The author doesn't mean that the technologies weren't inevitable in the absolute sense. They mean that it was not inevitable that anyone should use those technologies. It's not inevitable that they will use Tiktok, and it is not inevitable for anyone, I've never used Tiktok, so the author is right in that regard.
If you disavow short form video as a medium altogether, something I'm strongly considering, then you can. It does mean you have to make sacrifices, for example Youtube doesn't let you disable their short form video feature so it is inevitable for people who choose they don't want to drop Youtube. That is still a choice though, so it is not truly inevitable.
The larger point is that there are always people pushing some sort of future, sketching it as inevitable. But the reality is that there always remains a choice, even if that choice means you have to make sacrifices.
The author is annoyed at people throwing the towel in the ring and declaring AI is inevitable, when the author apparently still sees a path to not tolerating AI. Unfortunately the author doesn't really constructively show that path, so the whole article is basically a luddite complaint.
Has that ever worked at scale in history?
This strikes me as the same as people who take a stand by not ordering from Amazon or not using whichever service, they make their life somewhat harder and the world doesn't notice.
Even worse, the people taking a stand signal to others that they do it, but most others think that the cost outweighs the benefit, and don't like being judged. Groups in which everyone signals and judges like that suck and devolve into purity spiraling, so few people sustain it, and the people taking a stand get bitter.
Yeah it has on occasion, you're right in that it usually doesn't have much of an effect but every once in a while it does. If there's enough of the self-sacrificing users they'll together save a business or a way of doing things. Like running Linux on consumer hardware, or using cash in retail stores.
They don't necessarily have to coordinate, they can use a thousand different linux distro's and literally never talk to each other, and still cause PC manufacturers to keep to a standardized boot process and largely documented hardware so that Linux remains viable.
If you disavow short form video as a medium altogether, something I'm strongly considering, then you can. It does mean you have to make sacrifices, for example Youtube doesn't let you disable their short form video feature so it is inevitable for people who choose they don't want to drop Youtube. That is still a choice though, so it is not truly inevitable.
The larger point is that there are always people pushing some sort of future, sketching it as inevitable. But the reality is that there always remains a choice, even if that choice means you have to make sacrifices.
The author is annoyed at people throwing the towel in the ring and declaring AI is inevitable, when the author apparently still sees a path to not tolerating AI. Unfortunately the author doesn't really constructively show that path, so the whole article is basically a luddite complaint.