this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
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I don’t know. I dislike when apps and websites behave greedily as much as the next person, but within the system where we live, I don’t know if i would go so far as to say that people choosing what’s readily available or easiest for them is “morally lazy”. That line of thinking kind of implies that having the option or the knowledge or the preference to use certain types of “better” technology makes one a “better” kind of person, and I just don’t think that’s true.
A better way to put it might be “If you value FOSS and have the technical know-how to use an alternative, it’s morally lazy?”
No, not at all. I don’t think individual decisions that don’t hurt anyone are ever morally lazy, and I think that in most cases software is just morally neutral. I should have left preferences and technical know how out of it. I suppose I included them because i often see people making the argument that like, it’s morally better and makes you a better human being to be make the most optimized software decisions and if you like, enjoy instagram or windows or google or something, you are not just wrong or less intelligent, you’re also personally propping up the things that are wrong in the tech industry, even though that industry has accumulated so much money and power that they don’t care so much what individual people do. And i wanted to highlight that while little technological resistances to capitalism are very nice, they’re not available to all people, or appealing to all people, or right for all people, and i think that’s fine. Purity is impossible and doesn’t actually fix any systemic problems. I’ve actually seen a surprising amount of ‘you use the wrong software!’ shaming in my life and it’s always framed as “for these reasons” so I guess I meant to try to to dissect the reasons a little but, but ended up putting my foot in my mouth.
I see. I suppose I just can’t concieve of using the term “morally lazy” that way about someone other than myself, because I don’t know their morals or their barriers? So my thought in terms of the statement was solely “Is it morally lazy of me?0
That makes sense. I agree with you there.