4 ms·

>"do a thorough review and restore all the mechanisms that made the use of smartphones and internet optional". we should probably workshop ideas that are withi

>"do a thorough review and restore all the mechanisms that made the use of smartphones and internet optional". we should probably workshop ideas that are within reality. downvoters are welcome to tell me how they would approach a worlwide review of everything that requires internet and un-internet it. i will wait. some primer questions to get your brain turning: who organizes and conducts the review? who pays for the review? who pays for the implementations? whats the messaging and how do you convince people to go along with rethinking/re-implementing their entire already-working infrastructure that they have potentially spent millions to billions of dollars on? do you just dissolve all of the internet-only services, and tell the founders to suck it? who enforces it and how?

lejalv 8mo ago
"There is no alternative" is a self-fulfilling prophecy
- john_strinlai 8mo ago
  i am not saying "there is no alternative". i am saying that you cant do a worldwide systematic review of everything that relies on the internet, and un-internet it. if you have a realistic approach to doing so, i will eat my shoe.
  - grishka 8mo ago
    If we, the tech-savvy people, start pushing for it, it may have a chance of succeeding. On the other hand, if we take your defeatist approach, it's an absolute certainty that nothing will change.
    - john_strinlai 8mo ago
      just because i disagree with your idea does not mean i am taking a "defeatist approach". your idea is not the One Good Idea that everyone must subscribe to or else they must shrug and give up. but, lets hear it. what specifically is involved in "pushing for it"?
      - grishka 8mo ago
        For example, me posting this comment is pushing for it a tiny bit. Some organization like the EFF could campaign for something like this. Making algorithmic social media unappealing could help too.
        deleted 8mo ago
        [deleted]
        deleted 8mo ago
        [deleted]
- Klonoar 8mo ago
  It's not "there is no alternative", it's "you're not putting that tiger back in the cage no matter how much you bitch about it".
EvanAnderson 8mo ago
Consumer protection legislation would be a way to solve this: If a business has more than X employees / does more than X amount of business per year / has more than X physical locations (pick one or more, make up some new criteria, tune to suit the needs of society) it must offer the same capabilities to interact with the business to those without smart phones as those with. Small businesses wouldn't be radically impacted because they generally aren't "Internet only" anyway. The large business that are impacted have plenty of resources to handle compliance. If anything I'd argue it levels the playing field to an extent.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- john_strinlai 8mo ago
  some immediate thoughts that pop in my head are: 1) if you make it only applicable to smart phones, i just stop offering an uber smartphone app and now uber is website-only. if you apply it to "internet", as the original poster did, then: 2) companies like uber would be forced to shut down. you can say "cool, if they cant do it, their problem", which is fine, but a dozen of major issues pop up if something like 1/4 of the businesses currently propping up the stock market have to close doors or otherwise invest billions of dollars in phone centers or whatever they need. it also raises questions about all sorts of businesses. another off the top of my head example: should 1password setup a call center where i can tell the operator what my new hackernews password is? is 1password exempt even if they have hundreds of employees and do millions per year? if yes, we have to come up with a bunch of murky criteria and definitions of what companies are exempt (across every industry, no less). which will, of course, cost a lot of time and money, just to surely be gamed. can we convince tax payers to foot that bill? (this is also ignoring the approximately 0% chance that some sort of regulation of this sort gets pushed into law, against all of the extremely powerful tech lobbies. we dont even have ubiquitous right-to-repair!)
  - EvanAnderson 8mo ago
    I'll fully admit that I'm "vibe commenting" here out of frustration with the direction society is going. There won't ever be any consumer protection legislation like I suggested. I know that. It would make things better, but it'll never happen. Things aren't going to get better for people who don't want to be forced to use new technology. (Eventually it'll be you being forced, too.) I'm arguing, much in the way some techies bemoan removing malware from their parents' computer as an argument for why we shouldn't be allowed to use our mobile computers for what we want, for businesses to be required to offer ways of interacting to people who don't want to own smartphones. My argument isn't in the interests of powerful lobbies. My wife and I have been helping her elderly aunt deal with a bank recently. I was shocked at the assumption her aunt would be able to receive SMS, use a smartphone with a camera to do "identity verification", etc. This lady has a flip phone, a land line, and no personal computer. Sure-- she could meet with someone at a branch to help her. Their first available meeting was a month away. It's not going to get fixed. Nobody with the power to do anything about it cares.

lejalv 8mo ago

"There is no alternative" is a self-fulfilling prophecy

john_strinlai 8mo ago
i am not saying "there is no alternative". i am saying that you cant do a worldwide systematic review of everything that relies on the internet, and un-internet it. if you have a realistic approach to doing so, i will eat my shoe.
- grishka 8mo ago
  If we, the tech-savvy people, start pushing for it, it may have a chance of succeeding. On the other hand, if we take your defeatist approach, it's an absolute certainty that nothing will change.
  - john_strinlai 8mo ago
    just because i disagree with your idea does not mean i am taking a "defeatist approach". your idea is not the One Good Idea that everyone must subscribe to or else they must shrug and give up. but, lets hear it. what specifically is involved in "pushing for it"?
    - grishka 8mo ago
      For example, me posting this comment is pushing for it a tiny bit. Some organization like the EFF could campaign for something like this. Making algorithmic social media unappealing could help too.
      - deleted 8mo ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 8mo ago
        [deleted]
Klonoar 8mo ago
It's not "there is no alternative", it's "you're not putting that tiger back in the cage no matter how much you bitch about it".

EvanAnderson 8mo ago

Consumer protection legislation would be a way to solve this: If a business has more than X employees / does more than X amount of business per year / has more than X physical locations (pick one or more, make up some new criteria, tune to suit the needs of society) it must offer the same capabilities to interact with the business to those without smart phones as those with. Small businesses wouldn't be radically impacted because they generally aren't "Internet only" anyway. The large business that are impacted have plenty of resources to handle compliance. If anything I'd argue it levels the playing field to an extent.

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
john_strinlai 8mo ago
some immediate thoughts that pop in my head are: 1) if you make it only applicable to smart phones, i just stop offering an uber smartphone app and now uber is website-only. if you apply it to "internet", as the original poster did, then: 2) companies like uber would be forced to shut down. you can say "cool, if they cant do it, their problem", which is fine, but a dozen of major issues pop up if something like 1/4 of the businesses currently propping up the stock market have to close doors or otherwise invest billions of dollars in phone centers or whatever they need. it also raises questions about all sorts of businesses. another off the top of my head example: should 1password setup a call center where i can tell the operator what my new hackernews password is? is 1password exempt even if they have hundreds of employees and do millions per year? if yes, we have to come up with a bunch of murky criteria and definitions of what companies are exempt (across every industry, no less). which will, of course, cost a lot of time and money, just to surely be gamed. can we convince tax payers to foot that bill? (this is also ignoring the approximately 0% chance that some sort of regulation of this sort gets pushed into law, against all of the extremely powerful tech lobbies. we dont even have ubiquitous right-to-repair!)
- EvanAnderson 8mo ago
  I'll fully admit that I'm "vibe commenting" here out of frustration with the direction society is going. There won't ever be any consumer protection legislation like I suggested. I know that. It would make things better, but it'll never happen. Things aren't going to get better for people who don't want to be forced to use new technology. (Eventually it'll be you being forced, too.) I'm arguing, much in the way some techies bemoan removing malware from their parents' computer as an argument for why we shouldn't be allowed to use our mobile computers for what we want, for businesses to be required to offer ways of interacting to people who don't want to own smartphones. My argument isn't in the interests of powerful lobbies. My wife and I have been helping her elderly aunt deal with a bank recently. I was shocked at the assumption her aunt would be able to receive SMS, use a smartphone with a camera to do "identity verification", etc. This lady has a flip phone, a land line, and no personal computer. Sure-- she could meet with someone at a branch to help her. Their first available meeting was a month away. It's not going to get fixed. Nobody with the power to do anything about it cares.