I’ve noticed that many people struggle to simply let things go. Take a hypothetical case where HN requires ID verification. I'd just stop using HN, even if that meant giving up checking tech news. Sometimes things end, and that's fine.

I used to watch good soccer matches on public TV. When services like DAZN appeared, only one major match was available each weekend on public TV. Later, none were free to watch unless you subscribed to a private channel. I didn't want to do that, so I stopped watching soccer. Now I only follow big tournaments like the World cup, which still air on public TV (once every 4 years).

Sometimes you just have to let things go

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mystifyingpoi 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> I’ve noticed that many people struggle to simply let things go

Because it's not always about their entertainment. I know churches that post info about events only on WhatsApp groups, if you don't use it - you're screwed. I know kindergardens which use Facebook Messenger groups to send announcements to their parents' children - if you don't use it, you will miss important info.

For most people, letting go such things is very impractical. One can try to persuade for a better way to do something - but then you become the problem.

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array_key_first 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

People need to be more comfortable being the problem more often. Even if people actually use these solutions, they're almost always suboptimal anyway. We shouldn't be relying on them the way we do.

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xmprt 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Or to flip it on its head, be the solution. If a church or some other activity is requiring Whatsapp, then come up with a better alternative that does more than Whatsapp ever could.

	▲	milkytron 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I've tried this. It's hard to get people to switch platforms when they don't perceive any major existing problems with their current platform. My neighborhood that I'm on the HOA board for has been entirely on a facebook group. When I joined, I made sure that we communicate all necessary communication via email (for others like me not in the group or on FB). I created a website for the neighborhood that does everything the FB group does and more, but people don't see a reason to visit another website when FB has everything they want, so they still only engage on Facebook. I'm okay with being the problem (green bubbles are a whole nother thing for friends and family), but without sufficient pressure to switch, people generally prefer what they're comfy with.
	▲	devilsdata an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I guess this means a return to websites.

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inkcapmushroom an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I have a similar problem, I do swing dancing and all the information for dances in my area are exclusively posted on Facebook by a wide variety of people who are putting on the dances. I can try and go to each individual organizing a dance and try and get them off Facebook, but that's making their job harder when we've already had lots of people stop organizing events post-COVID, and the system they have now seems to really work for getting new people into dancing that haven't done it before with lots of new faces each dance. So I just go along with it.

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arkadiytehgraet 28 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

It's probably a good idea to let church go in 2026 too.

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zackmorris 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Funny, I'm the opposite. Since information wants to be free, and storage/compute get more affordable every year, then really everything ever posted on the web should be mirrored somewhere, like Neocities.

I grew up in the 80s when office software and desktop publishing were popular. Arguably MS Access, FileMaker and HyperCard were more advanced in some ways than anything today. There was a feeling of self-reliance before the internet that seems to have been lost. To me, there appears to be very little actual logic in most websites, apps and even games. They're all about surveillance capitalism now.

Now that AI is here, I hope that hobbyists begin openly copying websites and apps. All of them. Use them as templates and to automate building integration tests. Whatever ranking algorithm that HN uses, or at least the part(s) they haven't disclosed, should be straightforward to reverse engineer from the data.

That plants a little seed in the back of every oligopoly's psyche that ensh@ttification is no longer an option.

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terminalshort 2 hours ago | parent [-]

If "information wants to be free," doesn't that cut both ways? It applies equally to the personal data that I don't want to upload to an age gate as it does to the information that people want to keep behind an age gate.

	▲	irishcoffee an hour ago \| parent [-]
		One persons age is a data point. Everyone’s age is information. Data doesn’t want to be free.

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an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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layer8 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Many people don’t struggle to let privacy go.