Never install the Google Photos app on an Apple device, like an iPhone or an iPad. The app slurps up all your photos and videos, even though they were probably automatically backed up to iCloud already. Then, Google complains that you're out of Google cloud storage space, and services like Gmail stop working. (Well, they stop working exactly the way they should. For example, you may not be able to receive any more emails.) You can solve the problem by paying Google for more cloud storage space, but that's bullshit. There's no reason to pay them, because they had no legitimate reason to steal your data in the first place. Fuck that. Thankfully, there is an alternative. You can uninstall the app, then delete all of Google's copies of your media through the Google Photos website on another computer.
That's all a very technical way of saying the following: never install the Google Photos app on an Apple device. If you already installed it, uninstall it, then delete Google's copies of your photos and videos through the Google Photos website on another computer.
There may be a workaround. There may be some kind of button that instructs Google not to steal your shit and charge you for the privilege. If there is a solution, though, it must not be obvious, because practically everyone I know with an iPhone has faced this problem. Therefore, the easy solution is the best one: never, ever install the Google Photos app on an Apple device.
Why do non-technical people sometimes dramatically underestimate the time, money, and effort required to build software? I think it’s because they only see the end result: the app, website, or other product.
Thanks to social media, we all know too much about each other. We broadcast opinions to the entire Internet that a reasonable person would never mention at Thanksgiving dinner.
I only fully appreciated the flip side of this phenomenon very recently, however. As Jamie Bartlett writes in You are not an embassy, and as simple observation proves, social media companies work very hard to motivate us to share our thoughts publicly. More people sharing more thoughts means more readers, more commenters, more fights, more addiction, more ad impressions, and ultimately more money for these companies.
I can't claim the moral high ground here. I was guilty, too.
We know too much about each other because we've been manipulated into saying too much about ourselves. We've been convinced that we should say things online that we would never say in polite company. Is it any wonder the world is so divided?
I know this may seem hypocritical at first. I'm blogging right now, after all. However, I consider thoughts, the platform that currently powers this blog, to be a calm technology. It doesn't beg for my attention. I don't get any buzzes in my pocket letting me know that someone thought I was wrong. Nobody can like or comment at all. As a result, I write when I want to, not when the platform wants me to. I say what I want, not what drives outrage and enriches Mark Zuckerberg. We need more platforms like thoughts… and fewer like Facebook.
It turns out that in a country as large and diverse as ours, a certain amount of benign neglect of other people’s odd folkways is more conducive to social peace than a constant, in-your-face awareness of clashing sensibilities. Little is gained when people in my corner of Brooklyn gawk at viral images of Christmas cards featuring families armed to the teeth. And people in conservative communities don’t need to hear about it every time San Francisco considers renaming a public school.
The social corrosion caused by Facebook and other platforms isn’t a side effect of bad management and design decisions. It’s baked into social media itself.
There are many reasons Facebook and the social media companies that came after it are implicated in democratic breakdown, communal violence around the world and cold civil war in America. They are engines for spreading disinformation and algorithmic jet fuel for conspiracy theories. They reward people for expressing anger and contempt with the same sort of dopamine hit you get from playing slot machines.
My position on banning TikTok hasn't changed. I don't know if I support banning it, but I do encourage everyone to stop using it. It's digital tobacco, every bit as harmful to the mind.
I often wonder why there isn't a business that resells streaming subscriptions. Such a business could offer, for one price (and, importantly, one bill, one app, one password, and one user interface) access to content from several streaming platforms. The business could renegotiate deals with the underlying platforms based on how popular their content is with viewers.
I know, it sounds like I'm reinventing cable. Still, I think customers would appreciate this convenience. I certainly would. There must be a reason someone hasn't done it already, though. If you know more, let me know!
Throughout history, every single time something's gotten better, it's become somebody has come along to say, “This is stupid. We can do better.” It's the critics that drive improvement. It's the critics who are the true optimists.
How does social media drive political polarization? Justin Rosenstein explains in The Social Dilemma:
You look over at the other side, and you start to think, “How can those people be so stupid? Look at all of this information that I'm constantly seeing. How are they not seeing that same information?” And the answer is, they're not seeing that same information.
This is by no means the only way social media drives political polarization. It turns out, showing users gradually more extreme content is also a great way to keep them addicted. More addiction means more screen time, more ad impressions, and ultimately more money for these companies. Still, it's a great place to start when describing the problem. The other side is not seeing what you see. In fact, they're getting a constant stream of information about how wrong you are, and you'll hardly ever see a drop of it yourself.