I find YouTube consume a lot of my time, I blocked the url on my computer now I prefer to touch my phone more, it does help but I need to do more, and I willing to sacrifice some handy instructional knowledge. I am switching from music services to bandcamp (I hop in what people are currently buying to find better music, and bandcamp radio), also there is few internet radio stations like musicforprogramming, dublab, radiooooo and thelotradio etc, (looking for more internet radio stations!) I feel there is no need for explanation that human selection is better than "algorithm", I feel it.
Any line of thinking, taken to its extreme, is counter-productive at best, evil at worst. "Be thoughtful about where you spend your time and money" is not exactly a slippery slope we should be worried about.
The author admits at the end of the article that they aren’t absolute in their boycotts and that it’s hard to fully boycott certain things that are so prevalent within our lives.
It’s not that deep. Just be more mindful about what you do and what you use to do them, and you’ll find better ways to do them down the road that will make you and the people around you happier.
So don't take it to its extreme. Just put the effort in to make good choices up to the point it's more personally disruptive than you can handle.
Person A: I try to avoid eating beef regularly, cattle farms are so environmentally unfriendly.
Person B: Taken to its extreme, we should eliminate all cattle. Say goodbye to the hamburger!!!
Um, it's possible to walk and chew gum at the same time.
Not the author, but I have heard the criticism that it is trying to monopolize blogging. Oh, and it is hosting "white-supremacist, neo-Confederate, and explicitly Nazi" content. [1]
NTA but there are some people who see Substack as an enabler / platformer of the ultra-right. I don't personally feel this way since I've seen just as many lefty things hosted there. Seems like a fairly neutral platform.
I do dislike Substack for other reasons though, but they have more to do with disliking content aggregators and seeing them as parasites. Substack, and (worse) Medium are magazines with unpaid or under-paid writers. They bait people in with ease-of-use and free hosting and then paywall their content and if they allow author monetization they take a very large cut. The general trend on all these platforms is progressive enshittification.
Patreon remains probably the least objectionable one.
> they allow author monetization they take a very large cut
It could definitely change in the future, but Substack's cut seems to be 10% minus credit card fees. That definitely seems pretty reasonable in comparison to other platforms (Most app stores tend to be around 30%.)
Maybe there are other creator-hostile elements, but most of the creators I follow that have started on or switched to Substack don't seem to have an adversarial relationship with it.
I also "boycott" many such systems, and I completely empathize with the author on not really being sure why I'm doing it. It's, sadly, more for myself than it is in belief that anything will change, because many of these systems are ingrained, and it's not reasonable to expect that the others around me are also going to give them up.
Some examples:
I haven't ordered anything on Amazon since 2014. I hope the rationale is pretty obvious. I lean heavily into brick-and-mortar and especially local stores, where possible (I'm blessed with many local book and music stores). I do use eBay, and occasionally (maybe 1 in 10 purchases) I find out that the seller is actually just doing arbitrage from Amazon - they buy a $10 item on Amazon for $5, and have Amazon ship it to me using the "gift" feature. $5 profit for them; lots of bad feels for me.
I don't subscribe to any of the streaming platforms. I believe that I should have a tangible video that can't be clawed back, so that means buying a lot of DVDs and Blu-rays. Blu-rays, I know, are a tower of cards, since my ability to play them back indefinitely relies on leaked keys. If I want to watch a "Netflix exclusive", like Stranger Things, it means I'm organizing a watch party with friends who have subscriptions, where I'll provide food and beverages to at least attempt to offset that I'm benefiting from a streaming platform.
I listen to a local college radio station, instead of Spotify. I love that there are human DJs curating the playlists. They're creating community (the station actively engages the community), and since they're mostly college students, they're learning a valuable skill for their futures as well. Since laws around public radio prevent them from selling advertisements, I donate to the station in excess of what I'd pay for Spotify, since I value it. For buying music, my preference order is Bandcamp (DRM-free FLAC; the artists actually get a decent cut on the sale), followed by physical CDs (see the tangibility comment, above).
I run my own e-mail - both inbound and outbound. This is because I am stubborn, and have done it for twenty years now. I know Gmail and Outlook are on the receiving end of 90% of the e-mails I send, so they have a copy of most every message. The maintenance makes it a Pyrrhic victory.
I abstain from social media entirely. Hacker News comments are about as "social" as I get in the public sphere these days, as they capture the spirit of what I loved about the Usenet/forum days. I do participate in some professional Slack networks. Much as all of those networks would prefer _not_ to be on Slack, it'd be too hard to up and move the communities.
I could go on, but the gist is that I know these decisions are helping me, more or less exclusively - they don't even register in the overall trend.
> However, listing an item on eBay and then purchasing the item from another retailer or marketplace that ships directly to your customer is not allowed on eBay.
I find YouTube consume a lot of my time, I blocked the url on my computer now I prefer to touch my phone more, it does help but I need to do more, and I willing to sacrifice some handy instructional knowledge. I am switching from music services to bandcamp (I hop in what people are currently buying to find better music, and bandcamp radio), also there is few internet radio stations like musicforprogramming, dublab, radiooooo and thelotradio etc, (looking for more internet radio stations!) I feel there is no need for explanation that human selection is better than "algorithm", I feel it.
I loathe this writing style where everything is in lowercase.
If you follow thinking like this to its logical conclusion you shouldn’t engage in ANY technology for ANY purpose.
While you’re at it, you should make your own clothes, grow your own food, and build your own home with materials you procured sustainably.
Taken to its extreme, this line of thinking is such a non-starter that I don’t even really know what to do with it.
"Logical conclusion" is way too often used instead to mean "the most extreme version". This isn't honest.
Yes, we get to stay perpetually guilty for never even getting close to any “extreme” (actual) boycott of all technology.
Any line of thinking, taken to its extreme, is counter-productive at best, evil at worst. "Be thoughtful about where you spend your time and money" is not exactly a slippery slope we should be worried about.
The author admits at the end of the article that they aren’t absolute in their boycotts and that it’s hard to fully boycott certain things that are so prevalent within our lives.
It’s not that deep. Just be more mindful about what you do and what you use to do them, and you’ll find better ways to do them down the road that will make you and the people around you happier.
So don't take it to its extreme. Just put the effort in to make good choices up to the point it's more personally disruptive than you can handle.
Person A: I try to avoid eating beef regularly, cattle farms are so environmentally unfriendly. Person B: Taken to its extreme, we should eliminate all cattle. Say goodbye to the hamburger!!!
Um, it's possible to walk and chew gum at the same time.
The opposite, we need people to quit using things to create new things
> i've been off gmail before but fastmail started having flaky delivery both sending and receiving and i got too petrified and went skulking back.
Huh. Happy fastmail user for close to... 10 years now? Never had a problem of this sort.
Same here. I’ve been using fastmail since a very long time and it just works and gets out of your way. An amazing product.
I may reach out to the author to learn more as suggested, but is there a particular reason someone would feeling strongly about 'boycotting' substack?
I've not paid much attention, but Gruber discusses it here:
https://daringfireball.net/2024/11/regarding_and_well_agains...
Anil Dash (quoted by Gruber above) has even stronger feelings.
https://www.anildash.com/2024/11/19/dont_call_it_a_substack/
Not the author, but I have heard the criticism that it is trying to monopolize blogging. Oh, and it is hosting "white-supremacist, neo-Confederate, and explicitly Nazi" content. [1]
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/01/subst..., without pay wall: https://archive.ph/d1d7N
NTA but there are some people who see Substack as an enabler / platformer of the ultra-right. I don't personally feel this way since I've seen just as many lefty things hosted there. Seems like a fairly neutral platform.
I do dislike Substack for other reasons though, but they have more to do with disliking content aggregators and seeing them as parasites. Substack, and (worse) Medium are magazines with unpaid or under-paid writers. They bait people in with ease-of-use and free hosting and then paywall their content and if they allow author monetization they take a very large cut. The general trend on all these platforms is progressive enshittification.
Patreon remains probably the least objectionable one.
> they allow author monetization they take a very large cut
It could definitely change in the future, but Substack's cut seems to be 10% minus credit card fees. That definitely seems pretty reasonable in comparison to other platforms (Most app stores tend to be around 30%.)
Maybe there are other creator-hostile elements, but most of the creators I follow that have started on or switched to Substack don't seem to have an adversarial relationship with it.
Were I to guess, probably because it platforms rightists/non-leftists and is hence a "Nazi bar".
I also "boycott" many such systems, and I completely empathize with the author on not really being sure why I'm doing it. It's, sadly, more for myself than it is in belief that anything will change, because many of these systems are ingrained, and it's not reasonable to expect that the others around me are also going to give them up.
Some examples:
I haven't ordered anything on Amazon since 2014. I hope the rationale is pretty obvious. I lean heavily into brick-and-mortar and especially local stores, where possible (I'm blessed with many local book and music stores). I do use eBay, and occasionally (maybe 1 in 10 purchases) I find out that the seller is actually just doing arbitrage from Amazon - they buy a $10 item on Amazon for $5, and have Amazon ship it to me using the "gift" feature. $5 profit for them; lots of bad feels for me.
I don't subscribe to any of the streaming platforms. I believe that I should have a tangible video that can't be clawed back, so that means buying a lot of DVDs and Blu-rays. Blu-rays, I know, are a tower of cards, since my ability to play them back indefinitely relies on leaked keys. If I want to watch a "Netflix exclusive", like Stranger Things, it means I'm organizing a watch party with friends who have subscriptions, where I'll provide food and beverages to at least attempt to offset that I'm benefiting from a streaming platform.
I listen to a local college radio station, instead of Spotify. I love that there are human DJs curating the playlists. They're creating community (the station actively engages the community), and since they're mostly college students, they're learning a valuable skill for their futures as well. Since laws around public radio prevent them from selling advertisements, I donate to the station in excess of what I'd pay for Spotify, since I value it. For buying music, my preference order is Bandcamp (DRM-free FLAC; the artists actually get a decent cut on the sale), followed by physical CDs (see the tangibility comment, above).
I run my own e-mail - both inbound and outbound. This is because I am stubborn, and have done it for twenty years now. I know Gmail and Outlook are on the receiving end of 90% of the e-mails I send, so they have a copy of most every message. The maintenance makes it a Pyrrhic victory.
I abstain from social media entirely. Hacker News comments are about as "social" as I get in the public sphere these days, as they capture the spirit of what I loved about the Usenet/forum days. I do participate in some professional Slack networks. Much as all of those networks would prefer _not_ to be on Slack, it'd be too hard to up and move the communities.
I could go on, but the gist is that I know these decisions are helping me, more or less exclusively - they don't even register in the overall trend.
> I find out that the seller is actually just doing arbitrage from Amazon
Please report these sellers to eBay. This is explicitly against their terms of service:
https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/posting-items/setting-post...
> However, listing an item on eBay and then purchasing the item from another retailer or marketplace that ships directly to your customer is not allowed on eBay.