maiki
Tue, 12 Feb 2019 20:39:12 +0000
Digital Safety

Gizmodo – 7 Feb 19

I Cut the 'Big Five' Tech Giants From My Life. It Was Hell

Week 6: Blocking them all

Here are some choice quotes:

I wind up placing a lot of phone calls this week, because texting is so annoying on the Nokia’s numbers-based keyboard. I find people often pick up on the first ring out of concern; they’re not used to getting calls from me.

Something not delightful is my Nokia 3310’s camera; it takes terrible, dark photos. I have an old Canon point-and-shoot digital camera, but I find I don’t take many photos this week—because without Facebook and Instagram, I don’t have anywhere to share them.

To find out why the HMD Global is still selling dumbphones, I call its Hong Kong-based chief product officer, Juho Sarvikas. Sarvikas tells me that the company thought the core market for “classic” phones would be in Asia and Africa, where smartphones are less prevalent, but he says the devices have done surprisingly well in America.

“Digital well-being is a concrete area now,” he says. “When you want to go into detox mode or if you want to be less connected, we want to be the company that has the toolkit for you.”

First I’ve heard of “digital veganism”.

Many people I talk to about this experiment liken it to digital veganism. Digital vegans reject certain technology services as unethical; they discriminate about the products they use and the data they consume and share, because information is power, and increasingly a handful of companies seem to have it all.

I’d say more, but I told @susan I am applying to this place, so I gotta go do that!