[amrangaye]

lol - just out of curiosity: are you doing this yourself? Provide tech support to all your aunties and uncles, cousins, friends etc (already bad enough - now formalized) then you add installation and maintenance (including on all their devices), keeping everything updated etc. And having to troubleshoot every single problem they run into.

“make decisions as a group” sounds great and democratic - but you really think anyone cares about this enough amongst non-techies to be part of all this “decision making” about what apps to use? And this is in addition to your day job. And please don’t say well we can evangelize - again: no one has time for that.

It sounds great esp to us techies - that’s how WE would solve the problem as a group. Doing that with non-techies esp with family and friends would be HORRIBLE in practice. Unfortunately I have a feeling I’ll get responses of the type “well you never know till you try” and “maybe YOU can’t / don’t want to do it but others will”. To which I say more power to you :) but this is def not a solution outside of hacker forums where we can pore over tech surveillance and freedom etc. and create a bubble where everything is libertarian and can be solved if only we had the right systems in place for the normies.

[rakoo]

Allow me to quote the message again:

> If you can't/don't want to be there 24/7, let the group know that it might break but maybe the group will decide that it's fine enough.

You don't owe anyone anything, and I'm not advocating for being their tech support helping them in any and all tasks. The goal is not to be able to help them plug a webcam when they need it. I'm talking about redefining together social conventions and tools to be together. What kind of software you want to use for that, agree on rules, what to post, what is not tolerable, how do you do to share photos, and stuff.

> just out of curiosity: are you doing this yourself?

Yes, I installed and created accounts on the messenger I use with my parents. Yes, it can be as simple as that. That's the point.

> but you really think anyone cares about this enough amongst non-techies to be part of all this “decision making” about what apps to use?

You really are assuming people are stupid and that's sad. Of course people are interested in questions like "I want to talk with the group" or "I want to know where my photos are" or "I want to be able to see my videos in 10 years". Even when their reply is "wherever", it means it's acceptable for them to use another tool that isn't a FAANG.

I ask the question the other way around: have you had replies telling you "we don't want to leave Google because we actually like Google's surveillance capitalism" ? Until you haven't, "normies" are interested in getting out (and please don't use that term, you make it sound like you're superior to them when you are absolutely not. No one is superior, no one is inferior)