Some truly awful things are happening in the world right now. The sudden and shocking turn against Ukraine in some quarters has left many of us reeling. And it’s natural to feel quite helpless in the face of that, as a plain old everyday person.
But I’m reminded of a post I wrote around this time, three years ago, during perhaps the starkest, most shocking episode of this whole saga. During the all-out invasion of Ukraine, it’s cultural resistance that is one of our great powers as language lovers. In face of a monolithic dictatorship that seeks to deny the existence of a separate Ukrainian identity, support its language, music, literature – celebrate it to the hilt.
General disquiet comes not only from the Ukraine issue, of course; many are concerned about the more general political winds that are blowing the same way. How do we distance ourselves from regimes that go against our values – especially in a world that seems dominated by its products and services?
To that end, there are switches we can make that show our resistance against a new order that feels so at odds with our own values. For instance, sites like European Alternatives give us plenty of options. Enjoying ChatGPT for language practice? Give Mistral’s Le Chat a go instead, and support European AI research. Looking for a more federated community platform that hasn’t been X-ified? Mastodon is still out there, as promising as ever.
They give us a way to state our disquiet, well, quietly. And they’re little things that become big things, the more of us that do them.
Switching Costs
Switching sounds easy, of course, but we should also acknowledge that it’s not zero effort. In many cases, switching costs are high – technically, socially, in terms of convenience. In Cory Doctorow’s terms, services like Duolingo are walled gardens that offer us a place to stay, often for free, but at the cost of trapping our progress, social links and learning data, and feeding us to advertising algorithms.
There are ways, however, to limit the ad revenue you generate for economies you want to take a stand against. Use ad-blocking, privacy-boosting browsers like Norway-based Opera as your portal to services, and you’ve at least untangled yourself financially.
More little acts, of course – but little acts multiplied can make themselves felt.