4 ms·

The obvious problem with a title like "technofeudalism" is it sounds prejudicial. Something like historical feudalism was troubling because people couldn't just

by roenxi 3y ago

The obvious problem with a title like "technofeudalism" is it sounds prejudicial. Something like historical feudalism was troubling because people couldn't just walk away from it. A string of fiefdoms is actually a pretty decent organisational model as long as you don't have to inhabit ones that are hostile to your interests. At the technical level it is trivial to set up competitors and it remains the case that nobody needs to use these sites. I don't have a Twitter account, so over the years I have been more or less locked out of using it, in fact. These sites are fine.

sabellito 3y ago
Your argument is incorrect in regards to many of these social networks. Wanna be a photographer? You must have an Instagram account. Want to talk to some government services? You must use WhatsApp. Want to sell something used? You must have a Facebook account. Want to read what your politicians have to say? You must have a twitter account. Want to see the phone number of a restaurant? Gotta go over to Google maps. Also, no real alternative to YouTube's content. And so on and so forth. The argument "just don't use it" is disconnected from reality.
- roenxi 3y ago
  That list is mostly false. I've used government services, sold used things on the internet, read what politicians say (in detail) and bought food online without using those sites. Twitter is in fact a bad place to engage with politicians because, by design, you only get soundbites. It is much more informative to go straight to the parliamentary records if you care about politics. > Also, no real alternative to YouTube's content. About 40-50% of what I watch is being sloooowly driven off YouTube because they don't like right wing opinions. They all have duplicate channels on multiple sites. And even a lot of the non-political stuff is starting to appear in a few places because it makes more economic sense.
  - lentil_soup 3y ago
    that's great that you were able to do all of that, but that's not true for everyone. You can't deny that for a lot of people these networks are their day to day, and have become a necessity. Just like someone can make an effort and live off-the-grid just fine, it doesn't mean it is possible for everyone to do it.
  - Draiken 3y ago
    You claim the list is false and provide nothing of substance to back that up. Assuming everyone simply chooses to use those services and could stop doing so in a whim is extremely naive. If you want to participate in society today, many of those services are mandatory. Even if individuals can opt out, they can't force institutions or others to do the same, leaving them stranded. Maybe you in particular don't care about being disconnected from all that, but that is not an argument that can be generalized. The problems caused by the network effect can't be solved by individual choices.
- acheron 3y ago
  Not sure if serious, but literally none of those are true.
rsolva 3y ago
You might not have to use these platforms, but tell a random parent to stop using Facebook and Messenger cold turkey, and they'll tell you that a lot of their kids activities (both school and otherwise) is mainly being coordinated on Facebook. The same with politics and other core societal activities – at least here in Norway. It was never a good idea to use these services as a core communication infrastructure in the first place, but it happened non the less. It will take considerable effort to turn this around, and we should not blame the average user, but the tech companies using "growth hacking" and other unsavory tactics to lock people into their walled gardens. Also the governments for not taking action and regulating this space earlier.
- roenxi 3y ago
  To be honest, you're making it sound easier to quit Facebook than I believe it is. Humans have a multi-millennia history of successfully raising children without Facebook. We know it is possible. Facebook is more convenient than the alternatives, that much is obvious. This is a strength of fiefdoms - they can be very effective. But there aren't really any significant things holding you to them and you can drop them if you think the value isn't there. Your argument is you can't drop them because they provide more value than they cost you. Fair enough; but that doesn't mean you can't. It means you won't because they are better than the alternatives. That isn't a bad thing, for anyone. > It will take considerable effort to turn this around, and we should not blame the average user... They're enabling it. I don't see anything blameworthy happening, but if there was the users would shoulder most of the blame.
  - ajb 3y ago
    It's incorrect to say that they provide more value than they cost you. They cost most users more to leave than they cost to stay. That's not the same as providing that value, they've simply found a away to become a gatekeeper to the value people get from their social contacts.
    - roenxi 3y ago
      The cost to leave Facebook is precisely the cost of providing services equivalent to the value of Facebook's offering. There isn't an exit tax. In fact, I'd speculate the cost is exactly that someone would have to ring up their friends every so often and ask what is going on in their lives. As costs go we're delving into some trivial ones.
epups 3y ago
It is not always trivial to switch. There are realistically two companies dominating phone OS, and either one comes with their poisoned pills. More importantly, I think what he is referring to here is the economical subjugation of the rest of society to tech, and to a very few tech players at that. An oligopoly might be better than a monopoly, but not much.
mschuster91 3y ago
> Something like historical feudalism was troubling because people couldn't just walk away from it. A string of fiefdoms is actually a pretty decent organisational model as long as you don't have to inhabit ones that are hostile to your interests. The problem is, online discourse (especially about politics) has gotten extremely limited over the last decade in where it's taking place - it's either Twitter, Reddit or Facebook. Politics journalists are still primarily going off of what's trending on Twitter, and "generic" journalists copy off of Reddit, and boomers off of Facebook. The early days of the "modern Internet" era were more accessible - one had blogs, many of them selfhosted, web link rings, newsletters and whatnot - but spam and other rampant abuse (e.g. DDoS attacks, troll campaigns) made participating in discourse outside of the big "walled gardens" so incredibly tedious that barely anyone does that any more, and technologies/platforms like IRC or Usenet failed to keep up with technology progress or kneecapped themselves (remember Freenode?).
mantas 3y ago
Can you really walk away from Facebook and other big tech? You can run away into the mountains just like peasants did. But surviving there ain’t easy, in both cases. And technical part is the easy thing in setting up a competitor.
bluetomcat 3y ago
The name doesn't matter that much. In essence, it is centralised wealth extraction on a mass scale. The "rent" extracted is disproportional to the value of the service and their operational costs.
tmcb 3y ago
This is the modern equivalent of "if you don't like living in society, go build a cabin in the woods".
npteljes 3y ago
Facebook and co are also hard to walk away from, because even if you never registered, third party websites and other sources still sent data to them that they profiled. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_profile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_profile

by roenxi 3y ago

sabellito 3y ago

Your argument is incorrect in regards to many of these social networks. Wanna be a photographer? You must have an Instagram account. Want to talk to some government services? You must use WhatsApp. Want to sell something used? You must have a Facebook account. Want to read what your politicians have to say? You must have a twitter account. Want to see the phone number of a restaurant? Gotta go over to Google maps. Also, no real alternative to YouTube's content. And so on and so forth. The argument "just don't use it" is disconnected from reality.

roenxi 3y ago
That list is mostly false. I've used government services, sold used things on the internet, read what politicians say (in detail) and bought food online without using those sites. Twitter is in fact a bad place to engage with politicians because, by design, you only get soundbites. It is much more informative to go straight to the parliamentary records if you care about politics. > Also, no real alternative to YouTube's content. About 40-50% of what I watch is being sloooowly driven off YouTube because they don't like right wing opinions. They all have duplicate channels on multiple sites. And even a lot of the non-political stuff is starting to appear in a few places because it makes more economic sense.
- lentil_soup 3y ago
  that's great that you were able to do all of that, but that's not true for everyone. You can't deny that for a lot of people these networks are their day to day, and have become a necessity. Just like someone can make an effort and live off-the-grid just fine, it doesn't mean it is possible for everyone to do it.
- Draiken 3y ago
  You claim the list is false and provide nothing of substance to back that up. Assuming everyone simply chooses to use those services and could stop doing so in a whim is extremely naive. If you want to participate in society today, many of those services are mandatory. Even if individuals can opt out, they can't force institutions or others to do the same, leaving them stranded. Maybe you in particular don't care about being disconnected from all that, but that is not an argument that can be generalized. The problems caused by the network effect can't be solved by individual choices.
acheron 3y ago
Not sure if serious, but literally none of those are true.

rsolva 3y ago

You might not have to use these platforms, but tell a random parent to stop using Facebook and Messenger cold turkey, and they'll tell you that a lot of their kids activities (both school and otherwise) is mainly being coordinated on Facebook. The same with politics and other core societal activities – at least here in Norway. It was never a good idea to use these services as a core communication infrastructure in the first place, but it happened non the less. It will take considerable effort to turn this around, and we should not blame the average user, but the tech companies using "growth hacking" and other unsavory tactics to lock people into their walled gardens. Also the governments for not taking action and regulating this space earlier.

roenxi 3y ago
To be honest, you're making it sound easier to quit Facebook than I believe it is. Humans have a multi-millennia history of successfully raising children without Facebook. We know it is possible. Facebook is more convenient than the alternatives, that much is obvious. This is a strength of fiefdoms - they can be very effective. But there aren't really any significant things holding you to them and you can drop them if you think the value isn't there. Your argument is you can't drop them because they provide more value than they cost you. Fair enough; but that doesn't mean you can't. It means you won't because they are better than the alternatives. That isn't a bad thing, for anyone. > It will take considerable effort to turn this around, and we should not blame the average user... They're enabling it. I don't see anything blameworthy happening, but if there was the users would shoulder most of the blame.
- ajb 3y ago
  It's incorrect to say that they provide more value than they cost you. They cost most users more to leave than they cost to stay. That's not the same as providing that value, they've simply found a away to become a gatekeeper to the value people get from their social contacts.
  - roenxi 3y ago
    The cost to leave Facebook is precisely the cost of providing services equivalent to the value of Facebook's offering. There isn't an exit tax. In fact, I'd speculate the cost is exactly that someone would have to ring up their friends every so often and ask what is going on in their lives. As costs go we're delving into some trivial ones.

epups 3y ago

It is not always trivial to switch. There are realistically two companies dominating phone OS, and either one comes with their poisoned pills. More importantly, I think what he is referring to here is the economical subjugation of the rest of society to tech, and to a very few tech players at that. An oligopoly might be better than a monopoly, but not much.

mschuster91 3y ago

> Something like historical feudalism was troubling because people couldn't just walk away from it. A string of fiefdoms is actually a pretty decent organisational model as long as you don't have to inhabit ones that are hostile to your interests. The problem is, online discourse (especially about politics) has gotten extremely limited over the last decade in where it's taking place - it's either Twitter, Reddit or Facebook. Politics journalists are still primarily going off of what's trending on Twitter, and "generic" journalists copy off of Reddit, and boomers off of Facebook. The early days of the "modern Internet" era were more accessible - one had blogs, many of them selfhosted, web link rings, newsletters and whatnot - but spam and other rampant abuse (e.g. DDoS attacks, troll campaigns) made participating in discourse outside of the big "walled gardens" so incredibly tedious that barely anyone does that any more, and technologies/platforms like IRC or Usenet failed to keep up with technology progress or kneecapped themselves (remember Freenode?).

mantas 3y ago

Can you really walk away from Facebook and other big tech? You can run away into the mountains just like peasants did. But surviving there ain’t easy, in both cases. And technical part is the easy thing in setting up a competitor.

bluetomcat 3y ago

The name doesn't matter that much. In essence, it is centralised wealth extraction on a mass scale. The "rent" extracted is disproportional to the value of the service and their operational costs.

tmcb 3y ago

This is the modern equivalent of "if you don't like living in society, go build a cabin in the woods".

npteljes 3y ago

Facebook and co are also hard to walk away from, because even if you never registered, third party websites and other sources still sent data to them that they profiled. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_profile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_profile