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They (kind of) rot your brain. These services often come with algorithms that aren’t designed to maximise your time, but are instead designed to keep you using their service for as long as possible, in order to see more ads. This means that an algorithm smarter than basically every human is slowly reducing your attention span to maximise profit, and these losses spill into the real world.
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They weaken your capacity for free thought. These algorithms are designed to feed you content that will keep YOU happy, not content that you should be seeing/went onto the platform to see. This means that echo chambers end up being created, and you end up becoming more radicalised. Don’t try and deny this is happening by saying you’re more headstrong, because the algorithm is smarter than you. It can predict what you are thinking (to some degree) in real time and use that to select the perfect piece of content to show you that you will swallow without any second thought (and has done that before).
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You give up your rights. You might not have something to hide (or maybe you do) but using techniques like geofencing warrants, it’s entirely possible for police to suspect and target you for things you didn’t do. Usually, you would be protected against this because the police wouldn’t have that much data, but big tech just gives it away to law enforcement, making it way harder to just “stay out” of trouble. There’s also no guarantee that the footprint generated by these services isn’t abused by someone who could (in the future) want to hurt you, either for personal reasons or because of your race/identity (in areas with communal violence)
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We all make mistakes. I’m no longer a 14 year old, but I’ve expressed some pretty controversial (and not pleasant) views as a 14 year old. In a world where I used more mainstream big tech services, all of those opinions would be linked to my real name and face, which could be found by employers and other places performing background checks. Simple solution, right? Don’t post anything dumb? I was 14, and like most other teenagers, I said and did stupid shit that shouldn’t have to haunt me for the rest of my life. Sure, maybe you live in a free country where you’re not ashamed to have those views. However, political and social landscapes change all of the time, and what you may think to be a moderate and fair view today might have been clouded by racism/bigotry you didn’t see. Maybe the laws change regarding this stuff and you could get in trouble. Maybe you cracked a type of joke that won’t be acceptable in the future. Whatever it is, why expose yourself for no good reason?
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Big Tech services just suck ass in general. They’re full of ads, slow to load, hard to customise, and there’s usually no good reason to use them. Protonmail/disroot is just nicer than gmail regardless of the privacy benefits. Firefox with an adblocker just leads to a better browsing experience than chrome. Using newpipe (no ads!) is just more convenient than watching 2 stupid ads in a row for a 3 minute video. Linux distros (with GNOME) just look better than windows, while not coming with 300 bloat apps I’ll never use in my life. Plus, it’s easier to update and install things on.
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