| > Under those conditions I feel that it becomes pretty hard to defend these apps. The problem is that there are precious little alternatives. This article focused on Christians as a primary user of these tools. Put yourself in a Christian's shoes for a minute. You, being a Christian, are convinced your impulses and desires lead you to what is often harmful to yourself and those around you, and most importantly dishonoring to a God who you are convinced is honorable and good. You don't want to just say "no internet", but much content on the internet is so very well tailored to those impulses and desires. You are often presented with content that requires an immediate internal fight, and you know that some of those fights don't turn out the way you want. Look, when you are committed to fighting, you'll reach for any tool at hand. I'm not going to wait for a tank to magically appear for me when someone throws a punch at me. Unfortunately even though these churches are using tools with privacy issues, at the end of the day: it's what is available. And, the fact that the whole concern of personal privacy is often times at odds with the bigger fight doesn't help. |
I think this makes sense if you are trying to fight this, find this solution, and determine it is right for you. However, it feels like the "tool chooser" in many of these scenarios is different from the "tool user". A world that was geared towards individuals that wanted to fight their own impulses might create an app that just shut down your phone when you looked at questionable material, or charged you (like a "cursing jar" app). These apps instead seem to be "observer-centric", not "observed-centric". As such, it appears that oftentimes this is not the tool someone is reaching for, but the tool that is being handed out, if that makes sense. Clearly there exist other solutions to these "problems" (without getting into arguing whether this should be considered a problem or not). This honestly just feels like a lazy means of enforcement for the "accountability partner". In other words, the problem being solved here doesn't necessarily feel like it's "help me get over this", but rather "make helping me less of a burden on someone who's job is to help me, by letting them just look at an email at the end of the day."