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Comment by IlikeKitties | Hacker News Reader

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No I just won't use your crap. The value proposition is already marginal almost all the time, this tips over to "absolutely not, fuck off" territory.

>If you want to write your friends a message

Then I will use email as I do today. It works, it's universal, and it's free of this kind of bullshit (which is why they push everyone to use other things.) I even went on a date last weekend I set up over email (and it's far from the first.)

Again, fuck off.

I am with you all the way. But the amount of people that only use whatsapp for example in my daily life is staggering. I don't think the good guys are gonna win this one in the end.

Sometimes I try to imagine a future societal split akin to the Amish. Not as a religious group, but as a social movement eschewing these overbearing IT products and services. A rejection of this "attention" or "dopamine" exploitation market.

It is hard not to take a cynical view, that such dissenters will be pursued aggressively by a system that demands conformity. I do recognize the quasi-fascist leanings in modern consumer IT products and their backers.

But, even if tolerated by this larger IT-bound society, can this sort of IT abstention be carried on long enough and made feasible for different age groups and personality types? Can it be the basis for a sustainable, multi-generation subculture? Or is it more ephemeral, a phase someone might go through, like retirement to a quiet cottage...

I personally inherited most of my understanding of ethics and engineering principals from my father and know a number of people who feel similarly. I think there is potential for the free software movement to persist in the way the Amish have but it's going to have to be combined with both an actual religion and particular reality.

Perhaps you could come up with some sort of argument for it from Christianity and start a Christian sect/denomination from it.

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