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I've been reflecting deeply on my personal values and ethics. Whenever I discuss enshittification and surveillance capitalism, someone inevitably points out my continued use of Meta platforms, GitHub, and other services. There's this persistent notion that if you're not completely "all in" on ethical digital choices, you're a hypocrite.
I don't think the blame game gets us anywhere. While some in the Fediverse might view my reasoning as excuses, they're genuine considerations. My guiding principle is simple: If something doesn't make me smile and has too many downsides, I don't do it.
Here's a summary of my life choices aligned with my values:
Car-free lifestyle: Walking and running everywhere with my family. We use public transport or get rides for longer distances.
Sobriety: Five years sober, valuing optimal brain function. It took 17 years to understand alcohol's harm to oneself and others.
Plant-based diet: Challenging, but mostly avoiding red meat with regular vegan days at home.
X (Twitter): Completely deleted due to API closures, paid features, hate speech, and Musk's problematic leadership.
WhatsApp: Deleted because of surveillance, AI, ads, and privacy concerns.
Facebook: My personal account was deleted by the platform without any reason given (thank them), though my business still uses it - a "necessary evil" if you want to make profit.
GitHub: Too integrated with work, CI, and organizations to completely abandon. How do you move thousands of repositories that are not up to you?
AI: Using local, private Open WebUI, but AI is ubiquitous and hard to escape. It's in every organizational app and not up to me.
Instagram: Staying for memes and joy, despite knowing Meta's involvement.
Threads: Mixed feelings, might quit or moderate from Mastodon if EU integration ever happens.
LinkedIn: A "necessary evil" as a business owner.
Google: Impossible to completely disconnect due to long-standing business ties.
Bluesky: Rarely used, find the platform uninteresting. Might quit in some point.
Cloud and files: Self-hosting Nextcloud and other infrastructure.
Privacy: Using ungoogled-chromium, custom DNS, comprehensive tracker blocking.
Operating system: Primarily Linux, with a gaming PC and Mac.
So, am I doing enough? I'm trying my best to make conscious, ethical digital choices while acknowledging the complexities of modern tech ecosystems.
@rolle as a technology ethicist I am constantly thinking about this. It’s very hard given workplace requirements and social norms. I can’t even get rid of WhatsApp because all the kids’ school and preschool comms use it. So I’ve eventually come back to the “no ethical consumption under capitalism” thing because we need to make systemic changes that are outside of the control of individuals.
@rolle that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try to keep unethical things out (I avoid genAI as much as possible, but even then I occasionally have to test it in order to argue against it 
) but I’m not going to guilt trip myself if I can’t always live up to the ideal. My big sacrifice was Facebook, which is less of a hit these days but a decade ago everyone was on there and I missed out on a lot of events.
@CatherineFlick @rolle This is exactly on the point; perfect is the worst enemy of good enough!
Anyone who is just good but not perfect on these matters will face criticism of those who have not even tried. And these folks focus their criticism on the few things you failed to do and NEVER visit even one of their 10000 things not even for a second.
To me this setup is hard to tackle.