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Last updated 2 days, 20 hours ago

a computer can never be held accountable therefore a computer must never make a management decision

no technology is (un)natural. no technology is inevitable. no implementation is made without a human decision somewhere in the chain.

part one: machine

a list of apps and subscription technology services i am trying to boycott for ethical reasons (various), in no particular order:

i'm deeply inspired by be your own algorithm by pagemelt and the many faces of the indie web.

if you're interested in a long list of whys feel free to contact me but this is mostly a what and a little bit of how post.

part two: breaking

some people say the price you pay for community is inconvenience. some people say solidarity is supposed to be hard. some people say being kind doesn't cost a thing. some people say if you want to have a village you have to be a villager. people say all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons.

i think i have had to get over myself in this process. in a way i see the modern boycott as the boycott as an act of self-purification, the hair shirt of the secular leftist. the montgomery bus boycott aka not a modern, individualised boycott, or in other words an organised, focused, successful boycott, i deeply respect and admire.

i still ping between "is this just a pointless guilt response?" and "is this just solidarity being hard?". honestly i think exploring guilt in this way is worthwhile; what can i give up? what's pointless? what's impactful?

part 3: protocol

the big one i am starting out with is music. i've been off gmail before but fastmail started having flaky delivery both sending and receiving and i got too petrified and went skulking back. i am not ashamed to go one step forward, two steps back on this path at all. it's difficult and in no way incentivised.

bandcamp is way better than i remember, youtube has everything obviously when i just "need" music, and i'm going slowly slowly purchasing and radio listening.

i found the spotify way of consuming music was making me not appreciate and engage with it in the open eyed (and eared) way i really want to. i want to be saturated and i was at best lightly coloured by the music i've been picking up the last few years lol (save for hozier!).

substack i still use but don't have any paid subscriptions any more. uber i use when bolt or free now fail to find rides, but that's part of where my enthusiasm for learning to ride a bike comes from. these ones feel exciting and easy.

harder is google search; yes it sucks but i do a lot of image reverse searching, and have an android phone, so i dunno how much i can reasonably divest from the google ecosystem (same with apple, though i have no subscriptions with them right now).

hardest is instagram; the gay people in my phone aren't going anywhere en masse, and i am not leaving them for other platforms that don't quite fill the same need any time soon.

but it's okay. i am not perfect and neither is the process.

are you choosing to divest yourself from any platforms or tech habits at the minute? what ones? feel free to contact me to discuss.

this piece is part of my attempt at alphabet superset, a “6-month” creative challenge (i passed a year in september 2024 — with a long break! — and the creator of the challenge hasn’t finished yet either). other posts so far: abolition, bump, boost, culture, discussion, english, formulaic, gone, home, immortality, jargon, knowledge, leaving and monotony.

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