Comment by lrvick 3 hours ago
I turned off all cell carrier tracking 5 years ago. 100% of it.
By canceling my cell phone subscription.
I know I know, I must be amish, I have heard it all. But I run two tech companies, travel, have a family, and do most of the things most around here probably do other than doom scrolling.
So much more time in my own head to think.
Runs 2 tech companies - the basic promise of the US is when you're rich you can do whatever the hell you want because you can pay people to handle stuff for you.
But also, one doesn't always need a phone - phones can die, signal is not gauranteed. What are your "must have" things that require one to have a smart phone to participate? Assume the poster has a home phone, laptop, and credit card.
Most 2FA can be done without a phone, and you can also use offline 2FA keys, not necessarily a text message.
You can also set up a phone number to accept texts from a laptop.
I can do whatever on my bank by just calling. It would be a bit weird to never be able to pitch in on meals with a $ transfer app, but I suppose when you run 2 tech companies you're probably paying most of the time, or you just take a note and transfer it later.
All 2FA options that require a phone like TOTP can be done just as easily on a laptop with a yubikey or nitrokey.
I have several business and personal bank accounts with two major banks. No Android or iOS needed.
Sure they push you hard to use them, but just say it is against your unspecified religion. They cannot make you use Android or iOS.
Traveling internationally or domestically, booking flights, hotels, going to concerts, theme parks, the movies, organizing hangouts with friends, exploring new locations... all of these things I do just fine by using a web browser on a desktop computer before I leave home, and sometimes printing a couple things. I live a typical middle class lifestyle just without the doom scrolling.
All the ways of living an active life engaged in the modern world that worked before the 2009 smartphone explosion still work just fine today. Just without tiktok and instagram. I think I am okay without those.
So what - printed maps? No ‘where are you?’ texts or the like? No looking up nearby anything you’re curious about but didn’t know about before hand?
Certainly possible, I guess, if everyone in your circle does the same, and has a ton of patience, and you spend a ton of extra time doing all the prep in advance. And don’t need to deal with things like traffic jams right now, or the like.
Pardon my skepticism but I find it hard to believe you can actually participate in western society without choosing to have a government mandated tracking device?
Maybe you live somewhere this is possible but it's definitely not in the developed world