CarelessExpert

Just curious, why? Performance reasons? Compatibility? Something else?

Speaking for myself, I run Linux on the desktop and Windows in a VM for office applications and so forth and it works fine. But obviously I'm not running Photoshop or gaming or anything like that (though in the case of the latter, Proton is already great and is poised to get even better)...

Wine? Virtual machines?

Ah, well, in that case what you're getting out of older technology is "externally imposed self-control". Douglas Adams' publisher famously locked him in a hotel room because he was such a chronic procrastinator. I can definitely relate!

On the first point, I agree, the article was very much misleading and I hope they correct it.

As for the rest, frankly, this just adds more fuel to my belief that the first thing we need from these companies is simply transparency. If they're running mass psychology experiments on people, we should know about it.

The idea that Facebook can operate as a black box while literally weighing how much to value individual human emotions is deeply deeply disturbing me.

> It could be that the screenwriter used to use that MS-DOS program back in the day, and already knew and liked it, had a well-developed workflow around it, etc. Then running it on DOSBox or an old machine you happen to have lying around makes perfect sense imo.

Absolutely!

But I wasn't responding to the article. I was responding to the original comment, which stated:

> There's something to be said for the focused nature of older technology.

My response and point was that this isn't somehow precluded with newer technology. That is, if what you're getting out of older technology is "focus", you can get that with newer tech without having to sacrifice other capabilities.

If what you're getting out of older technology is "familiarity" or "nostalgia" or "joy" or something similarly aesthetic, then obviously, keep on keeping on. :)

Digging up and using some old piece of technology instead of using an existing, multi-purpose computing device is the definition of "[building] his life around it", as it requires adapting your workflows to the technology instead of adapting the technology to your workflows.

Man, there is a profound lack of self-awareness when you cite 1984 in an article defending Facebook, when Facebook is complicit in the creation of modern surveillance capitalism and the slow but inexorable shift to the digital panopticon...

Eh, you can get that distraction-free experience with modern technology if you want it. When I want to focus on writing, I have a Vim setup that gives me a screen with a cursor. I run that full screen, turn off notifications and whatnot, and get to it. And when I'm done I can go back to using my modern technology to do everything else I want with the content, whether it's formatting/typesetting, sharing, etc.

There's really no reason to sacrifice all those additional capabilities at the alter of focus or productivity. Just find ways to use modern technology more effectively.

I really wish I could see an industry/education level cross tab. Anecdotally, we're seeing a lot of churn in tech where education levels are typically quite high, but in the data in the article, if you don't break down by sector, the numbers would suggest quit rates should be lower than normal...

There's clearly a very complex dynamic going on, here, and I have a very strong suspicion that while the macro numbers say one thing, what's going on at the ground level actually varies significantly from sector to sector, geography to geography, and demographic to demographic.

Again: Your point being what, exactly?

Does your little observation, here, have any bearing on the article? Does it make the facts less factual? Does it make the numbers less number-y?

Hell, I tried to go back to the top-level comment to figure out what might've triggered you, but your original comment is a non sequitur as far as I can tell.

> It just gives people with bad thoughts a thing to look at.

The word "just" is doing a lot of work, here. By your line of reasoning, propaganda isn't anything anyone should worry about.

Not to go full Godwin, but the Nazi regime is an instructive analogy, here. By your reasoning, all the Nazis did was "just" promote a lot of anti-Jewish propaganda. Would you really go on to say "Blaming the Nazis for negative outcomes in the world is just like blaming violent video games. All they did was put the messages out there, then the people with the bad thoughts did the mass murder..."?

And to preempt the objection that Facebook isn't intentionally distributing material that, say, promotes ethnic violence, while Facebook corporate obviously does not have that as an official policy, their algorithm is doing precisely that, by actively promoting these types of materials. Facebook's own internal research has shown that it can and does steer individuals to increasingly extreme content.

So if we agree that a) Facebook's systems steer individuals to violent or extremist content (as proven by their own research), b) propaganda is a tool that works to steer public opinion and drive human behaviour (as proven by historical precedents like Nazi regime), c) extremist content serves as effective propaganda (which is well trod ground in research on extremism), and d) that Facebook knew all these things and failed to curtail what was going on (as now revealed in these internal documents), then I don't see how you can possibly defend Facebook, here.