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I hate the gaslighers who try to downplay this by putting into some BS "context". The situation with tech is abysmal right now. I do think it's fixable, though.
by gambler 5y ago
I hate the gaslighers who try to downplay this by putting into some BS "context". The situation with tech is abysmal right now. I do think it's fixable, though.
> What can we do or is it already too late to save the world from the big tech monster?
We have to use extreme lateral thinking and build systems that support themselves and over time outcompete garbage like social media and "crypto". Neither are long-term stable anyway.
One of the problems, though, is that this needs to be worked on over time. People who see the problem need places to cooperate. Social media is clearly not the place to do that, because pretty much by definition it is ran and inhabited by people who aren't interested in solving these kind of problems. (In fact, they are interesting in the opposite.)
One of my biggest regrets right now is that I spent too much time on my normal work in tech, while spending not enough time and effort on cultivating independent communities of people who actually think about stuff like this. It was easy to find interesting and interested people to cooperate with in late 90s and early 00s. Today it's really hard. Everything is filtered through social media. We are on social media right now.
Another problem is that we have no good conceptual vocabulary or an analytical framework to precisely talk about these problems. Everyone just repeats terms like "misinformation" and "censorship". Public conversations about this spin in place, going nowhere good. I understand (at least I think I understand) what you're talking about because I've already independently reaches the same conclusions. That's not enough to conceptually advance anywhere.
- mancerayder 5y ago>Everything is filtered through social media. We are on social media right now. What's an example of the anti-social media that fits the mould you seek? BBSes? email groups ? I agree about mindless repetition of terms like misinformation and censorship. These terms are used to attack political opposition rather than advance any progress.
- gambler 5y agoI define "social media" as anything that manipulates content visibility based on metrics that aren't related to the content itself or user's direct inputs. Because of deliberately deceptive terminology in play this definition will inevitably sound kooky. Yes, BBSes/forums, chats, NTP news groups and mailing lists are not "social media" in my book. It's important to note that the word "social" in social media was always a kind of marketing ploy.
- mancerayder 5y agoWould you include voting systems within threads and messages such as the one we're on, where visibility can be affected?
- gambler 5y agoAbsolutely. Like I said, we are on social media right now.
- joaogui1 5y agoI think that means Mastodon also doesn't count as a social media (not disagreeing)