The promise of technology was to expand our horizons. In many ways, it kinda did. We got a lot of awesome shit. But we also got {waves hands vaguely at everything} this dystopia.
I love tech! But I hate techno-surveilance. There are things I don’t do b/c of it. Or things I do less now.
For example. I wanted to volunteer on a trail maintaining crew. But they’re all TF over FB and Tiktok. They put everyone’s photos on there. Vids of ppl working. They coordinate on FB groups.
I give up conveniences like google maps. Esp when those conveniences come with baked in surveilance. My friends mock my paper map. But w/e.
I take less road trips than I want. I hate having all my travel logged by ALPR. Even driving an old ass car without onboard GPS.
Are there things you would do, but you don’t, b/c of techno-dystopia? Or you do them less?
Mostly interacting with other people in-person. I left most corporate social media and lost access to Meta explicitly due to a conflict around my viewpoints on what constitutes hate speech against trans people (hint: saying it’s a sickness that needs curing and that justifies cure by torture, eg. conversion therapy, is hate speech). But I lost access to a really active Buy Nothing group in my neighborhood that’s on Facebook as well as several groups that only post their in-person events on Facebook. Really sucks that Meta locked us out not for violating a rule, and thus with no possible appeal, but assumedly because they were surveiling their platform and excluding people who argued against their stance. Or at least that’s the best guess that those who were blocked have for why.
Also, I have been losing a lot of home automation from Nest devices because Alphabet bought them and has decided to force allowing access to data for “AI” training and “law enforcement”/government surveillance. If I could keep the data local, I would still be able to use the devices with Home Assistant, but they only allow using their servers.