@3e3ce96c for me, i think about the relative value that accessing and making use of something will bring. i feel it's also important to distinguish between personal / professional, as those are obviously two very different areas that bring a lot of varying factors into the equation. 

for instance, to reuse the two examples you gave, i personally use discord as a means for community because I've managed to find a few spaces there for myself. which, being someone for whom outgoing and social behavior isn't default, is precious to me, enough to outweigh a loooot of the other stuff. but i don't really use it for any work related purposes because i don't exactly have a need for it in that capacity. but we have threat intel teammates who absolutely do use it (obv in addition to stuff like slack, forums, etc) for that purpose and i imagine it would be a bit of a hindrance for them in some ways to restrict themselves from even having a presence there.

and on the AI front, i don't use any of that in any context (moral, ethical, distrust, etc). we also have a general block at work for a lot of AI-related sites for obvious reasons, which would put limitations on the usage even if i were interested in it. but then here, i think this gets into another question to ask yourself, which is are you looking at it from a user standpoint or a technical standpoint? meaning, do you feel fomo because of not using it like everyone else seems to be doing or is it because you feel like you're leaving an important knowledge pathway unexplored?

i think it's also worth mentioning that these things aren't inherently a binary in terms of privacy and you're more equipped than most to be able to use tools and concepts at your disposal to minimize any sort of privacy leakage. 

 @5412db58 hm, all good points, thank you. 

It's mostly personal, but I do worry that not engaging with some of this tech more deeply puts me at a familiarity disadvantage, whereas being an enthusiastic early-adopter has served me well pretty much my entire life. 

But either I know the price of early adoption better now, or there are new prices in place for it, as far as data goes. So I go back and forth quite a bit.

Will have to think some more on what you said, thank you.