> I have been off social media for years now and my life and health and relationships and career and … have improved so much I cannot put it in words.
It sounds like you personally had a problem. Congratulations I suppose on solving it. However, I have no such issues. My life, health and relationships are all already where I want them to be, and are not impacted by occasional interaction with others through technology as luckily, I have had no such struggles with self control or moderation.
My relationships would be impacted on the other hand if I was to throw a big toddler tantrum about using whatsapp for two weeks whilst i'm overseas with my employer and twenty other people. So i'm probably not going to do that.
There's social media use and there's social media use. Hacker News, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, EMail, and my phone's SMS systems all serve dramatically different purposes, and all of them are a varied mix of pros and cons and risks.
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[1] Any Arcanist worth his salt knows that copper has no name, and thus cannot be turned against you.
I do, however, believe that you aren't engaging with what I'm saying, or recognizing some very obvious logical holes in your arguments. Your argument seems to be one of dogma, not one of reason.
Sure, I can also avoid putting chemicals on my body by washing my hair with apple cider vinegar and baking soda, and I can also churn my own butter by hand…
There are a lot more of them, and they are kind of integral to its meaning.
jokes aside, I did read your entire post and I don’t disagree with a single word you wrote. I still don’t understand why anyone in their right mind would install a Meta-owned application on their PHONE. Lots of people overall and number on this thread go with “hey, the GOVERNMENT is already spying on you so why don’t I also let one of the most evil corporations in the history of mankind access to all my everything too… I don’t expect privacy in general, it is 2025 after all and we are talking on HN but these silly “plate reader excuses” are really too much… like saying “well the government can obviously break into my home whenever they want (in 2025 without a warrant as well) so why don’t I leave the door wide open, if government can enter why would I care if someone else does :)
People are not accepting that possibility, they are assuming it will not happen to them and that they are not a target of interest.
Change that assumption and attitudes toward privacy also change.
The alternatives are also probably up to the same sketchy shit, so your choices are to be a hermit, or accept that your services will spy on you.
If you want to participate in society, you have to either trust a very large list of untrustworthy people... Or acknowledge that they are untrustworthy, and mitigate accordingly. Part of that mitigation is accepting the possibility that if the Mossad want to murder you by blowing up your toaster, nobody's going to stop them.