Technology

Good response. It seems to me that both parties here don't really have fully coherent arguments. There is indeed a tech-libertarian bent to the arguments made by Cory Doctorow, which is not always compatible with a how a Marxist analysis would approach this topic. On the other hand, the critique also seems to stray too far into moralism and the idea of expressing your ethics through consumption, which, again, is not the dialectical-materialist outlook. In fact it has somewhat of a superstitious feel to it, like you are incurring "bad karma" by using certain products.

For example: In the piece they mention using What's App being problematic because Meta is problematic. That is a moralistic argument. A more practical reason why you shouldn't use What's App is security and data privacy - backdoors for intelligence agencies, and the fact that companies like Google, Meta or Apple are embedded with the security state. And it depends on what you use it for. Context matters. Using it discuss revolutionary organizing - maybe not a great idea; using it for a parent discussion group about your kid's school - probably fine. It's not so much what you use but how you use it.