WhatsApp and the Domestication of Users
I&#x27;m extremely weary of using the term &#x27;domestication&#x27;.<p>In social sciences and evolutionary biology, &#x27;domestication&#x27; has a specific meaning which has changed over time.<p>Past definitions of domestication put emphasis on the who was the lead partner in the relationship. Modern insights, however, have shifted that definition towards recognizing domestication as a mutual relationship in which both partners gain benefits.<p>Moreover, domestication is specifically defined as a mutual relationship with one organism exerting influence over the care and reproduction of another organism.<p>The dynamic described by the author isn&#x27;t a mutual relationship, as demonstrated in the blogpost, nor a relationship having - obviously - &quot;care&quot; or &quot;reproduction&quot; are at its core.<p>Morever, this sounds a lot like hyperbole:<p>&gt; WhatsApp rose by trapping previously-free beings in their corral and changing their habits to create dependence on masters. Over time, this made it difficult or impossible to return to their previous lifestyle.<p>Okay, so this is where I&#x27;m going to play advocate of the devil.<p>What does the author mean with &quot;previously-free&quot; exactly? Are users being actively corralled like cattle into an enclosure? Or is that figure of speech to drive a point home about the importance of FOSS in the second part of the article?<p>&gt; Free software is a necessary but sometimes insufficient requirement to build domestication immunity.<p>There is no such thing as &quot;domestication immunity&quot;. That doesn&#x27;t exist.<p>Species evolve over multiple generations towards a mutually beneficial relationship, usually driven by environmental circumstances e.g. dogs and cats are massively &quot;successful&quot; species for the simple sake that their domestication ensured their survival across generations, whereas wild variants are less &quot;successful&quot; (e.g. bobcats or lynxes) and have become endangered because they didn&#x27;t adapt to a changing environment over tens of thousands of years.<p>Domestication is an emerging evolutionary trait. It&#x27;s not something any species is  &quot;immune&quot; against.<p>Language matters. Whenever biological or evolutionary terms are used to explain market dynamics, that raises a few red flags with me.<p>Of course, there&#x27;s a problem. WhatsApp is part of a larger industrial complex which specifically aims to wholesale capture markets, root out competition and accumulate wealth on an unprecedented scale.<p>The best comparison you can make between large tech companies and the past would be the Dutch East Indian Company which was a proto-conglomerate, a megacorporation and example of an early-modern corporate model of a vertically integrated global supply chain. [1]<p>The same criticisms espoused in the blogpost - restrictions of freedom, alleged violence - were made against the VOC as well: monopolisation, exploitation, colonisation, violence and slavery. [2]<p>None of this is new from a historic perspective. It&#x27;s just the same dynamics emerging again, but in a digital space which spills over and fundamentally affects the lives of countless of individuals in ways that couldn&#x27;t be foreseen.<p>Rather then looking at the larger picture of how these large corporations operate and their uncanny semblance with past predecessors which yield valuable historic lessons, the author double downs on the importance of &quot;free software&quot; as a measure against these practices.<p>I&#x27;m weary of such principled takes on &quot;free software&quot; as well.<p>&gt; With user domestication, providing useful software to users is a means to the end of exploiting them. The alternative is simple: make serving users the end in and of itself.<p>It sounds nice in theory, but it&#x27;s really a veiled reformulation of Kant&#x27;s Categorical Imperative. [3] Many philosphers - Schoppenhauer and Kierkegaard - have shown that such categorical and principled takes can, paradoxically, lose their value as well.<p>Why would &quot;make serving users the end in and of itself&quot; be a thing? What does this even mean? Why would I want to serve users for the sake of serving users? Isn&#x27;t that a circular argument that carries absolutely no value in itself?<p>The concept of freedom only gains importance when you tie it to the human condition, to human goals, incentives and motives. To the things that makes humans human. Freedom and free software helps empower people to act on their own dreams, their own path in life,... Whether it&#x27;s writing a book, starting a small business, making art, starting a family, choosing where to live,... without some anonymous corporation comprising those wishes for the sake of profit.<p>As soon as you start to think about this in concrete terms, it should become clear that slapping free software licenses on codebases alone isn&#x27;t going to save the world either. And it&#x27;s extremely important to recognize that as well.<p>Whether you like it or not, how humanity will have to confront big tech corporations and their global impact has surpassed the notions of the importance of IRC, Matrix or XMPP over WhatsApp quite a long time ago.<p>For sure, it&#x27;s important to promote the existence of alternatives and raise awareness. Absolutely. But the entire &#x27;user domestication&#x27; perspective takes it one notch too far of the mark.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dutch_East_India_Company" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dutch_East_India_Company</a>
[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dutch_East_India_Company#Colonialism,_monopoly_and_violence" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dutch_East_India_Company#Colon...</a>
[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Categorical_imperative" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Categorical_imperative</a>