You don’t have to tell me about the problems we have with Big Tech nowadays. I know there are tons of alternatives and I am always happy to tell people there’s a bigger world then Whatsapp, Instagram, ChatGPT and X. Within a couple of minutes, I will get one of the following responses:

  • Yeah, but my friends are on Whatsapp so why should I have another app I also need to take care of?
  • Yeah, but Microblog doesn’t have likes or boosts or other engagement tools. How does this help my brand?
  • Yeah, but Mastodon is so hard, why can’t I just sign up and find people? Where are my people?
  • Yeah, but I can follow my favorite brands on Instagram.
  • Yeah, but on X I can still follow interesting people in my own lists. They don’t appear anywhere else.
  • Yeah, but I don’t have the time or energy to take care of my blog.
  • Yeah, but AI answers my questions faster than any search engine does. It is so easy!

I bet you can think of variations of these arguments yourself as well.

How do you deal with these questions? Sometimes I am stumped, because in a way they are right. It is extra work to deal with both Whatsapp and Signal (I know, because I do). I love to follow brands and bands on Instagram as well, I know AI is wrong a lot of the time but can sometimes give me things to think about. And I know you can fix some of this on a technological level. But guess what, most people don’t have the time, energy and knowledge to make technology decisions. Talking about data-extraction, algorithmic manipulation and state-actors having access to your data doesn’t help either in my experience. Because it’s too far away from the daily reality for them.

How do you deal with these arguments, forexample, when you are in a podcast tomorrow and will definitely get into these territories…