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On the other hand these tools do allow individuals to connect and share. I see it like politics ( at least the way it's managed in the UK ) - democracy means e

On the other hand these tools do allow individuals to connect and share. I see it like politics ( at least the way it's managed in the UK ) - democracy means everyone get's to vote, leaflet door to door, politically organise etc. However there are ( in the non-online space ) strict regulations about money not being able to buy a larger voice - political spending is(was) strictly limited. You can't use broadcast media for political ads, apart from the government allocated slots..... The regulations haven't kept up with the digital world - but they need to. Looking at what unfettered money has done to US politics is all the incentive you need. One of the core problems is astroturfing is so easy online - money pretending to be people - in the end, I think the only solution is the loss of anonymity online - anonymity enables sock puppetry and astroturfing. ie if we want to keep people's freedoms online to say what they want ( but within the law ), but at the same time stop money drowning out all voices, then you have to know what's automated and what's real - and people need to be held accountable for what they say or do - that's how the real world works. You don't need authoritarian laws regulating content - social peer pressure is quite effective - after all democracy is the tyranny of the majority.

freehorse 2y ago
Blogging platforms also allow people to connect and share, but are prob less profitable. A lot of the role of blogs was taken over by social media, this created larger networks but with a lot of downsides. But these downsides are not inherent to all the online platforms where people can connect and share.
- Clubber 2y ago
  Blogging is typically unidirectional, like TV or radio. You get to hear what someone says, but unless they turn on comments and actually read them, you don't get to have a conversation.
  - freehorse 2y ago
    In the blogosphere (at least the part I was in) most used to have comments turned on, and at very least pingbacks were definitely common practice . There used to be communities around blogs with similar theme/views and usually blogs had a sidebar with links to other blogs, linking to the newest articles there. People used to write and refer to what others wrote. I assume there must have been also isolated blogs, as there are practically isolated people in social media, but there were definitely also very vibrant communities.
    - surge 2y ago
      So did Usenet, no one cares. They simply require you go to 18 different sites to follow what friends are up to. Tumblr would just be the ad tech company instead, or the blog hosting company, for a while it was MySpace. It's either free and supported by ads, or self hosted or comes with a cost and doesn't gain mass adoption. When did the comments here get to the point they can't think past 1st order magnitude effects or remember genuinely how things actually were. Your grandma didn't have a blog to follow the grandkids. Yeah, there's a one off exception or two, but nothing at the scale of MySpace and later social media companies.
      - freehorse 2y ago
        Blogs did not require one to be a technical genius. A lot of non-technical people had blogs. And ads existing per se is not what we discuss here. Blogs require an effort to post sth because you cannot get away with posting a catchy 2-phrases sentence or a photo (you can, but that's not what they are for mainly). In this sense, yes, social media won because of convenience among other things. But the same convenience is what I find as problem with them. And where are we now? The role of social media as "grandmothers sharing with grandkids" are long gone, in most places at least (cannot speak of the whole world). Very few from my social circles post in social media any mode. Most of the content is direct or indirect advertising (if it's not meta, it is the next door bar or yoga studio broadcasting posts), (semi-)professional content creators/influencers and, lastly, a lot of AI slop. Most people I know use facebook for events and the like, and which is definitely not what facebook optimises for or profits from. Now, most of the sharing-role has fled in closed group chat platforms (whatsapp, viber, messenger and the like). The only thing that seems to still hold some livelihood is microblogging platforms (xtwitter and clones) which are also what replaced part of the blogosphere. But a rant about these would be too large to fit in a comment here.
midnightblue 2y ago
> On the other hand these tools do allow individuals to connect and share. Ok, Mark. That's enough. Any coder can build a tool that allows individuals to connect and share. It's not a unique feature of Meta tools. The unique property of Meta is that they have a hegemony. Which is ok. They went further than that, though, and built the infrastructure for influencing the decisions of individuals. That's no longer ok.
hulitu 2y ago
> On the other hand these tools do allow individuals to connect and share. Yes , with the NSA, MI6 and other 3 letter agencies. The best democracy ever.

freehorse 2y ago

Blogging platforms also allow people to connect and share, but are prob less profitable. A lot of the role of blogs was taken over by social media, this created larger networks but with a lot of downsides. But these downsides are not inherent to all the online platforms where people can connect and share.

Clubber 2y ago
Blogging is typically unidirectional, like TV or radio. You get to hear what someone says, but unless they turn on comments and actually read them, you don't get to have a conversation.
- freehorse 2y ago
  In the blogosphere (at least the part I was in) most used to have comments turned on, and at very least pingbacks were definitely common practice . There used to be communities around blogs with similar theme/views and usually blogs had a sidebar with links to other blogs, linking to the newest articles there. People used to write and refer to what others wrote. I assume there must have been also isolated blogs, as there are practically isolated people in social media, but there were definitely also very vibrant communities.
  - surge 2y ago
    So did Usenet, no one cares. They simply require you go to 18 different sites to follow what friends are up to. Tumblr would just be the ad tech company instead, or the blog hosting company, for a while it was MySpace. It's either free and supported by ads, or self hosted or comes with a cost and doesn't gain mass adoption. When did the comments here get to the point they can't think past 1st order magnitude effects or remember genuinely how things actually were. Your grandma didn't have a blog to follow the grandkids. Yeah, there's a one off exception or two, but nothing at the scale of MySpace and later social media companies.
    - freehorse 2y ago
      Blogs did not require one to be a technical genius. A lot of non-technical people had blogs. And ads existing per se is not what we discuss here. Blogs require an effort to post sth because you cannot get away with posting a catchy 2-phrases sentence or a photo (you can, but that's not what they are for mainly). In this sense, yes, social media won because of convenience among other things. But the same convenience is what I find as problem with them. And where are we now? The role of social media as "grandmothers sharing with grandkids" are long gone, in most places at least (cannot speak of the whole world). Very few from my social circles post in social media any mode. Most of the content is direct or indirect advertising (if it's not meta, it is the next door bar or yoga studio broadcasting posts), (semi-)professional content creators/influencers and, lastly, a lot of AI slop. Most people I know use facebook for events and the like, and which is definitely not what facebook optimises for or profits from. Now, most of the sharing-role has fled in closed group chat platforms (whatsapp, viber, messenger and the like). The only thing that seems to still hold some livelihood is microblogging platforms (xtwitter and clones) which are also what replaced part of the blogosphere. But a rant about these would be too large to fit in a comment here.

midnightblue 2y ago

> On the other hand these tools do allow individuals to connect and share. Ok, Mark. That's enough. Any coder can build a tool that allows individuals to connect and share. It's not a unique feature of Meta tools. The unique property of Meta is that they have a hegemony. Which is ok. They went further than that, though, and built the infrastructure for influencing the decisions of individuals. That's no longer ok.

hulitu 2y ago

> On the other hand these tools do allow individuals to connect and share. Yes , with the NSA, MI6 and other 3 letter agencies. The best democracy ever.