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Comment by vorpalhex | Hacker News Reader

I literally couldn't come up with a better example of False Dilemma fallacy:

> Moving to the woods and going full Thoreau, for most of us, is simply not an option. The only long-term fix is making the background into foreground: calling out the exact ways digital technologies have colonized our lives, aggravating and expanding our burnout in the name of efficiency.

Technology didn't colonize anything, you invited over an annoying house guest that you refuse to kick out. Turn off your phone and go pet a dog. You'll be better for it.

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More like, the house guest is a sweet talker who cajoles you into letting them stay every time despite them not doing much for you in return.

Let’s not pretend like technology isn’t vigorously A/B testing its way into being as psychologically addicting as possible.

To me this analogy just underscores the absurdity of blaming the houseguest for this situation.

Why? It's not as if you spontaneously invited the house guest. Your guest arranged it so that you met them, then over time manipulated you into believing they would be a good company. Only thus conditioned, you agreed to have him over.

And that's why I consider most advertising a malicious act.

Like a vampire, needs to be invited in, won’t leave.

Only solution is to aggressively deny all push notification requests

As an example of how this can be used maliciously I will put forth Grubhub. Anytime you request a delivery, they ask for push notifications, ostensibly such that they can alert you to the status of your delivery. But then they start to push advertisements after. Not directly after, mind you, but a week or two or even more after you got your delivery.

One cat-and-mouse solution here might be the “know your location” notifier that iOS uses - allow push notifications only for today.

And sweet gas-lighting guest clones are on every corner, so you get accustomed to this new reality.

People are just supposed to magically reject these things that, thanks to the efforts of some of the brightest of our generation and unlimited amounts of money, have managed to penetrate every single aspect of our lives. But of course it’s as simple as “just get a dog!”. And climate change can be solved by just recycling more I guess!

Speaking as someone who tried to cut tech out of my life outside of work as much as possible... there's also the chance that your circles slip away as a result.

This is where it rises to society-level problem. If Facebook was a single-player game, leaving it would be as simple as getting a dog. But because most of the value you derive from Facebook comes from everyone else you know communicating with you through Facebook, the act of leaving becomes a big social sacrifice. This turns it from an individual issue to a collective action issue.

FWIW, I haven't been using Facebook much for the past couple of years. But - beyond unfollowing a bunch of pages and killing notificaitons - it didn't come from a conscious decisions. Over time, my feed became mostly ads and news articles, as Facebook tweaked their algos; meanwhile, most people I know retreated to other social networks. Too many to track at the same time. I also got more busy and focused on my immediate family. Some time ago I realized that I derive near-zero value from Facebook. My part of Fb's social graph pretty much dissolved on its own. I think this is going to be ultimately the fate of the entire graph.

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