this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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Blog writer with vague complaint and no solutions stumbles across popular headline - more at 11.
The issue at play is the big corporate companies, that pretended to be public services, had their venture capital dry up and felt pressure to become profitable. The subsequent monetization and censorship within those systems had significant impact on the quality of content, but outside of those systems the internet has continued to flourish. I suggest the author get off of Reddit/Meta/TwitX, use a better search engine than Google, and start checking out the Fediverse.
Remember kids, the big social media companies will always want you to think that they are the entirety of the internet. But the internet is not a network of machines. It's a network of human minds, and no organization will ever be able to contain the raw chaos that is the collective force of human imagination.
I'm guessing you weren't around before these guys ate up the internet?
The issue at play IS the big corporate companies. Period.
They didn't eat it up, although they certainly want you to think they did, and it's clear they convinced you.
I've been on the internet since the BBS days. Centralized services rise and fall, and people said the internet was dead when AOL became the big portal, and then they said it with Yahoo, and Digg, and Facebook, and now Reddit and Twitter. It's kinda like people who are always saying the world is gonna end - it never ends - it just changes.
I'd actually argue that we're at a point of an internet renaissance spurred by the combined failures of Reddit, Twitter, and Meta to maintain contributor trust. They can't control the flow of human imagination that pulses through the internet, they can only channel it. If they try to dam it, well, it's just gonna overflow into fuckSpezicles all over /r/place and carry the cream to the Fediverse and beyond.
I'm not saying that big corporations aren't a problem, I'm saying they don't have to be our problem now that we're here, and anyone who says the internet is dead isn't looking in the right places.
It's always interesting when someone is like "I wish I could go back to using smaller sites/forums or try some more open/ethical platforms, but I can't because all of my family are on Facebook."
Remember just 20 years ago when most of your family wasn't anywhere on the internet and that was just fine? I recognize that I'm saying this as a semi-isolated weirdo on some relatively obscure corner of the Internet, but it's okay to not be in constant passive contact with everyone you've ever met. Yeah it's more work to keep in touch with the folks you actually care about if you can't do so passively via Facebook, but that's how it always was. Email exists, texts and phone calls exist, meeting up exists.
If there are people you care about you can still keep in touch with them without using the same social media platform as them. Just like in the 90s you didn't need to read rec.models.railroad to keep in touch with your model train loving uncle.
I get that these connections (whatever one might say of their quality or tangibility if the interaction is just "look at picture, press like button") are important to people and one of the positives of platforms like Facebook, but if you're going to bemoan not being able to seek alternatives solely because the entire world isn't switching with you, it's important to realize that is a choice and not a requirement.
Lol - my family being on Facebook is one of the reasons I post here instead.
I actually think the dynamic you speak of helps the quality of the Fediverse specifically. I've seen it in play with other emerging platforms, where the adventurous sorts leap onto the new software and start creating content, while the more social sorts like to hang on to what they're familiar with because they value the community... up until the content begins to dry out, because all the adventurous sorts are usually the ones driving the creative soul of a platform.
Then the real migration begins (which I believe we're at the beginning of with Reddit & Twitter), and you see an influx of the social sorts. This is the point at which you and I chuckle and say "cool, you've got a new Fediverse account? I've been posting there for awhile - I'll follow you - can't wait to see what you've got".
Then you have that sweet spot where both the creative/adventurous sorts live in harmony with the social sorts and that's what makes a vibrant internet community, until Spez spazzes or Elon buys it out, making the community miserable. That is until, like Leif Erikson seeking a warm land to grow grapes on to make wine to have a fuckin' raging party, the adventurous sorts once again venture out into the great wide expanse of Open Source to find the next digital kegger.
Such is the circle of life.
There's Leif Erickson and then there's Columbus. Columbus is Elon or Spez.