Anti-Personnel Computing (2023)

Keep Control of Your Computing, So It Doesn&#x27;t Control You!<p>from <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gnu.org&#x2F;philosophy&#x2F;keep-control-of-your-computing.en.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gnu.org&#x2F;philosophy&#x2F;keep-control-of-your-computin...</a>

Not a good term. Anti-personnel mines do exactly what they are intended to do. These devices&#x2F;software do something against the interests of the user in the process of doing something the user actually wants (otherwise why would the user even get them?).<p>Perhaps &quot;Faustian computing&quot;?

I prefer &quot;antifeatures&quot; as more precise.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fsf.org&#x2F;bulletin&#x2F;2007&#x2F;fall&#x2F;antifeatures&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fsf.org&#x2F;bulletin&#x2F;2007&#x2F;fall&#x2F;antifeatures&#x2F;</a>

It&#x27;s all in the software. Avoiding systems that work against you is harder than ever. Even our brains betray us, falling for the dopamine rushes expertly assembled by the exploiters.<p>An unchecked drive for profit maximisation is often at the source of this evil. Cory Doctorow has expertly described the phenomenon in his essays¹ about <i>enshittification</i>, a term he coined. He has raised a lot of awareness, yet we&#x27;re still in a timeline where non-profit, decentralised services have small market shares. Perhaps the <i>Leidensdruck</i>, i.e. the degree of suffering, is not yet great enough?<p>--<p>¹ <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow&#x2F;</a>

Eh. I think &quot;user hostile&quot; or &quot;hostile architecture&quot; (like unsleepable benches) is a better analogy, reserving anti-personnel for those cases where computers are used in genuinely dangerous ways. Like the Chinese ethnicity-recognizing security cameras.

I love term how it plays on the words and the negative association we have with anti-personell mines<p>If we could have a ban on anti-personell computers…

anti-personal computing: data collection, closed ecosystem, dark patterns, opaque programs, central control<p>anti-personnel computing: the use of a computing system to target, harm, control or neutralize individuals