> That decision is being made by a person who you should be able to find and share your concern with.

Good point, and it generalizes to pretty much all the social problems "created by" tech. The technology is fine. Behind each misuse is a person or a group that commissioned said tech, and/or is applying it in malicious ways. Focusing on ills of technology, while ignoring the people wielding it for wrong, is just a distraction.

> Behind each misuse is a person or a group that commissioned said tech

How many cases of misuse implicates a structural flaw in a larger system? It's absurd to point the finger, over and over, at this or that "malicious" person. It's exhausting! They somehow keep getting incentivized to appear.

Yes, but! People, not systems, are the moral actors. And yes, while a lot of problems are more or less systemic, in many cases those systems have control levers that happen to be in the reach of a small number of people. Finally, pointing the fingers and creating ethical, social and legal pressure for people closest to control levers, is a form of systemic response too - it's adding a back flow to form a feedback loop.

Rejecting "technology" is, IMHO, a perfectly rational response to the typical layers of consultants, sales teams, and general lack of knowledge of the fundamentals of tech that result in the isses described above. You can't win.

Yes, but good luck getting those people to see things your way.

I would like to get journalists to see things my way, so we'd get a little less "oh look at the bad tech" and a little more of "look at the C-suite of companies X, Y and Z employing tech for bad" kind of articles, but I get the feeling that I won't get through to them either. Something about things your salary depends on not understanding, etc.

You don’t need to.

“I don’t use email anymore. I need you to communicate any important information about my child’s education to me through other means. Would you rather send notices home with my child or call my home phone?”

Or some variant thereof. “I reviewed the privacy policy and have serious concerns, no longer agree with the terms of use and cannot use this platform.” (I’m sure if you go read it it won’t even be a lie; all the ones I’ve seen have been awful.) Or “My phone broke and I can’t afford a new one so I can’t check my email.” Or “I’ve had a religious revelation and will no longer be making use of any technology created after 1970.”

Once someone has to make an active decision to contact you instead of just mass-spamming the entire school with a button press I guarantee nobody goes “Yeah, I really should call jacquesm and ask if he can bring coffee to the PTA meeting.”

You might be the first person to ask for an accommodation but it doesn’t mean that it can’t be done, just that it hasn’t.

My daughter is a bit younger, but I’ve never used the various platforms, Facebook pages, etc that all the daycares are trying to use. They figure it out. Hasn’t caused any problems yet.

> Once someone has to make an active decision to contact you instead of just mass-spamming the entire school with a button press I guarantee nobody goes “Yeah, I really should call jacquesm and ask if he can bring coffee to the PTA meeting.

Instead, they make the decision to call you at 3:30pm to inform you that your child needs picking up asap today when they realise your kid hasn't been picked up yet, whilst every other parent found out about the need to arrange an earlier pickup in advance via the after school club's mailing list.

This may be more inconvenient than receiving a few irrelevant emails. Other stuff like being the only kid not in fancy dress or sports kit because nobody would ring you about that even if they were competent at handling the essential stuff may only be inconvenient for your child, of course.

I agree it is a people problem but: the people are ignoring you and the tech is just asking for abuse and that tech too was implemented by a bunch of people who are ignoring you. So absent an outright block on all such messages with the significant risk that one day you'll miss something important there isn't all that much that you can do. Complaining certainly doesn't seem to work (at least: it hasn't worked for me) and the only thing that happened in terms of change is that there now are two portals (and two apps...) to be used because half the teachers refuses to switch to the new one. It is frankly incredible how little attention is given to usability and respect for the user when the user is part of a captive audience. Short of changing schools there is not much that you can do and that isn't an option for a variety of reasons.

Have you ever tried making this complaint? In the context of OP's comment about schools and technology, you will only ever get told "well, everyone else wants this". Sadly, this is true.