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I agree with everything you said. Only two comments: (1) I only want to emphasize that at every stage, we had choices. Network effects are powerful, perhaps e

I agree with everything you said. Only two comments: (1) I only want to emphasize that at every stage, we had choices. Network effects are powerful, perhaps even irresistible, but still subject to free choice. (2) Spam and blacklists... that's a tougher thing. But there are plenty of options (like fastmail, I think) that never violated anyone's privacy. Most of us still use gmail. I should clarify, because I kinda took the coward's way out with all the "we" stuff: I use Gmail, Facebook, YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, and even use an iPhone and MacBook despite all the limitations and lack of freedoms that come with every single one of them. I choose them freely, which says a lot about how much I think I value freedom versus how much I actually do in practice.

fossuser 5y ago
Even fastmail is still using a centralized service. I use fastmail (with my own domain) and hardest part about the switch from gmail was going through all the crappy website account flows to change email (some of which are impossible). I dropped FB last year after painstakingly deleting every post/like/photo, but I still use twitter (though I do delete old stuff after a retention period around 1yr - this is easy to do for tweets, but hard to do for likes so I stopped liking stuff). I think Amazon is really great and still use them, same for Netflix. YouTube I use because there's no real alternative, but I pay for premium to at least avoid ads (though can't avoid the tracking). Apple hardware is arguably the best available option for aligned incentives/privacy. In theory you could throw ubuntu on a thinkpad (I did this for college years among others like Arch), but the experience is bad and the security is likely worse. I play around with Urbit and it's surprisingly usable - it also feels like old school internet from when I was young. Strangers hanging out on forums or chat and enjoying the shared experience of being online. The nature of people interested in Urbit brings some of that back.

fossuser 5y ago

Even fastmail is still using a centralized service. I use fastmail (with my own domain) and hardest part about the switch from gmail was going through all the crappy website account flows to change email (some of which are impossible). I dropped FB last year after painstakingly deleting every post/like/photo, but I still use twitter (though I do delete old stuff after a retention period around 1yr - this is easy to do for tweets, but hard to do for likes so I stopped liking stuff). I think Amazon is really great and still use them, same for Netflix. YouTube I use because there's no real alternative, but I pay for premium to at least avoid ads (though can't avoid the tracking). Apple hardware is arguably the best available option for aligned incentives/privacy. In theory you could throw ubuntu on a thinkpad (I did this for college years among others like Arch), but the experience is bad and the security is likely worse. I play around with Urbit and it's surprisingly usable - it also feels like old school internet from when I was young. Strangers hanging out on forums or chat and enjoying the shared experience of being online. The nature of people interested in Urbit brings some of that back.