Thank you. You're spot on there - what is the alternative? Surrounded by technologies of power that relegate us observers to being the observed (the Gaze), that place us potentially in the role of the subjugated, we must resist. What is the way to resist? Opting out is one way of doing this. I use LI only because I must but I don't engage with it. FB, Insta, OF, Temu, TikTok. Are any of them necessary to live a good and meaningful life? Unlikely, since their fundamental purpose is to enrol humans-as-subscribers to justify global advertising revenue spend. However, there is good in some part of some of these platforms (well, maybe not in OF, but maybe Discord and GitHub) as an original good of the internet which is communication between humans that didn;t know each other yet share common goals or world views. In my next article I will use YouTube as an example of separating out the purposes of a platform (as you can see in the graphic included in this article). Like any form of oppression no matter how gross or subtle we can resist. If you look at the Thai situation for freedom of an elected government and the hunger strikes from the protesters that is exemplary. A small example of how computers discipline us is auto suggest. As writers we know our thoughts I don't need Grammarly or Google auto correct to tell me how to write,. And if I do make mistakes isn;t that my communication style and part of me why should an algorithm erase who is me? This is the point of YouTube's "algorithm" trotting to match viewers with content to make it sticky. This is the opposite of a library model where we browse a passive array of content. YouTube is the angry librarian "making" us consume content the librarian wants us to consume for advertising revenue uplift. Why does YouTube scrub in-app search history therefore? We need to opt out of consuming content in a forced manner is another model of resistance. #followers doesn;t suggest that the content will make me a better person or improve my lot. I read an article yesterday how Olympian are funding their dreams by being OF content creators,. This is a power-relation both of economic but also of co-opting bodies into a digital platform. This is pretty shameful. If the athletes were correctly funded they wouldn't have to become sex workers (of some sort). Yet maybe they find it empowering as one of them said were pretty much nude infront of large crowds anyway. The moral purpose of engaging or disengaging with these platforms therefore is of importance. Why we choose to use them and how we choose to use them puts us back in control (not their gamified/ad maximising algos).
