As anyone who remembers the 90s/00s can remember, the internet was supposed to liberate us. Free access to information meant everyone would be educated and informed, and able to freely communicate and organize.
That’s not what happened. Corporations turned it into a tool of oppression. Technology has never and will never save us from capitalism on its own. Since the early 1900s we’ve been capable of providing food, housing, and medical care to everyone but we don’t. Technology cannot change that.
Social media is a particularly vile tool. It allows corporations to totally shape the reality of people who use it. To the point where people are so divided it’s all but impossible to oppose the government.
Decentralized social media might be better, at least for now. But it’s still removing the human element from our lives. Instead of talking to each other we create little echo chambers for ourselves. The Fediverse will not fix that.
The only real solution is to reject social media entirely. Which was happening, but now I fear decentralized social media is pulling people back in.
The major benefit of distributed social media comes from one thing: no ads.
It’s the ad-supported business model that creates terrible incentives:
- to spy on the user in order to better guess what they might pay for
- to concoct algorithms that boost the user’s engagement using rage, anxiety, controversy
Virtual socializing does carry drawbacks, as you say. Particularly the problem of group bias reinforcement, i.e. echo chambers and bubbles. But the really bad externalities of modern corporate social media can be traced to one thing IMO: advertising.
Erm, but, uh… There’s nothing about decentralization that makes it inherently ad free. We currently have an ad-free network of sites, but we also used to have an ad-free web.
Decentralization does not solve this. The only reason there’s no ads here is that they haven’t arrived yet.
Not really. It’s mainly because the site belong to idealists and hosting is cheap because it’s text.
Not sure if this is what the previous user was getting at, but I think we should put it a different way: it’s not about whether or not the admins of a given site/instance refuse to host ads, but if they can meaningfully prevent ads from manifesting on their platform.
If there is money to extract from people, the advertisers will eventually arrive, invited or not.
On Reddit, for instance, I’d be willing to guess that the majority of ads were not formal ads, but rather astroturfed content from informal advertisers.
The only reason Lemmy is not seeing that (at least not so overtly) is because it’s still small and obscure. But security through obscurity is not really a winning strategy in the long run.
That’s fair but I think you’re both worrying a bit too much. Astroturfing is a problem, sure, but it’s a first-world problem compared to spyware-driven engagement-maximization algorithms.
Websites on webrings used to have ads too.
And there is some classism in enforcing the idea that these kinds is websites have to be self hosted with the cost borne by the admin only. Not everyone around the world has the combination of money, time, and computer access to self host.
I’ll spin up my own instance if necessary. Problem solved.
There’s nothing stopping ads from being added. Decentralized social media will be enshittified as much as any other technology thanks to the boundless greed of capitalists.
Much harder to pull off algorithmic ad tech when it’s genuinely decentralized. And if it happens here I’ll be gone and I won’t the only one.
Thankfully, there aren’t any ads here. Just the thought of it stresses me out, and when I get stressed out, I reach for a Morley cigarette to keep my cool. The toasted tobacco and asbestos filter make for a smoother smoke, which soothes the throat. 9 out of 10 anti-ad, Fediverse, activists choose Morleys to keep up their pep and vigor in the fight against advertisement.
This is why youtubes also went down the drain, must, earn, more, followers…
Except maybe news, most things are needed to be done only once (in the best of worlds), not regurgitating the same tutorial in different manners to gain cash.
Yep but important to note here that decentralized social media based on video is always going to be a challenge because of the hosting and bandwidth costs of video.
Is it though?
I mean it is probably impossible to replace youtube, but it’s based on the idea that more subscribers = good, more views is a good thing without any kind of restrictions.
In my fantasy world, someone making a video about say oil painting (because I like that) and puts up a magnificent one hour video on their own PC.
In my fantasy world, it won’t hit 100.000 views that week, but maybe 10.000 per year.
Totally serveable with a fix line.
Also, pooling bandwidth, like this incredible news channel (still in my fantasy world) that needs millions of downloads per day could be served by thousands of nice people sharing their bandwidth.
Well that’s how I see it, what do you think?
It’s an attractive vision. And yes, it’s probably even technically possible, the BitTorrent algorithm was designed for exactly this purpose.
Thanks.
I’m working on a decentralised sharing algorithm and it starts to feel quite mature. Gotta do some announcements I guess :-)
The only real solution is to reject social media entirely.
…you say on social media.
I understand why, but you’ve got to admit it’s ironic
I know it is. But that’s because social media has destroyed places where people used to get together in person and discuss these things.
Social media also allows people who would be isolated or in echo chambers in IRL friend and community groups to be exposed to diverse people and viewpoints. It’s a double edged sword. For me personally, I know the Internet was crucial in getting me out of my IRL bubble as a young adolescent
I have a number of friends who feel like socializing online saved their lives, largely because they are queer and grew up in small towns with no other visible queer folks around. Discovering that there were other people like them in the world kept them from feeling completely isolated.
It was similar for me as an LGBT+ person. Ironically, my internet was censored, but I found out about trans people through Scratch (.mit.edu) at the age of 13. Also found lots of YouTube videos that were helpful to me as an agnostic atheist surrounded by religious people.
Yes, I’d argue though that technology in itself is neutral. It’s the way people use it that is helpful or harmful. So it’s not a problem of tech in general, it’s the problem of our society that allowes for harmful uses and enshitification. When the whole world is on it’s way to a totalitarian regime run by the super rich, all technology is falling into the wrong hands and is going to seem very evil.
This is why I’m here. I’m a firm believer that there is no good or bad technology, it’s what we allow it to become. I have my friends, I break out of my echo chamber, I know where social media fits for me. I know it may be different for others, but as long as the fediverse remains neutral it’s on each of us individually to limit it
Enshittification comes from algorithm-driven profit seeking.
Not worried.
Hospitals helps, but it won’t solve the issue of death.
Death is a natural phenomenon that is totally inevitable. Social media is not. This comparison makes no sense.
Free access to information meant everyone would be educated and informed, and able to freely communicate and organize.
Could be, not would be. They still can be. But they won’t be.
Corporations turned it into a tool of oppression.
No the people turned it into a tool of distraction from the pain of life using the tools corporations were happy to provide.
Technology has never and will never save us from capitalism on its own.
Capitalism isn’t the reason that free access to information hasn’t educated and informed everyone. Exactly the same indifference to education and organisation would exist in the absence of capitalism. The limitation isn’t capitalism, the limitation is the suffering that life necessarily implies. In the face of relentless suffering, most people are not motivated to learn beyond what’s necessary to survive.
It’s a dopamine versus serotonin issue. People think they want to be happy, but that longing is more for purpose. Eating ice cream can make you happy, but learning to cook your own meals makes you a more component being able to provide for yourself and those around you.
Most modern luxuries are basically Skinner boxes at this point monetized in some way to keep us staring at it or consuming it.
We doom scroll at the expense of relationship building.
We door dash instead of have community gardens.
Instant gratification isn’t always and intrinsically bad, but the more the default it becomes, the less patient and competent people become.
Then you pile on decades of American exceptionalism and actively encouraging selfishness at the expense of a functioning society and the present state of things is hardly surprising.
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