> To be online, many now admit, is to be endlessly manipulated and exploited. In December, Oxford University Press declared rage bait to be the word of the year, noting that use of the term had tripled over the previous 12 months. The lexical spike represented a heightened awareness that monetized social accounts churn out bad-faith takes and extremist content.
A side effect of rapid technological change is that there are now multiple generations who didn't experience the pre-monetized internet.
It's like we've hit a tipping point where enshittification etc. are allowed to thrive because there's no longer a critical mass of people who know from first-hand experience that things don't have to be this bad.
It's become easy to pacify young people with the meme that older people didnt really have a better internet, they're remembering the past as better than it actually was.
seems like the only way to do that is for the spaces and services we use to charge fees instead of relying on ads. but also they'd need to be non-profit and well governed or else they will enshittify.
not saying its not possible but people are pretty hooked on the internet being "free" (not realizing they are just the product)
it does seem like the time is right for something like the fediverse except that its like 20% too complicated for regular people to understand...
So like maybe something that is a verified humans only, publishing / sharing, social connection managing, community building platform that doesn't rely on huge cloud infra (you own your own data and host your own content) monstrosity, that you pay a nominal fee for so there is 0 ads allowed and a legal contract that forbids the company from selling your data ever.
no problem right? just sell it as real and "healthy" social web. (not social media dark patterns and infinite scrolling, actual human connection and community building.)
> To be online, many now admit, is to be endlessly manipulated and exploited. In December, Oxford University Press declared rage bait to be the word of the year, noting that use of the term had tripled over the previous 12 months. The lexical spike represented a heightened awareness that monetized social accounts churn out bad-faith takes and extremist content.
The irony.
Really, we need a non-monetized internet. The rest would fall into place. The fediverse honestly had the right ideas.
A side effect of rapid technological change is that there are now multiple generations who didn't experience the pre-monetized internet.
It's like we've hit a tipping point where enshittification etc. are allowed to thrive because there's no longer a critical mass of people who know from first-hand experience that things don't have to be this bad.
It's become easy to pacify young people with the meme that older people didnt really have a better internet, they're remembering the past as better than it actually was.
seems like the only way to do that is for the spaces and services we use to charge fees instead of relying on ads. but also they'd need to be non-profit and well governed or else they will enshittify.
not saying its not possible but people are pretty hooked on the internet being "free" (not realizing they are just the product)
it does seem like the time is right for something like the fediverse except that its like 20% too complicated for regular people to understand...
So like maybe something that is a verified humans only, publishing / sharing, social connection managing, community building platform that doesn't rely on huge cloud infra (you own your own data and host your own content) monstrosity, that you pay a nominal fee for so there is 0 ads allowed and a legal contract that forbids the company from selling your data ever.
no problem right? just sell it as real and "healthy" social web. (not social media dark patterns and infinite scrolling, actual human connection and community building.)
Starting over won't address human urges which got us here.