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.
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.