All of tech right now is a war of attrition. Nagware and stealthware is now life's default experience.
If you aren't terminally online and constantly checking version notes, these corporations will steal your data (and let's be honest, they'll steal it even if you are proactive in preventing it).
They won't take the hint. Google Photos and Microsoft OneDrive beg me regularly to let me create "memories" in their cloud storage even though I tap "NO" every single time.
Except it's never "NO"
They're like sex pests. They don't even know what the word "no" means. It's always something non-committal like "Maybe Later". There are no longer any absolutes.
I can't simply go offline in apps like Discord. I can only be invisible. "Why not just quit out of the app?" Except most don't use Ctrl-Q anymore. Who uses keyboard shortcuts these days? And forget dipping out on your phone.
Clicking the "X" in the corner of your Discord window only minimizes the app, and not even to your taskbar. It tucks itself away in your system tray, still happily pinging you with notifications, trying to sucker you back into pulling it out again. Discord Mobile is always pushing notifications to you. This is the default experience. Almost no one has enough tech savvy to even be aware they're getting sold upstream. Almost no one is going to dig in labyrinthine app settings to find the one toggle that turns off getting milked.
Realize that the vast majority of humanity using tech is not a power user like you are.
Stop guilting people for not being paragons of rugged digital individualism
What we need right now more than anything, more than even leaving Discord for some other platform that is probably just going to do the same thing in a couple years, is comprehensive privacy protection laws. That's the bare minimum we should be striving for. It's a losing battle trying to convince everyone to go back to IRC, and it does nothing for the countless individuals left behind.
And I'm fully aware that "just get a law passed" is easier said than done, but that's where the battle really is, if you even care.
Do what you want, of course. If you want to return to IRC or some Jabber client or whatever, be my guest. You don't get to be smug about it, though, especially since you're probably leaking data in plenty of other places. However, if you think using Mastodon and Matrix or whatever grants you some kind of saintly privacy aura that everyone should "get gud" and aspire to, fuck you. You're a dumbass, and an asshole.
we made this kind of thing our day job because it needs to be SOMEBODY's.
you can help, no matter who you are, by understanding that we need real privacy laws. not the hyper-real simulacrum of privacy laws; laws that actually do something.
individual hypervigilance does not work to solve systemic problems. even if opting for an individualist solution were morally appropriate, in practical terms the systemic problem just keeps getting worse and worse until the things you do as an individual are no longer sufficient.
don't allow legislators to pass bullshit that ratifies the status quo and then take a victory lap where they congratulate themselves, secure in the knowledge that nobody who matters will dig into the details. carry the awareness in your heart that that's what nearly all legislation about the tech industry does these days. don't be rude or proselytize about it unless you really want to live that kind of life, but if it comes up in conversation, let it be known how you see it.
storytelling is a powerful tool for making change to the world; more than that, it may be the only tool that has the power to make sure things stay changed. if we forget what we're doing or why, we lose, even if we had previously won. the implication is that you are part of a movement, you are concretely helping, just by understanding what's going on and remembering it.
