This is my rebuttal to a response of my response to a response about a post (Andreas, look what you’ve started!).
One thing that the internet never fails to remind me of is that I tend to see the world in broad brush strokes whereas many see it in intricate detail and hold their view as unassailable.
I say “there is no bad Porsche 911 model” meaning that even a bad one is still a freakin 911, and the comments light up with “well, actually the early built 1977 models were awful”, and I roll my eyes whilst side-eyeing our 100k miles old Dacia Sandero that sits outside our house. It’s all relative.
However that type of thinking always discombobulates me. I know it happens and largely tend to shrug it off, but I can’t help wondering why some people are happy feeling so definite about something, so arrogant?
And then —something I’m in the midst of writing about— I remember I no longer care to argue with people on the internet.
However, this is not an argument, this is just my response which I’m labelling as a rebuttal for grandiose reasons that escape me.
I’d suggest you go and read that post because if you don’t the next few paragraphs will make no sense at all.
Suffice to say that on my first reading of it I was taken aback. So I let it sit for a while and went back to read it last night, and again this morning.
With all that in mind —blimey I do prattle on sometimes— here is my rebuttal which I hope acknowledges some of the points made whilst restating my viewpoint in, possibly, a different way in the hope that it brings clarity but with the understanding that it likely won’t but after this I’m done with this topic and we move on because differing viewpoints are ok, and all is fair in love and opinions.
OK OK, enough prattling.
George, George, George… I think we’re actually closer in our conclusions than your response suggests. I don’t disagree that Big Tech has accumulated enormous power, that some of its behaviour deserves serious scrutiny, or that alternatives matter. Where I disagree is what you think follows from that.
Calling the relationship “abusive” and describing people who continue to use these products as being “in denial” assumes the conclusion you’re trying to prove. People can understand the problems perfectly well and still have limited practical alternatives. I don’t think that’s denial, I think it’s recognising the reality of the ecosystems.
And that’s really the point of my original post. “Vote with your wallet” sounds empowering, but it dramatically overstates the power of an individual consumer when the alternatives are often incomplete, incompatible or socially impractical. Linux is actually a good example, decades of people choosing it haven’t displaced Windows on the desktop, even though Linux has become enormously important elsewhere.
That doesn’t mean individual choices are pointless. They can create pressure, support alternatives and contribute to change. But they are only one part of the answer.
A more productive route forward, to me, is about reducing the power Big Tech has over our choices rather than simply telling individuals to escape it.
How do we move forward? I think there are a few different things to consider here too.
First, individual choice still matters. I think advocating for people to use alternatives where they are genuinely viable is a good thing. We should support open-source projects and help people avoid products or services that they disagree with. Knowledge of the alternatives, and how to deploy them, is an issue though.
Secondly, we shouldn’t pretend individual choice is sufficient. When a handful of companies control so much of the infrastructure, platforms, devices and communications we rely on, “just leave” isn’t a meaningful systemic solution. “Just leave” and go where? In my comment on your site I hinted at this but I think the majority of people who use one of the big platforms, would struggle to do that themselves. Remember, a lot of people think Facebook IS the internet.
Third, we need to change the incentives. Regulation, competition law, interoperability, data portability and open standards can do far more to constrain companies with this level of market power than any individual consumer can.
Fourth, we should make switching easier. This goes hand in hand with my first two points and that, to me, is the really important bit. The answer isn’t necessarily persuading everyone to abandon Apple, Google, Microsoft or Meta. It is making it possible to leave without losing your data, purchases, social connections, hardware investment or ability to communicate with everyone else.
And finally, I think we should be careful about conflating technology with the companies that control it. A piece of technology can be genuinely transformative while the company behind it behaves badly. We don’t have to reject the technology in order to challenge the business model. Can you imagine the good Google could do with all that data it has? Amazon?
So I agree that we need to recognise the problem, that we should challenge the companies, that we should start to use and support better alternatives and make different choices where we can.
But let’s not turn that into a binary choice between “escape” and “denial”.
I do thank you for the response post though, you’ve definitely helped me realise that the path of my thinking was veering slightly away from what I was really trying to address.
I think technology is wonderful, and that it’s an easy, and cheap, shot to say it sucks. But what I really wonder is why the barriers to leaving it are so high for so many people.
What are your thoughts?