About 13 months ago, I made the decision to dump Facebook. Primary reasons were a) I realized it was was sucking up too much of my mental energy feeling like I had to engage in the culture war with every post I read, b) I realized that it was a breeding ground for envy and discontentment, and that I was not immune, and c) I realized that I had never successfully changed anyone’s mind about anything through a Facebook argument. Social media just becomes each person’s personal echo chamber of affirmation, and as Doug Wilson once referred to it, “an endless parade of trivialities.”
But I did find that it definitely inconvenienced my friends and family, who had used it as a primary means to get a hold of me.
Definitely agree. Once you’ve invested in Apple’s ecosystem, you feel pretty stuck there. But at least that ecosystem is pretty much kept to itself. I switched from Android to iOS two years ago, after growing frustrated with the fact that all the Android phone vendors (except Google themselves) are so terrible at software upgrades / security patching. Each manufacturer develops their own flavor of Android, and you’re at their mercy as to whether or not they will choose to push updates. It also depends on what carrier you use, etc. Samsung usually seems to average about 2 major updates per phone, but after that it’s on to bigger and better models. It’s estimated that over 25% of Android devices are still running Lollipop 5.1 or older, even amid the existence of major known security exploits like Stagefright, and will never be updated.
By contrast, with iOS being a closed platform controlled exclusively by Apple, you are pretty much guaranteed software support for 4-5 years, if not more. And the app experience is generally always more smooth, I imagine due to the fact that app makers don’t have to be concerned with optimizing the experience across a fragmented operating systems.
Definitely agree with this as well. When it comes to actual device security, and at least appearing to have genuine care for the principle of personal privacy, Apple seems to be friendly. But this leads to your final question of “why” we are compelled to get away from big tech.
For me, the concern is that the thought police will eventually exploit big tech as their primary tool to identify and persecute those who don’t subscribe to the socially-prescribed worldview. You know, like us. With a company like Apple, it’s not the prospect of losing my iPhone and having a thief try to access it that worries me. What worries me is Apple (and others like Amazon and Google) logging all my web behavior. It’s staggering to think how accurately easily these companies could anticipate your worldview by simply cross-referencing metadata. And even though I’m not sure how it fits into my eschatalogical views, I suspect the thought police are going to get a hold of this data one day and begin targeting Christians. It’ll basically be like the plot of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, only minus the flying aircraft carrier and superheroes.
That said, I don’t really fight against it. I’ve concluded that it’s actually an inevitability at this point. The internet really isn’t really free, and I guess I’ll just utilize it while I can.
