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One can argue that replacing real-life relationships with digital ones is unhealthy. And digital lives are more easily monitored by governments -- not just the
by jhiska 9y ago
One can argue that replacing real-life relationships with digital ones is unhealthy.
And digital lives are more easily monitored by governments -- not just the American or European governments, which is already bad enough. This too is dangerous.
Being able to go into a community of like-minded people translates in the meat-world to meat communities where your neighbors might have a completely different perception of reality than each other. This too is problematic.
I understand now that there is no company behind it. It's open-source and developed with good intentions, but as the saying goes, the graveyard is full of good intentions. I deeply distrust anything that entices me to reveal personal data in a medium monitored by the secret police.
How much these objections weigh for you depends on your priorities. Non-corporate, open-sourced social-media isn't significantly different for me to assuage my very real Internet privacy terrors.
- kstrauser 9y ago> One can argue that replacing real-life relationships with digital ones is unhealthy. One can argue lots of things, but I think it's a crucial support network for people not near lots of like-minded others. What "real life" peer group is a trans kid in small town in Kansas supposed to hang out with and get support from?
- jhiska 9y agoThat is a fair point. I worry for what transpeople -- who lack meat-world social choices -- are enticed to reveal about themselves online to the secret police. Our governments' thugs are happy to lend an unsympathetic ear to their problems.
- kstrauser 9y agoThat's a fair point, too. And non-governmentally, there's nothing preventing Joe Neonazi from creating an LGBTQ-friendly-seeming instance to collect people to harass. One mitigating factor, though, is that there seems to be a wider disconnect between Mastodon IDs and real life IDs than there is between real life and Twitter. I have plenty of Mastodon friends who could be sitting at the next desk as I type this for all I know. Also, having multiple Mastodon accounts is seen as a perfectly normal and acceptable thing to do, so @joe@joefamily.name might post vastly different stuff than on their @jane@transfriendly.social.
- myaso 9y agoYou have a problem discovering people in real life if you have niche interests -- I was talking to a gay grad student and he explained how isolating it is outside major cities. Relying on organic social dynamics to do their job will get you nowhere. The chief concern for projects like this is can they gain enough traction to be useful. Also it's unhealthy to have expectations of absolute privacy, in private communication you rely that the contents are not leaked from one party -- with data driven platforms you give a little piece of information in return for a service. Hell, half the businesses on here can only work because it's possible to market to niche groups and for niche interests. This is peacetime if you ignore what is effectively a low intensity conflict for the West happening in the Middle East. If the country you are living in was mobilized for war you would have zero expectations for anything, individual concerns of autonomy are irrelevant at that point and with very good reason -- no gains made for individual privacy would remain in that situation anyways. The 'secret police' doesn't care since they are concerned with the willing and unwilling agents of other countries 'secret police' -- there are plenty of targets to fry before they ever bother with you, aiding and abetting their primary concerns is a quick way to move yourself up the list.