Forget about smartphones for a moment; with minimal exceptions, he doesn't use the web interactively (https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html). That very much makes him a "relic", and detached from so much knowledge, the Zeitgeist of the times.
Good luck getting people to adopt to this behavior, when we are so massively leveraged by what we can look up on the web. It works to an extent for him because of where he's been situated since 1970, but try telling a kid who's not in The Athens of America (the Boston area) that he should cut himself off from most of the world's useful, and cheaply obtained info, and you're not likely to get many sales.
I don't follow. How does supporting RMS' ideals imply you have to adopt his computing habits to the fullest? I don't recall him ever making such a claim. His is mostly to avoid profiling and non-free JavaScript, but not something he insists everyone advocating free software to do.
One point is that his take on the "technological vastness of the future" we now live in has become so circumscribed that his advice WRT to is is getting less and less relevant.
At another level it's making him more and more ignorant, since the price for him to do the research necessary to chart wise paths in things like FSF/GNU governance is so high.
To draw back from the weeds, how can he be "The Hero the Internet Needs" when he is so disconnected from it? Per the essay, his argument has no nuance, it is to not be a part of this thing which, at least to my paranoid mindset, is indeed just as dangerous as portrayed, but which offers vast benefits for being (a careful) part of. Especially for the vast majority of us who, aren't, you know, (any more) a part of the MIT community or the like.
ADDED: Maybe to draw back even further, he's not wise; that doesn't disqualify him from being A Hero of the Internet, but it's a significant thing.
I still don't follow. Most noteworthy computer scientists, programmers and hackers have workflows that are totally heterodox or outside the norm. That doesn't make them any less authoritative or informed.
He definitely is informed on the subject, too. You can tell from his constant political notes and regularly updated boycotts or calls to action. He's active enough that he understands much of the web's giants from third-party sources or observation without having to directly use any services himself. Or are you suggesting that one cannot understand and criticize Facebook or Twitter without being a regular user? What a puerile and ludicrous assertion.
He's not disconnected from the Internet, nor the Web. He merely limits his exposure to it. Again, does one need to be intimately involved in their social media profiles to have the necessary prerequisites to speak against it?
I further do not understand how heterodox computing habits make the free software message any less relevant. What is so grand about the web that such a conclusion should be derived? SaaS? Non-free JavaScript? He voices out against those.
Good luck getting people to adopt to this behavior, when we are so massively leveraged by what we can look up on the web. It works to an extent for him because of where he's been situated since 1970, but try telling a kid who's not in The Athens of America (the Boston area) that he should cut himself off from most of the world's useful, and cheaply obtained info, and you're not likely to get many sales.