Every time I do tech support for my family I get very angry about people who whine about lacking "tech literacy".
90% of the stuff I have to teach them is how to navigate manipulative software and dark patterns. This has nothing to do with tech, but with capitalism. Tech is not complicated, it is just made maximally confusing on purpose to remove agency.
Better tech ed won't fix this.
I think of popups like spam calls.
At least where I live, almost every phone call is an attempt to manipulate the recipient into providing data that can be used against them. An unexpected message that is both needed and useful is so rare that people are conditioned by the system to ignore everything they did not have a good reason to anticipate.
We need better regulation of computer technology in addition to better instructional resources on how it works.
@shadowsminder @gsymon @lanzz @piegames Tech-literate people will know which popups they have to read, and which one they can ignore.
You encounter popups that you don't read all the time: EULAs, ads, newsletter signups, etc. But you know which one are interesting/out of place, and which one are not related to your current activity and can ignore.
For tech-illiterate people, even having to use the computer is juts a hurdle they have to go through to achieve their goal, and so are popups.
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