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I Tried to Live Without the Tech Giants. It Was Impossible

189 points by ForHackernews 6y ago

Andy_1 6y ago
It makes sense she failed. I kinda envisioned going digitally vegan about a year ago, and then really thought about it -- figured out that it's totally impossible.
ewzimm 6y ago
This almost reads like a parody to me. The author was introduced to alternatives for just about everything they used the tech giant services for, and therefore, living without their services was impossible. The issue that alternatives are harder to find and use is something that should be solved. Instead of pursuing policies like nationalizing Google into a public service, what if various public agencies tried to operate with free software internally and then exposed their tools to the world with things like public Searx and Peertube instances?
- zerotolerance 6y ago
  The point was even as far as she went to eliminate her direct interaction those services were transitive dependencies in almost every consumer interaction.
  - ewzimm 6y ago
    Wouldn't this be something like a "Kevin Bacon" game of tech giants? Anyone is only a certain number of degrees of separation away from any company in an interconnected world. I could find a very obscure company and show that if both of us participate in a global economy, there are transitive relationships between us. So I could choose not to use Amazon, but if I do business with only a few others, some of those people will do business with Amazon. The same goes for the Chinese Communist Party. Would that mean it's impossible for me to live without the CCP? There's a sense in which I could say that's true, but that wouldn't necessarily mean I shouldn't look for alternatives for who I depend on directly.
zackkitzmiller 6y ago
Unless you move to a farm and grow everything yourself, I think yes. It would literally be impossible to live with out them. I'm sure the POS at your corner store somehow interacts with AWS or GCP, but I'm not sure that should 'count.' As well as not visiting any site that is hosted on a cloud provider. You could almost certainly live a life with significantly reduced quality by living without the tech giants directly, but to not visit websites that are hosted on AWS, and still shop at a local shop that uses Square or other payment provider that's hosted in the cloud seems disingenuous to me.
- WhyKill 6y ago
  HA! Try growing or raising animals and not using Amazon...
  - dylan604 6y ago
    How in the world did farmers and ranchers do it before July 5, 1994? How did humanity survive?
    - 52-6F-62 6y ago
      A lot of farmers still do. Especially older ones. I don’t know about the USA but up here many older farmers operated entirely on in person deals with other farmers, farmers markets, and local grocers. (Depending on how abstracted you want to get, but yes the farmer probably filled up their pickup for the morning delivery at a gas station that has a POS that connects to some service that interacts with AWS somewhere a long the line. Though the farmers I’d met likely used cash)
      - dylan604 6y ago
        I'm really not sure where the GP was trying to take the sustaining w/o Amazon would be impossible. It's not like farmers are buying there tonnage of seeds from Amazon. They are not buying new calves at Amazon. They don't buy tractors from Amazon. Maybe they buy new items for the kitchen/office, but that's not a large line item on the farm.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
motohagiography 6y ago
Also described by a perennially appearing post about Ivan Illich's concept: https://wikitia.com/wiki/Radical_Monopoly https://wikitia.com/wiki/Radical_Monopoly
- sukilot 6y ago
  Strange that the canonical example -- an addictive drug, isn't mentioned there.
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
    Drugs don't addict people, poverty does. (Sorta)
    - veridies 6y ago
      That's part of the story, but I know a LOT of middle and upper class addicts.
    - wmeredith 6y ago
      Active ingredient drugs most certainly addict people. Physical addiction is a physical state. So much so that if the drug is removed too quickly the withdraw can kill you in some cases (see Heroin).
      - Ericson2314 6y ago
        It is my understanding that physical addiction and withdrawal are both physical states, but the former depends on more variables.
    - clairity 6y ago
      no, a lack of meaning, purpose, confidence and/or esteem perhaps, but lack of money has little role in addiction.
    - nonamenoslogan 6y ago
      Bullshit. I've got plenty of money and a pill-addicted wife-- trust me those f'ing things cost upwards of $200 a week during some stretches. Reason for taking them has nothing to do with how much we can afford and everything to do with feeling "pain-free."
luckylion 6y ago
Meh, "hosted on AWS = I can't avoid Amazon" isn't a reasonable question, it's like "My dentist used Amazon to buy his pants = I can't Avoid Amazon". You aren't doing business with Amazon by visiting a site hosted on AWS, the site owner is, and you're doing business with them. If you don't want AWS to see your IP for some "no direct touching" reason, get a VPN. Six Degrees Of Separation is a fun game, but I don't think it's useful for this kind of debate.
- zeepzeep 6y ago
  > You aren't doing business with Amazon by visiting a site hosted on AWS But think the other way, if you don't support them, you should avoid sites using them _and communicate so_. "No sorry, I won't, that's an amazon IP."
- onion2k 6y ago
  When you load a webpage or an app that's hosted on AWS you give Amazon a lot of information about your browser, location, etc. They could very easily aggregate all of the AWS services you load things from to build a very detailed profile about you. If Amazon were being nefarious they could inspect the data in the packets you send across their network. Using a site that's hosted on AWS === doing business with Amazon. It's just a very one-sided relationship where they get a ton of useful data and you get to load a JS app.
  - 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
    Imma need a citation for that. Yes, Amazon could do that, but the cloud providers are usually very clear about drawing a clear dividing line between their hosting businesses and consumer businesses, because enterprise customers are extremely sensitive to the slightest suggestion of their data being mined.
    - heipei 6y ago
      What about this, a mere three months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22962145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22962145
DJHenk 6y ago
This is an unproductive interpretation of "living without tech giants". Yes, if you decide to ban all major cloud providers from your live, including everything they host, you are going to have a hard time. But it is foolish to give up that easily. Let's say I want to ban Google from my live and I ditch my GMail account. Thinking along the lines of this author I would not be done. Actually I would not be able to have an email account at all anymore, because there are other people who are still on GMail and they might mail me and then I would be "infected." And therefore I would better just keep my GMail. This is nonsense, of course. You're better of without GMail and Google and the others. You can't get all there in one day, but it is certainly worth it to take as much steps as you can.
- dharmon 6y ago
  I agree that it is still worthwhile to do what you can. If large numbers of people stopped using just Google search and gmail, Google would most definitely notice and feel it hard. Or to phrase it differently, the choices of individual users absolutely can still decide the fate of these companies. This sounds obvious, but is not always true (it would be much harder for individual preferences to dethrone Microsoft, for example).
  - 3764738236 6y ago
    The choices of individual users are already affecting the fate of these companies. Most people just prefer life with these companies and their products rather than life without.
- pjc50 6y ago
  Sure - but the "just live without them" argument is the main one used against having public policy about them! If they really are inescapable, they should not escape public scrutiny.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    > If they really are inescapable I think you missed the point of the comment you replied to. It's not that "just live without them" is impossible under a reasonable definition, it's that the author is using an unreasonable definition.
kaydub 6y ago
> Cutting Amazon from my life meant losing access to any site hosted by Amazon Web Services, the internet’s largest cloud provider. Stopped reading here. Thought this was going to be an experiment on privacy. Like, blocking trackers and not using the giant providers SaaS offerings.
- WealthVsSurvive 6y ago
  Remind me of the US law that stops AWS from copying the business models of their customers? They didn't seem to have much difficulty getting around copying physical products from their seller customers.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
  It's not, but perhaps it makes an even deeper point: that it is genuinely impossible to use the Internet without Amazon, Google and Microsoft, because so much of the web relies on the three giants, and every click you make adds a fraction of a cent to their hosting revenues. That said, I do agree that madness lies going too down the supply chain. Is using any device with a lithium-ion battery inherently immoral because they contain some cobalt that may have been mined in exploitative conditions in the Congo? Where do you draw the line?
- jrumbut 6y ago
  Amazon and Google can't track who connects to their cloud servers? I find that hard to believe. That's what unique about these companies. When AT&T owned telecommunications infrastructure it wasn't also a major retailer, a movie studio, a logistics company, etc.
ibn_khaldun 6y ago
Only skimmed through this but I thought that this article sounded familiar...down to the tidbit about missing a friends birth on Facebook and using a custom VPN to block the services....Published by Gizmodo, Jan. 2019 [0] [0]: https://gizmodo.com/life-without-the-tech-giants-1830258056 https://gizmodo.com/life-without-the-tech-giants-1830258056
- xdavidliu 6y ago
  to save other readers a click, this is the same author as the NYTimes article in the OP, so this is that author recycling their own content, not plagiarism from someone else
  - wmeredith 6y ago
    I'm actually OK with this, particularly in the area of tech reporting. The state of the art advances quickly and it's likely worth revisiting assumptions, options, and outcomes with updated inputs. *I haven't read both articles, so there may actually be no updates.
    - brian_herman__ 6y ago
      I couldnt even read the article without logging into google, facebook, or apple. I could read the gizmodo one though. I guess that's an ironic update?
- glxxyz 6y ago
  Without Google she had no way to search and see if she'd already published it somewhere.
- jrumbut 6y ago
  Also mentioned in the article, which does in fact reflect on the same experience.
feralimal 6y ago
After so many years (perhaps starting with the East India Company), the result is that these mega-corporations have finally reached a point where they have had both the power and control of the reins for so long, that life as we know it is not possible without them. We will demand that our ineffective government step aside and that our corporations step up - we will choose to have them technocratically manage us. And the boot up of governance 2.0 will be complete. My own PoV, is that I wanted governance 1.0 rolled back!
- eternalban 6y ago
  I am not sure about life being impossible for a humanity that has managed to shake off the yoke of these cartels. The technology and know how are neutral. The issue is how technology is (mis)used, and what role does the desire to maintain archaic social and political order (of the stake-holders of East India Companies of the world) plays in the dystopian turn of the “liberating technology” of the internet.
  - feralimal 6y ago
    Well, you are clearly an optimist, which I genuinely appreciate! I agree, technology is neutral in itself, its just a tool. But, who runs all of it? Is it you? No. Is it comparable to other tools such as a shovel? No, again. The question I ask myself, is 'who owns the algorithm and its parameters?'. Do you? Or do you only have the impression of that? If you are only 'leasing' the tools as you continue to use them, you are providing corporations the opportunity to learn all about everyone at scale. This confers huge advantages to whoever owns that data, they measure, store and analyse everything they can. But don't share it. There are many examples of this, but how about that amazon doesn't even release data on which books sell best? It simply provides a best seller list. With that level of knowledge, much of which can be automated, and which you do not have access to, you have a massively asymmetric balance of power. I don't see how you shake off that yoke. Like I say, I would prefer to move away from the archaic social and political order. But stepping into a highly monitored and supervised cage, no matter how gilded it is, isn't the answer for me!
zokier 6y ago
There is not really meaningful difference between service fully hosted on AWS (or GCP/Azure) vs service hosted otherwise on AWS and putting Cloudflare in front of it. That shows how meaningless idea it is to try to block AWS based services as an end-user. On a technical level you can not know what the supply chain of a service is like. If you are concerned about supply chains, then Microsoft owning GitHub, which almost everyone uses more or less directly, probably should pop up high in the list of things. But for an end-user I'd again question if that is a meaningful concern.
peterwwillis 6y ago
The author's major complaint is that they can't have their cake and eat it too. You can easily live without tech giants! Stop using a smart phone, use a Linux PC/Laptop, pay for your few online services like e-mail, stop using the internet for shopping and everything else. You know, the way the entire world worked 15 years ago. > Yes, there are alternatives for products and services offered by the tech giants, but they are harder to find and to use. If life is somewhat difficult without giant tech corporations, this is inherently unacceptable? No - this is called living in the real world. You do very often have to choose between an immoral yet easy life, and a moral yet difficult life. This has been our constant choice for literally millennia. Every society has had to grapple with it. Entire religions are based on it. It is the completely unavoidable part of life that everyone is forced to participate in. > If I were still blocking the tech giants today, I wouldn’t have been able to watch this week’s antitrust hearing online. C-SPAN streamed it live via YouTube, which Google owns. So get a TV! I don't know if you know this, but C-SPAN is a TV channel! You can watch it without the internet! You can even make comments on it without the internet by calling a live show and speaking your mind! Amazing! (But, probably don't do this, as the average caller seems to have about the same political insight as the average YouTube commenter) This whole premise - that life is impossible without tech giants - concedes that life is impossible without the internet. I assure you that it is not. It's up to you to decide whether that convenience and lack of expense is preferable to the alternative, which is doing things "old school".
- decasteve 6y ago
  > use a Linux PC/Laptop When you install Linux, where is the OS downloaded from? Where do the software packages and updates reside? What about the source code? If you blocked Microsoft (Azure + github), Google, Amazon (AWS), and Akamai, I'd be surprised if you could run any mainstream flavour of Linux. Some *BSDs might work. I minimize my interaction with the big computing-advertising-consumer entities but I know they're still there behind the scenes. It's all part of the same cesspool.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
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ragona 6y ago
Disclaimer: I worked at AWS from 2012-2020. I am not a current employee. > I came to think of Amazon and Google as the providers of the very infrastructure of the internet, so embedded in the architecture of the digital world that even their competitors had to rely on their services. This is the right take. I disagree with the disappointment around this article. It’s about the fact that tech giants are running the infrastructure of the internet. Its the federal highway program of the 21st century. It’s a critical piece of public infrastructure. I can’t even begin to wrap my head around the death and mayhem that would ensue if AWS and Google simply packed up and turned off the data centers. When we consider the future and safety of our country we should keep these things in mind. Imagine an unusually well-attended AWS all-hands was hit by a freak meteor. What do you even do? Take enough engineers off the oncall rotation and things will eventually fall over. I think the government would actually need to take emergency action at a level we don’t understand to prevent the collapse of our financial system beyond god knows what else. It would be utter mayhem. Globally. That said, no one takes this more seriously than AWS. I really believe this. I sat in meetings regarding how to recover if we lost entire states, like literally what if we lose the Virginia to a catastrophe. (I worked on the Key Management Service or KMS which underlies much of the rest of the infrastructure.) But it is good and correct that our representatives are questioning our tech giants about their role in the future of our civilization. They’re playing perhaps the most critical role, and that should scare you. I actually believe in the benevolence of AWS; I spent nearly a decade there. Do you?
- mbostleman 6y ago
  Sure, I'll believe it. I've not heard enough to the contrary to not believe it, and you make a good recommendation. But benevolence is transient and brittle. I don't want to depend on it.
  - ragona 6y ago
    > But benevolence is transient and brittle. I don't want to depend on it. Yup, exactly.
- ls612 6y ago
  That makes me wonder, how did AWS or other big cloud providers handle the stay at home orders in March? Did they just keep having people go in?
yters 6y ago
I tried living without the major food producers and I starved to death because I can't farm.
granzymes 6y ago
This is like complaining that you can’t escape Intel, AMD, and Arm because all of the businesses you frequent use commodity hardware. The horror!
- fsflover 6y ago
  Well, it is a horror considering all that Intel ME staff. https://libreboot.org/faq.html#intel https://libreboot.org/faq.html#intel
switch11 6y ago
This is a stupid article 1) Many people don't use the tech giants and get by just fine 2) Actual tough stuff is getting by without the currently dominant Operating Systems for desktop and mobile and Office Software THAT takes us some work Also the AWS employee talking about 'Amazon and Google as the providers of the very infrastructure of the world' is absolutely ridiculous There are a ton of cloud providers and in many countries Google and Amazon don't even have much presence
awinter-py 6y ago
the nokia 3310 they got runs YunOS, a droid fork made by Alibaba, which is 1000% a tech giant
rwnspace 6y ago
The amount of doublethink on display here is incredible. It IS impossible to both live without these services and a be a relatively normal member of society. I've tried everything in this article, and it isn't sustainable. Veganism is also something I've tried, and it's an apt metaphor; I think most thinking persons are educated enough to agree that the global meat industry could be improved by both regulation and consumer behaviour. That everyone could do with feeling good about having a little less meat, don't feel bad about having a bit. With Veganism and other stances of denial, it generates so much extra complexity and negative social pressure that sustaining them requires finding a niche social group to help you feel ok about it, and teach you strategies to help maintain it. But if the very thing you are trying to quit encompasses the social medium, you're completely on your own. Deleting my Facebook was social suicide, no joke. Most of my friends are old enough to rely on that platform alone. It was like losing a limb or two, and suddenly realising all your friends ever do is climb.
- fizwhiz 6y ago
  > It was like losing a limb or two, and suddenly realising all your friends ever do is climb. While I don't entirely agree with your comment (and certainly didn't downvote it), I did enjoy the double(?) metaphor here.
- mping 6y ago
  Most vegans I know see it as the right way to be in the world, not something that brings complexity or social pressure, so it ends up being no hassle at all.
gitowiec 6y ago
This is weird "When I blocked Google, the entire internet slowed down for me, because almost every site I visited was using Google to supply its fonts, run its ads, track its users, or determine if its users were humans or bots." I think it should be opposite - all websites should speed up. Why am I wrong?
- doublerabbit 6y ago
  Bad design and code.
ulkram 6y ago
Why do these articles always leave out ISPs and cellular providers when talking about Tech Giants? Their monopoly is even stronger.
birdyrooster 6y ago
And the asshole who truly started the browser bar adware craze is leading one of those tech giants.
rafaelvasco 6y ago
Yeah. It's funny to think about it. From one side, these companies, we can't deny, provide amazing services to us, and make our lives easier. On the other hand, they collect an absurd amount of data about everything we do on the internet. But that's not the bigger problem, the bigger problem is that they directly or indirectly enforce the production of things that are really bad for us like buying things we don't need, eating things that are bad for us, consuming media that is harmful for us etc. That is the bigger threat. Making money on things without real value and that don't bring any real positive effect to anyone.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
wdr1 6y ago
"Impossible" is a strange way to say you're unwilling to forge convenience and live the life we all had in the 90s.

189 points by ForHackernews 6y ago

It makes sense she failed. I kinda envisioned going digitally vegan about a year ago, and then really thought about it -- figured out that it's totally impossible.

ewzimm 6y ago

This almost reads like a parody to me. The author was introduced to alternatives for just about everything they used the tech giant services for, and therefore, living without their services was impossible. The issue that alternatives are harder to find and use is something that should be solved. Instead of pursuing policies like nationalizing Google into a public service, what if various public agencies tried to operate with free software internally and then exposed their tools to the world with things like public Searx and Peertube instances?

zerotolerance 6y ago
The point was even as far as she went to eliminate her direct interaction those services were transitive dependencies in almost every consumer interaction.
- ewzimm 6y ago
  Wouldn't this be something like a "Kevin Bacon" game of tech giants? Anyone is only a certain number of degrees of separation away from any company in an interconnected world. I could find a very obscure company and show that if both of us participate in a global economy, there are transitive relationships between us. So I could choose not to use Amazon, but if I do business with only a few others, some of those people will do business with Amazon. The same goes for the Chinese Communist Party. Would that mean it's impossible for me to live without the CCP? There's a sense in which I could say that's true, but that wouldn't necessarily mean I shouldn't look for alternatives for who I depend on directly.

zackkitzmiller 6y ago

Unless you move to a farm and grow everything yourself, I think yes. It would literally be impossible to live with out them. I'm sure the POS at your corner store somehow interacts with AWS or GCP, but I'm not sure that should 'count.' As well as not visiting any site that is hosted on a cloud provider. You could almost certainly live a life with significantly reduced quality by living without the tech giants directly, but to not visit websites that are hosted on AWS, and still shop at a local shop that uses Square or other payment provider that's hosted in the cloud seems disingenuous to me.

WhyKill 6y ago
HA! Try growing or raising animals and not using Amazon...
- dylan604 6y ago
  How in the world did farmers and ranchers do it before July 5, 1994? How did humanity survive?
  - 52-6F-62 6y ago
    A lot of farmers still do. Especially older ones. I don’t know about the USA but up here many older farmers operated entirely on in person deals with other farmers, farmers markets, and local grocers. (Depending on how abstracted you want to get, but yes the farmer probably filled up their pickup for the morning delivery at a gas station that has a POS that connects to some service that interacts with AWS somewhere a long the line. Though the farmers I’d met likely used cash)
    - dylan604 6y ago
      I'm really not sure where the GP was trying to take the sustaining w/o Amazon would be impossible. It's not like farmers are buying there tonnage of seeds from Amazon. They are not buying new calves at Amazon. They don't buy tractors from Amazon. Maybe they buy new items for the kitchen/office, but that's not a large line item on the farm.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

motohagiography 6y ago

Also described by a perennially appearing post about Ivan Illich's concept: https://wikitia.com/wiki/Radical_Monopoly https://wikitia.com/wiki/Radical_Monopoly

sukilot 6y ago
Strange that the canonical example -- an addictive drug, isn't mentioned there.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  Drugs don't addict people, poverty does. (Sorta)
  - veridies 6y ago
    That's part of the story, but I know a LOT of middle and upper class addicts.
  - wmeredith 6y ago
    Active ingredient drugs most certainly addict people. Physical addiction is a physical state. So much so that if the drug is removed too quickly the withdraw can kill you in some cases (see Heroin).
    - Ericson2314 6y ago
      It is my understanding that physical addiction and withdrawal are both physical states, but the former depends on more variables.
  - clairity 6y ago
    no, a lack of meaning, purpose, confidence and/or esteem perhaps, but lack of money has little role in addiction.
  - nonamenoslogan 6y ago
    Bullshit. I've got plenty of money and a pill-addicted wife-- trust me those f'ing things cost upwards of $200 a week during some stretches. Reason for taking them has nothing to do with how much we can afford and everything to do with feeling "pain-free."

luckylion 6y ago

Meh, "hosted on AWS = I can't avoid Amazon" isn't a reasonable question, it's like "My dentist used Amazon to buy his pants = I can't Avoid Amazon". You aren't doing business with Amazon by visiting a site hosted on AWS, the site owner is, and you're doing business with them. If you don't want AWS to see your IP for some "no direct touching" reason, get a VPN. Six Degrees Of Separation is a fun game, but I don't think it's useful for this kind of debate.

zeepzeep 6y ago
> You aren't doing business with Amazon by visiting a site hosted on AWS But think the other way, if you don't support them, you should avoid sites using them _and communicate so_. "No sorry, I won't, that's an amazon IP."
onion2k 6y ago
When you load a webpage or an app that's hosted on AWS you give Amazon a lot of information about your browser, location, etc. They could very easily aggregate all of the AWS services you load things from to build a very detailed profile about you. If Amazon were being nefarious they could inspect the data in the packets you send across their network. Using a site that's hosted on AWS === doing business with Amazon. It's just a very one-sided relationship where they get a ton of useful data and you get to load a JS app.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
  Imma need a citation for that. Yes, Amazon could do that, but the cloud providers are usually very clear about drawing a clear dividing line between their hosting businesses and consumer businesses, because enterprise customers are extremely sensitive to the slightest suggestion of their data being mined.
  - heipei 6y ago
    What about this, a mere three months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22962145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22962145

DJHenk 6y ago

This is an unproductive interpretation of "living without tech giants". Yes, if you decide to ban all major cloud providers from your live, including everything they host, you are going to have a hard time. But it is foolish to give up that easily. Let's say I want to ban Google from my live and I ditch my GMail account. Thinking along the lines of this author I would not be done. Actually I would not be able to have an email account at all anymore, because there are other people who are still on GMail and they might mail me and then I would be "infected." And therefore I would better just keep my GMail. This is nonsense, of course. You're better of without GMail and Google and the others. You can't get all there in one day, but it is certainly worth it to take as much steps as you can.

dharmon 6y ago
I agree that it is still worthwhile to do what you can. If large numbers of people stopped using just Google search and gmail, Google would most definitely notice and feel it hard. Or to phrase it differently, the choices of individual users absolutely can still decide the fate of these companies. This sounds obvious, but is not always true (it would be much harder for individual preferences to dethrone Microsoft, for example).
- 3764738236 6y ago
  The choices of individual users are already affecting the fate of these companies. Most people just prefer life with these companies and their products rather than life without.
pjc50 6y ago
Sure - but the "just live without them" argument is the main one used against having public policy about them! If they really are inescapable, they should not escape public scrutiny.
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  > If they really are inescapable I think you missed the point of the comment you replied to. It's not that "just live without them" is impossible under a reasonable definition, it's that the author is using an unreasonable definition.

kaydub 6y ago

> Cutting Amazon from my life meant losing access to any site hosted by Amazon Web Services, the internet’s largest cloud provider. Stopped reading here. Thought this was going to be an experiment on privacy. Like, blocking trackers and not using the giant providers SaaS offerings.

WealthVsSurvive 6y ago
Remind me of the US law that stops AWS from copying the business models of their customers? They didn't seem to have much difficulty getting around copying physical products from their seller customers.
9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
It's not, but perhaps it makes an even deeper point: that it is genuinely impossible to use the Internet without Amazon, Google and Microsoft, because so much of the web relies on the three giants, and every click you make adds a fraction of a cent to their hosting revenues. That said, I do agree that madness lies going too down the supply chain. Is using any device with a lithium-ion battery inherently immoral because they contain some cobalt that may have been mined in exploitative conditions in the Congo? Where do you draw the line?
jrumbut 6y ago
Amazon and Google can't track who connects to their cloud servers? I find that hard to believe. That's what unique about these companies. When AT&T owned telecommunications infrastructure it wasn't also a major retailer, a movie studio, a logistics company, etc.

ibn_khaldun 6y ago

Only skimmed through this but I thought that this article sounded familiar...down to the tidbit about missing a friends birth on Facebook and using a custom VPN to block the services....Published by Gizmodo, Jan. 2019 [0] [0]: https://gizmodo.com/life-without-the-tech-giants-1830258056 https://gizmodo.com/life-without-the-tech-giants-1830258056

xdavidliu 6y ago
to save other readers a click, this is the same author as the NYTimes article in the OP, so this is that author recycling their own content, not plagiarism from someone else
- wmeredith 6y ago
  I'm actually OK with this, particularly in the area of tech reporting. The state of the art advances quickly and it's likely worth revisiting assumptions, options, and outcomes with updated inputs. *I haven't read both articles, so there may actually be no updates.
  - brian_herman__ 6y ago
    I couldnt even read the article without logging into google, facebook, or apple. I could read the gizmodo one though. I guess that's an ironic update?
glxxyz 6y ago
Without Google she had no way to search and see if she'd already published it somewhere.
jrumbut 6y ago
Also mentioned in the article, which does in fact reflect on the same experience.

feralimal 6y ago

After so many years (perhaps starting with the East India Company), the result is that these mega-corporations have finally reached a point where they have had both the power and control of the reins for so long, that life as we know it is not possible without them. We will demand that our ineffective government step aside and that our corporations step up - we will choose to have them technocratically manage us. And the boot up of governance 2.0 will be complete. My own PoV, is that I wanted governance 1.0 rolled back!

eternalban 6y ago
I am not sure about life being impossible for a humanity that has managed to shake off the yoke of these cartels. The technology and know how are neutral. The issue is how technology is (mis)used, and what role does the desire to maintain archaic social and political order (of the stake-holders of East India Companies of the world) plays in the dystopian turn of the “liberating technology” of the internet.
- feralimal 6y ago
  Well, you are clearly an optimist, which I genuinely appreciate! I agree, technology is neutral in itself, its just a tool. But, who runs all of it? Is it you? No. Is it comparable to other tools such as a shovel? No, again. The question I ask myself, is 'who owns the algorithm and its parameters?'. Do you? Or do you only have the impression of that? If you are only 'leasing' the tools as you continue to use them, you are providing corporations the opportunity to learn all about everyone at scale. This confers huge advantages to whoever owns that data, they measure, store and analyse everything they can. But don't share it. There are many examples of this, but how about that amazon doesn't even release data on which books sell best? It simply provides a best seller list. With that level of knowledge, much of which can be automated, and which you do not have access to, you have a massively asymmetric balance of power. I don't see how you shake off that yoke. Like I say, I would prefer to move away from the archaic social and political order. But stepping into a highly monitored and supervised cage, no matter how gilded it is, isn't the answer for me!

zokier 6y ago

There is not really meaningful difference between service fully hosted on AWS (or GCP/Azure) vs service hosted otherwise on AWS and putting Cloudflare in front of it. That shows how meaningless idea it is to try to block AWS based services as an end-user. On a technical level you can not know what the supply chain of a service is like. If you are concerned about supply chains, then Microsoft owning GitHub, which almost everyone uses more or less directly, probably should pop up high in the list of things. But for an end-user I'd again question if that is a meaningful concern.

peterwwillis 6y ago

The author's major complaint is that they can't have their cake and eat it too. You can easily live without tech giants! Stop using a smart phone, use a Linux PC/Laptop, pay for your few online services like e-mail, stop using the internet for shopping and everything else. You know, the way the entire world worked 15 years ago. > Yes, there are alternatives for products and services offered by the tech giants, but they are harder to find and to use. If life is somewhat difficult without giant tech corporations, this is inherently unacceptable? No - this is called living in the real world. You do very often have to choose between an immoral yet easy life, and a moral yet difficult life. This has been our constant choice for literally millennia. Every society has had to grapple with it. Entire religions are based on it. It is the completely unavoidable part of life that everyone is forced to participate in. > If I were still blocking the tech giants today, I wouldn’t have been able to watch this week’s antitrust hearing online. C-SPAN streamed it live via YouTube, which Google owns. So get a TV! I don't know if you know this, but C-SPAN is a TV channel! You can watch it without the internet! You can even make comments on it without the internet by calling a live show and speaking your mind! Amazing! (But, probably don't do this, as the average caller seems to have about the same political insight as the average YouTube commenter) This whole premise - that life is impossible without tech giants - concedes that life is impossible without the internet. I assure you that it is not. It's up to you to decide whether that convenience and lack of expense is preferable to the alternative, which is doing things "old school".

decasteve 6y ago
> use a Linux PC/Laptop When you install Linux, where is the OS downloaded from? Where do the software packages and updates reside? What about the source code? If you blocked Microsoft (Azure + github), Google, Amazon (AWS), and Akamai, I'd be surprised if you could run any mainstream flavour of Linux. Some *BSDs might work. I minimize my interaction with the big computing-advertising-consumer entities but I know they're still there behind the scenes. It's all part of the same cesspool.
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ragona 6y ago

Disclaimer: I worked at AWS from 2012-2020. I am not a current employee. > I came to think of Amazon and Google as the providers of the very infrastructure of the internet, so embedded in the architecture of the digital world that even their competitors had to rely on their services. This is the right take. I disagree with the disappointment around this article. It’s about the fact that tech giants are running the infrastructure of the internet. Its the federal highway program of the 21st century. It’s a critical piece of public infrastructure. I can’t even begin to wrap my head around the death and mayhem that would ensue if AWS and Google simply packed up and turned off the data centers. When we consider the future and safety of our country we should keep these things in mind. Imagine an unusually well-attended AWS all-hands was hit by a freak meteor. What do you even do? Take enough engineers off the oncall rotation and things will eventually fall over. I think the government would actually need to take emergency action at a level we don’t understand to prevent the collapse of our financial system beyond god knows what else. It would be utter mayhem. Globally. That said, no one takes this more seriously than AWS. I really believe this. I sat in meetings regarding how to recover if we lost entire states, like literally what if we lose the Virginia to a catastrophe. (I worked on the Key Management Service or KMS which underlies much of the rest of the infrastructure.) But it is good and correct that our representatives are questioning our tech giants about their role in the future of our civilization. They’re playing perhaps the most critical role, and that should scare you. I actually believe in the benevolence of AWS; I spent nearly a decade there. Do you?

mbostleman 6y ago
Sure, I'll believe it. I've not heard enough to the contrary to not believe it, and you make a good recommendation. But benevolence is transient and brittle. I don't want to depend on it.
- ragona 6y ago
  > But benevolence is transient and brittle. I don't want to depend on it. Yup, exactly.
ls612 6y ago
That makes me wonder, how did AWS or other big cloud providers handle the stay at home orders in March? Did they just keep having people go in?

yters 6y ago

I tried living without the major food producers and I starved to death because I can't farm.

granzymes 6y ago

This is like complaining that you can’t escape Intel, AMD, and Arm because all of the businesses you frequent use commodity hardware. The horror!

fsflover 6y ago
Well, it is a horror considering all that Intel ME staff. https://libreboot.org/faq.html#intel https://libreboot.org/faq.html#intel

switch11 6y ago

This is a stupid article 1) Many people don't use the tech giants and get by just fine 2) Actual tough stuff is getting by without the currently dominant Operating Systems for desktop and mobile and Office Software THAT takes us some work Also the AWS employee talking about 'Amazon and Google as the providers of the very infrastructure of the world' is absolutely ridiculous There are a ton of cloud providers and in many countries Google and Amazon don't even have much presence

awinter-py 6y ago

the nokia 3310 they got runs YunOS, a droid fork made by Alibaba, which is 1000% a tech giant

rwnspace 6y ago

The amount of doublethink on display here is incredible. It IS impossible to both live without these services and a be a relatively normal member of society. I've tried everything in this article, and it isn't sustainable. Veganism is also something I've tried, and it's an apt metaphor; I think most thinking persons are educated enough to agree that the global meat industry could be improved by both regulation and consumer behaviour. That everyone could do with feeling good about having a little less meat, don't feel bad about having a bit. With Veganism and other stances of denial, it generates so much extra complexity and negative social pressure that sustaining them requires finding a niche social group to help you feel ok about it, and teach you strategies to help maintain it. But if the very thing you are trying to quit encompasses the social medium, you're completely on your own. Deleting my Facebook was social suicide, no joke. Most of my friends are old enough to rely on that platform alone. It was like losing a limb or two, and suddenly realising all your friends ever do is climb.

fizwhiz 6y ago
> It was like losing a limb or two, and suddenly realising all your friends ever do is climb. While I don't entirely agree with your comment (and certainly didn't downvote it), I did enjoy the double(?) metaphor here.
mping 6y ago
Most vegans I know see it as the right way to be in the world, not something that brings complexity or social pressure, so it ends up being no hassle at all.

gitowiec 6y ago

This is weird "When I blocked Google, the entire internet slowed down for me, because almost every site I visited was using Google to supply its fonts, run its ads, track its users, or determine if its users were humans or bots." I think it should be opposite - all websites should speed up. Why am I wrong?

doublerabbit 6y ago
Bad design and code.

ulkram 6y ago

Why do these articles always leave out ISPs and cellular providers when talking about Tech Giants? Their monopoly is even stronger.

birdyrooster 6y ago

And the asshole who truly started the browser bar adware craze is leading one of those tech giants.

rafaelvasco 6y ago

Yeah. It's funny to think about it. From one side, these companies, we can't deny, provide amazing services to us, and make our lives easier. On the other hand, they collect an absurd amount of data about everything we do on the internet. But that's not the bigger problem, the bigger problem is that they directly or indirectly enforce the production of things that are really bad for us like buying things we don't need, eating things that are bad for us, consuming media that is harmful for us etc. That is the bigger threat. Making money on things without real value and that don't bring any real positive effect to anyone.

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wdr1 6y ago

"Impossible" is a strange way to say you're unwilling to forge convenience and live the life we all had in the 90s.