4 ms·

I'm finding it rather unlikely that decentralized institutions like blogs, forums (the PHPbb kind, not subreddits), personal websites will disappear as a class.

I'm finding it rather unlikely that decentralized institutions like blogs, forums (the PHPbb kind, not subreddits), personal websites will disappear as a class. What has been happening is that people have taken the parts of their communication that does not require such tools into the more convenient walled gardens of Facebook, Twitter and Reddit -- commercial entities that (for perfectly valid commercial reasons) focus on the 80% of communications that they can service with 20% of the work. If these behemoths were really trying to become universal content archives, they'd behave very differently. I don't think they're losing any sleep over the existence of 4chan, Dreamwidth or Simple Machines Forum; it's a different world, and not one they could easily make any money in. They have centralized the internet to the extent that helps making them money and no step further. I wouldn't be surprised if states start playing this game, but if government IT so far has been any indication, the results won't last long. Most likely, servers in rogue countries will be used for all sufficiently hot potatoes (just as Library Genesis and Sci-Hub are operating from Russia but used all over the world), whereas the rest of online activity that doesn't fit well into the big walled gardens will keep happening semi-anonymously as it is now. Governments will probably keep downloading and hoarding everything, but this has been going on for years and everyone just adapted. Downloading is but a first step on the long road to controlling (and, unlike the former, the latter cannot easily be automated). Encryption bans will be undermined in practice by steganography, surveillance by fake data, and censorship by various forms of illegibilization. I'm not saying it will be a great world to live in...

jlokier 6y ago
> into the more convenient walled gardens of Facebook, Twitter and Reddit I don't think "convenience" explains it. Take for example talking with the local group of emergency food delivery volunteers. I picked that example because if you really need to talk with them, it's not optional. I can't avoid Facebook to do that. It's not a convenience issue. The local group is on Facebook, so I have to use Facebook to achieve my task. There isn't a "less convenient" alternative for me to use, if I need to talk to those people as a group. I could try phoning someone in the group, or emailing. That might get something to happen. But it won't let me achieve the basic task, which is to communicate with a particular group of people, i.e. all of them identified by some common interest. The alternatives will just let me talk to one person who is connected to the group, with a different effect. Well, that's just my side. But can we say the reason the group is on Facebook is due to convenience for the people who created the group? It's arguable, but I think probably not any more. Most likely, the group was formed on Facebook because the people forming it were already on Facebook due to similar network effect pressures for other things they got involved in at some time, and for this new group, if they picked a different platform, a lot of people they want to reach wouldn't have the same level of access to the service they aim to provide. The task for them was to pick a platform lots of local people could realistically join. If they had picked some forum on a private domain, or even a mailing list these days, realistically it wouldn't have been as effective for the service they are aiming to provide locally. So it's network effects over many layers, and I don't think it's accurate to sum that up as convenience any more.
- generationP 6y ago
  That one's a good example, though I'd still argue that such cases are rare. I'm pretty sure that, at least as a consumer (if not as a volunteer) you could communicate with such a local group through email. Last time I've been asked to join a facebook group, I've said I didn't have an account and everyone switched to a mailing list administered via google in no time. (Though I was not the only one.) Pretty sure a bunch of other alternatives would have been possible if google didn't work nicely. Over the last half-year of online academic events, I've seen at least half a dozen different online services used (Zoom, Zulip, Gather.town, google hangouts, Cisco Webex and probably a bunch I don't remember). Most of us users don't particularly like to, but can (without serious tears) learn a new tool when it comes up and turns out to be more suited. As it comes to reach, don't forget that email has probably the greatest reach of any service around.
  - jlokier 6y ago
    > Last time I've been asked to join a facebook group, I've said I didn't have an account and everyone switched to a mailing list administered via google in no time. That's amazing. I've seen similar things the other way around. Someone didn't use Facebook. People didn't switch; they got left out and forgotten. Another one was Google Groups (a type of mailing list). Someone didn't want to use a Google account. They couldn't figure out how to subscribe. Was the group willing to switch to another provider? No of course not. In the end an admin manually subscribed the person with their non-Google address, but if that hadn't been possible, the group would have let them go rather than switch service. I think it depends on how much the group wants to accommodate everyone who wants to be in it, and what the mix of people is. Also whether it depends on additional tools such as Facebook Events. If it's a fun social group that you're interested in joining, where the people don't particularly care who is in it, they're probably not going to change what they do. That's fairly obvious when the group aren't your friends (yet). Less obviously, I've seen it happens among friends too, where someone not on Facebook gradually gets left out and forgotten from things like party invitations. > Over the last half-year of online academic events, I've seen at least half a dozen different online services used (Zoom, Zulip, Gather.town, google hangouts, Cisco Webex and probably a bunch I don't remember). Most of us users don't particularly like to, but can (without serious tears) learn a new tool when it comes up and turns out to be more suited. I've seen the same thing this summer. (Some of those tools have awful data protection issues and permissions to do things they shouldn't on your computer, yet I've installed and used them anyway. When it's a job interview you don't really have a choice.) The above list shows us Facebook doesn't have a monopoly. But I don't count them as great examples of freely leaving behind walled gardens either. It's more like, there are more walled gardens. You don't get a choice which tool to use. You must use whatever tool the group has chosen before you join it, and they are very unlikely to change tool for a new joiner. > As it comes to reach, don't forget that email has probably the greatest reach of any service around. Yes and no. Everyone uses email, but many only use it inside Gmail, which is a bit of a mess if you're subscribed to a bunch of mailing lists, and trying to keep track of events you've been invited to.

jlokier 6y ago

> into the more convenient walled gardens of Facebook, Twitter and Reddit I don't think "convenience" explains it. Take for example talking with the local group of emergency food delivery volunteers. I picked that example because if you really need to talk with them, it's not optional. I can't avoid Facebook to do that. It's not a convenience issue. The local group is on Facebook, so I have to use Facebook to achieve my task. There isn't a "less convenient" alternative for me to use, if I need to talk to those people as a group. I could try phoning someone in the group, or emailing. That might get something to happen. But it won't let me achieve the basic task, which is to communicate with a particular group of people, i.e. all of them identified by some common interest. The alternatives will just let me talk to one person who is connected to the group, with a different effect. Well, that's just my side. But can we say the reason the group is on Facebook is due to convenience for the people who created the group? It's arguable, but I think probably not any more. Most likely, the group was formed on Facebook because the people forming it were already on Facebook due to similar network effect pressures for other things they got involved in at some time, and for this new group, if they picked a different platform, a lot of people they want to reach wouldn't have the same level of access to the service they aim to provide. The task for them was to pick a platform lots of local people could realistically join. If they had picked some forum on a private domain, or even a mailing list these days, realistically it wouldn't have been as effective for the service they are aiming to provide locally. So it's network effects over many layers, and I don't think it's accurate to sum that up as convenience any more.

generationP 6y ago
That one's a good example, though I'd still argue that such cases are rare. I'm pretty sure that, at least as a consumer (if not as a volunteer) you could communicate with such a local group through email. Last time I've been asked to join a facebook group, I've said I didn't have an account and everyone switched to a mailing list administered via google in no time. (Though I was not the only one.) Pretty sure a bunch of other alternatives would have been possible if google didn't work nicely. Over the last half-year of online academic events, I've seen at least half a dozen different online services used (Zoom, Zulip, Gather.town, google hangouts, Cisco Webex and probably a bunch I don't remember). Most of us users don't particularly like to, but can (without serious tears) learn a new tool when it comes up and turns out to be more suited. As it comes to reach, don't forget that email has probably the greatest reach of any service around.
- jlokier 6y ago
  > Last time I've been asked to join a facebook group, I've said I didn't have an account and everyone switched to a mailing list administered via google in no time. That's amazing. I've seen similar things the other way around. Someone didn't use Facebook. People didn't switch; they got left out and forgotten. Another one was Google Groups (a type of mailing list). Someone didn't want to use a Google account. They couldn't figure out how to subscribe. Was the group willing to switch to another provider? No of course not. In the end an admin manually subscribed the person with their non-Google address, but if that hadn't been possible, the group would have let them go rather than switch service. I think it depends on how much the group wants to accommodate everyone who wants to be in it, and what the mix of people is. Also whether it depends on additional tools such as Facebook Events. If it's a fun social group that you're interested in joining, where the people don't particularly care who is in it, they're probably not going to change what they do. That's fairly obvious when the group aren't your friends (yet). Less obviously, I've seen it happens among friends too, where someone not on Facebook gradually gets left out and forgotten from things like party invitations. > Over the last half-year of online academic events, I've seen at least half a dozen different online services used (Zoom, Zulip, Gather.town, google hangouts, Cisco Webex and probably a bunch I don't remember). Most of us users don't particularly like to, but can (without serious tears) learn a new tool when it comes up and turns out to be more suited. I've seen the same thing this summer. (Some of those tools have awful data protection issues and permissions to do things they shouldn't on your computer, yet I've installed and used them anyway. When it's a job interview you don't really have a choice.) The above list shows us Facebook doesn't have a monopoly. But I don't count them as great examples of freely leaving behind walled gardens either. It's more like, there are more walled gardens. You don't get a choice which tool to use. You must use whatever tool the group has chosen before you join it, and they are very unlikely to change tool for a new joiner. > As it comes to reach, don't forget that email has probably the greatest reach of any service around. Yes and no. Everyone uses email, but many only use it inside Gmail, which is a bit of a mess if you're subscribed to a bunch of mailing lists, and trying to keep track of events you've been invited to.