective decision". There is only the decision of each person. Any movement to quit these sickness-inducing manipulators has to start somewhere otherwise you end up like those Buddhists who won't enter Nirvana until all other creatures are also ready to enter Nirvana, so they all end up hanging about outside the gates (as it were...), forever waiting. The decision to be the first,... to lead,... to tread without trepidation where others fear to go,... that's what I called growing a spine. "Won't work because everybody else is still stuck in there" is simply an expression of that fear.
- diminoten 7y ago
  You're acting like we can't use multiple systems, or that people care if they can interact with us...
- thsealienbstrds 7y ago
  Let's say you run your own mail server. How much privacy do you really gain if 99% of the mail that comes in and goes out passes through Google servers? It doesn't matter what you do by yourself. You just can't expect everybody to run their own mail server. I run my own mail server, and while I'm happy to be self-reliant, it's hardly a win for my privacy (also, mail server administration is a pita). Same goes for every other communication tech. Just because your endpoint is not spied upon, if every other endpoint is spied upon you gain nothing. If you don't use WhatsApp, but all your friends use WhatsApp to talk about you then you gained nothing. If you really believe there is no such thing as collective decision-making then imho you already gave up in the fight for privacy. But even if we boycot Google and Facebook, they are not the main problem. Their business model is the main problem. Spying on your users, training predictive models, and using those models to exploit people is simply too profitable, and therefore too attractive for any profit-seeking company to ignore. Until we solve that problem by deciding as a society that these business models are not ok, this 1984-like world we currently live in will be our reality.
justaguyhere 7y ago
On the other hand, you could be the first among your family/friends to not use FB's products, and slowly others will follow.

IggleSniggle 7y ago

I know some of this is regional, but despite the myriad chat services, I quit them all and have been doing just fine with email and SMS. Can't use phone numbers since it's all spam all the time, tho.

mikro2nd 7y ago

There is no such thing as a "collective decision". There is only the decision of each person. Any movement to quit these sickness-inducing manipulators has to start somewhere otherwise you end up like those Buddhists who won't enter Nirvana until all other creatures are also ready to enter Nirvana, so they all end up hanging about outside the gates (as it were...), forever waiting. The decision to be the first,... to lead,... to tread without trepidation where others fear to go,... that's what I called growing a spine. "Won't work because everybody else is still stuck in there" is simply an expression of that fear.

diminoten 7y ago
You're acting like we can't use multiple systems, or that people care if they can interact with us...
thsealienbstrds 7y ago
Let's say you run your own mail server. How much privacy do you really gain if 99% of the mail that comes in and goes out passes through Google servers? It doesn't matter what you do by yourself. You just can't expect everybody to run their own mail server. I run my own mail server, and while I'm happy to be self-reliant, it's hardly a win for my privacy (also, mail server administration is a pita). Same goes for every other communication tech. Just because your endpoint is not spied upon, if every other endpoint is spied upon you gain nothing. If you don't use WhatsApp, but all your friends use WhatsApp to talk about you then you gained nothing. If you really believe there is no such thing as collective decision-making then imho you already gave up in the fight for privacy. But even if we boycot Google and Facebook, they are not the main problem. Their business model is the main problem. Spying on your users, training predictive models, and using those models to exploit people is simply too profitable, and therefore too attractive for any profit-seeking company to ignore. Until we solve that problem by deciding as a society that these business models are not ok, this 1984-like world we currently live in will be our reality.

justaguyhere 7y ago

On the other hand, you could be the first among your family/friends to not use FB's products, and slowly others will follow.