Comment by bm3719 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bm3719 | Hacker News Reader

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The author loved technology when it worked for him, now he toils in its service. Previously, it was additive, only giving and not taking; now it narrows options to only one: the app.

Obviously, we shouldn't let this happen. Keep paper tickets, physical menus, cash, etc. These things are human, made by and for humans. They make sense across the intelligence spectrum as they connect to us in the physicality of the real (which everyone understands).

Of course, the individual doesn't get to decide if all his government and city services app-ify themselves. What to do in that case? I guess this guy's chosen the path of minimal leashing: wearing the digital yoke as little as possible. That's just harm minimization though.

Perhaps it'll help someone to say this: It is possible to live without a smartphone. I do it. There's times when you can't use a service. QR codes are meaningless. You might occasionally be bored. I've always found an alternative or workaround to these issues. Yes, that's inconvenient sometimes (usually not though, surprisingly), but is that worse than being a slave to glass slab?

> Previously, it was additive, only giving and not taking; now it narrows options to only one: the app

This seems a bit dramatic. The issue is who is making the decisions. People have stopped being intentional about their decision-making, in a variety of ways, and tend to simply go with whatever the company providing the software recommends. This is the thing that we need to change. Using these services and using a smartphone are fine. We need to find a way to do it on our own terms, though.

For an example from my own life (technically less relevant because if it comes down to it I'm fortunate and stubborn enough to win the lawsuit if that's what it comes down to, but swap me for any of their other million customers and the story still applies), my HSA has unilaterally made owning a sufficiently modern smartphone (<3yrs practically speaking, though it depends a bit on the manufacturer) with all the secure enclave bells and whistles mandatory to access my money I voluntarily placed into their system under a completely set of rules. Customer service has gone nowhere. If I couldn't afford the lawsuit, what options would I have? The employer offering the HSA a decade ago was just trying (and succeeding) to provide a nice benefit. I would've been insane to turn down a bunch of free money from my employer when the only stipulation was that it went through a third party taking a <<1% cut. The fuck-the-customer mentality happened later, and suddenly enough I couldn't do anything about it. If some family caves to their demands to access their own money, I'm not going to be the one to blame them for not being intentional about their decision making.

This is a weird example. Are you addicted to your HSA app? It sounds like you are being intentional.

You’re fighting trillions a year in addictive engineering.

The tech industry has spent the last 20 years (and really in earnest the last 15, accelerating over time) making their tech as addictive as possible.

Current tech is egregiously addictive. It’s worse than most drugs.

The big tech companies are now the most successful drug dealers in history.

You can get pretty far replacing your launcher with something that makes you type the name of the app you want to launch, and avoiding most apps, like FB, X, Amazon, Insta, etc.

The trillions are effective at forcing network effects, but anything outside that it pretty trivial to swap out and get a better experience.

I'm a bit surprised by the fatalism on display in this discussion. I get that it sounds like I'm victim-blaming, but you can only alter your own behavior, so assuming responsibility has merit.

No, you're fighting just one thing: yourself.

People don't want to admit this because it is uncomfortable to blamed by the problems you yourself create, but if you are addicted to your phone to the point that you feel compelled to complain about the network (on the network, mind you), then it is entirely because you let yourself get addicted and you still let yourself keep being addicted.

The most insane part of this is the subtle-as-a-hammer-to-the-face MiSTER ad shoved in the middle of the article as if it made any sense whatsoever. And people are taking this guy seriously?

Come on now.

Addiction has a demand and supply component. I think we can all recognize that fact. Personal responsibility matters of course. However, ignoring the fact that companies spend trillions to make their products addictive is a very silly thing to do.

IMO the closest corollary we have is gambling. Most countries place strict limits on gambling, because it's so incredibly addictive to some people. We can see this very obviously in the rise of online gambling platforms like Polymarket it recent years. Without regulation, a lot of people will get sucked in and their lives will be destroyed.

I encourage you to read up on how addiction works. Your comment implies a severe lack of understanding about the subject. Alternatively, you could take a course on addiction at your local college. Always good to get educated!

I don't see that as an ad. I have an original retro PC under my desk for my detox hours. His detox pill is just a smaller version of mine.

If addiction could be solved as simply as "just don't let yourself be addicted", it wouldn't even be a defined term.

Come on now.

Not letting yourself be addicted does not mean it is easy, it means that you have the power to stop it, and fuelling that addicting (as in: posting ON THE FUCKING NETWORK that you don’t like the network) is exactly that.

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