Notices by Leth (lethargilistic@kolektiva.social), page 3

Like, imagine believing that you can quantify the value of a work by how many times people access it and gleefully destroying it if it's not performing well enough. MOST creations are not commercially "productive" after two years, so that view reduces to the capitalist idea that things (and people) which are not contributing to what the capitalist considers value ought to be destroyed.

I don't engage with people who think we should delete everything to "save the environment" because their grasp of the issue is so pointedly myopic that their solution to saving the environment is destroying humanity.

"We keep everything in data centers and it's so terrible." Yes. It is. But it's an array of issues that are extremely solvable and don't require the purposeful destruction of decades of human creativity.

Analogizing to archives of physical stuff and libraries is bullshit. The things they preserve physically degrade and take up far more space.

As for the intersection of this with accessibility: explain to me how a culture where most people do not understand how computers work and yet are forced to use computers is in ANY way "accessible."

A general ignorance of technology and difficulty in learning how to use digital tools is cognizable as a disability when computers are this ingrained into our lives. The collective experience of helping older people who weren't born with digital technology demonstrated this when we made them acceptable targets for scorn instead of helping them.

But instead of opposing practices that are intended to create future generations that struggle to understand new technology SO THEY CAN BE CONTROLLED MORE EASILY, accessibility "advocates" embrace future-proofed manipulation as progressive? Fuck that.

If you claim to be for accessibility and you oppose encouraging a culture where people know how computers work, you're a fraud.

Honestly, the intersection of privacy and social media is a great example of this.

If you claim to be a privacy advocate and you have even the slightest qualms about abandoning a walled-garden data-vacuum like Facebook for a Fediverse alternative like Frendica, you're a fraud.

We start conversations about a healthy, manipulation-free relationship between humans and technology at "A person is capable of learning new things."

It is also true that it is OK to just want something to work, but the conversation cannot start there.

If a person is incapable of making their own technology decisions, then other people with agendas will decide every aspect of that person's technological life.

People think that "It's OK for people to just want technology to work" (which it is) is like saying "It's OK for people to not know things" (which it is). But to the extent that they're saying it to argue against technologists advocating for open technology, it's humanity-defeating and just a fucking strawman.

The technologists are complaining about abusive designs that manipulate people by making the path of least resistance the one that, for example, destroys the concept of privacy.

When you respond to that with "well not everybody needs to understand everything," What you're actually saying is "It's OK for people to be MANIPULATED into maintaining their ignorance."

These companies have worked very hard to create a culture where computers are magic boxes to most people, so the vast majority of users remain vulnerable. You're not countercultural for thinking that's a good thing. You're a fucking mark.

Under Microsoft, Github's whole shtick has become professionalizing all levels of software and it's frankly just fucking abusive. You should not need to have a God damned cell phone to contribute to software.

"We're just enforcing best practices."

No. You're enclosing the hobby.

@anarchopunk_girl Record yourself explaining stuff to your friends, then.

An implementation of alt text where, if you don't enter it, people who boost it can put in whatever they want. Adversarial accessibility.