Principled? A massive red flag? Simply idiotic?

Unknown said:

nterested to know whether you are living half this life balanced with convenience and these principles – do not use apps, do not shop online?

I'm sorry, I don't really understand the question.  I avoid all apps, wherever possible, despite the inevitable inconvenience and added expense that occurs.  The classic one, at the moment, that makes my blood boil, is paying for a car parking space.  Large companies have started charging SUBSTANTIALLY more if you refuse to download their app for payment.  It can be £2-£3 per hour in some places.  I don't mind paying by card (and do so often, although I try to keep cash alive for society too)  Does that answer or clarify for you?

Emmalephant said:

I think that sticking to principles is sensible and valuable as long as it doesn’t interfere with your life.

OK - but what is the difference between "shaping your life" and "interfere with your life?

What is the difference between shaping and interfering when we talk about how 'principles' affect our lives?

[ - please feel no obligation to respond.  - please know that this is written as a question, not a challenge to what you have written -]

Like you, I am also prone to addiction (in a weirdly autistic way) too.....so you are right that this is probably an additional reason why I have a "zero tolerance" for social media.  I have watched it change people before my very eyes.  It is powerful stuff, for sure.

I'll add to that sensible and fairly comprehensive list.

Don't use any sort of subscription service, that includes nectar & direct debits. 

I never give my opinion or submit to a survey.  

I (currently) use brave browser or at least an adbolcker & "duck duck go" browser.

UK mil intelligence people don't use any apple product and their laptops have the microphone and camera drilled out.

Ive de-gogled my phone as much as possible and when I can get my act together I'm going back to a non smart phone. It's a TELEPHONE I don't need the internet on it, I Don't need to have my head down looking at that little screen all day.

Only "apps" I run are drone software on a separate phone that has no sim card in it. 

I get zero junk mail, not much spam, and apparently I'm hard to doxx... 

Oh, and ANYONE who seeks to advise you about, or draw your attention to matters of "Security" is NOT TO BE TRUSTED. 

I don't do most of them, here is the only social media I use, I prefer real shops but use online because I can't get what I want or need in real shops, I refuse cookies and I'm still not sure what apps are or if I have any, I don't have anything to store on the "cloud". There are some of those things I wouldn't do out of principle, for example I don't like the way FB opperates and its non existant privacy policies, I don't know how to use the ones they do have. Mostly I don't use them as I don't know how, I get problems looking stuff up online, I get told what I'm looking for dosen't exist or I get loads of stuff I didn't ask for, I think in part it's because I live so little of my life online it dosen't "know" me and so just shoves random stuff at me in the hope I'll buy it or at least look at it and a bigger part is the general enshitification of the internet where people are being pushed into ever more narrow aisles of the same stuff and echo chambers of opinion.

There are times when my iinability to use a smart phone and do stuff online really bug me, but most of the time it dosen't, it dose make life harder in some ways, like when a tradesperson wants a photograph that I have no way of taking or sending and they ignore me if I don't send one. But then I think they're probably not the type of person I'd want to use anyway, as I'd get what they want at my expense rather than what I want.

I think people are already suspicious of those who don't have smartphones and a massive online pressence, I think that's only going to get worse.

I'm actually not happy with my response. The medium through which I communicate is insufficient.

I pretty much do it all - I don't care - I'm not that interesting, I don't care if someone in Silicon Valley knows that I bought a Marvel DVD, or whatever.

If I get the option to reject cookies, then I will do that.

One thing that I have noticed about myself is that I have been online so much that I actually don't "see" adverts. My brain filters them out. I've never clicked on an advert in my life.

I used to think that the whole online advertising multi-billion dollar industry was a house of cards that was going to crash down horribly when everyone realised that no one actually "saw" the adverts no matter how intrusive they were. But latterly, I think maybe this is a 'skill' that maybe only some people have - I dunno.

I know and accept that most people think this, but I don't think that I can get manipulated in the same way as other people because my vote is based on my values, not some news report or Facebook post that is designed to frighten me. I tend to think about things from first principles and work out what is most likely.

Edited : deleted until further notice. See below.

Yes, my choices are the same as yours, except I do shop online more than going to actual shops, just because many shops I used to go to (M&S, Wilko, etc) have shut down in my area and I don't have a car and avoid using the bus.

Unknown said:

These choices make things lonelier, more expensive and more inconvenient for anyone who adopts them.

For autists, making things worse on these fronts is a big ask.

I limit what I put on social media (rarely use it except for some touristy stuff), avoid anything confidential in the cloud (although I do store some confidential stuff like passport scans, key documents etc in encrypted containers in the cloud, protected with a 40 digit password) and balance the benefit of any apps with the data they harvest.

As for centralised systems with out data - they already exist and anything any company has about you is already in some of these. I would imagine the scale of it is now to the point where there is no stopping it so at best you can limit what info it holds at some considerable inconvenience to yourself.

I wouldn't do what you suggest as a matter of principle but some of the points to a degree as a pragmatic precaution to limit what is captured to just the things I am OK with them knowing.

Once Gen-X are too old to be a resistance, the rest of the population will have lived pretty much their whole lives online and this will just be part of the landscape for them - the inevitable thust of progress.

This means your choices are less convenient if you consider them in terms of principles or values. I also use a few of the same measures myself—I don’t use social media platforms, and only share data when I need to—because they give me some control over my digital profile.

So I do think that it’s worth keeping a principle *if* you care even if the change for the greater isn’t a big one. It can be as simple as carrying on the values instead of hoping to bring down the established order in the first instance. Interested to know whether you are living half this life balanced with convenience and these principles – do not use apps, do not shop online?

I think that sticking to principles is sensible and valuable as long as it doesn’t interfere with your life. It’s all about the cost-benefit ratio. Sticking to principles gives me a sense of reliability and it also keeps me from making a lot of mistakes. For instance, I also refer from using social media platforms like instagram, Facebook or TikTok, mostly because I think, I’m very prone to addiction. I would likely interfere with my life by throwing that principle out. Even though this is a positive example, there are also a lot of negative ones. Although being pretty open-minded I can be quite intolerant when it comes to sticking to certain principles. For a lack of a better example: My parents raised me to always be aware of how others perceive me. As a result, I always make sure to be extra careful while interacting with others and apologise a lot. This keeps me from socialising even more so. Additionally, I can’t cope when someone I’m out with does anything that disturbes my sense of etiquette even though I know I’m far too easily embarrassed.

So in this context I would think it to be over the top and quite annoying for myself and others.