The balkanization of the net is here…
Apple/Android/Big tech platforms run algorithms over all your text and interactions.
Now politicians are open calling to be the masters of censorship, scared of being de-platformed after the orange man was banned by twitter.
And I fail to have solutions to the recent events, of the last few months without the shutdown of the psychological manipulative media platforms (facebook/twitter) and the talking heads of TV.
On a lighter note there are still options, the Linux mailing list has avoided platforms by using email and while IRC & self-hosted solutions exist, us power users should continue to have communities.
Tho for contacting non technical people (parents, family, friends) we get to look forward to this https://xkcd.com/1810/
there’s plenty of options but they just require work.
it’s a tradeoff of convenience vs. independence, if you care about being censored, etc. then do the legwork yourself.
simple
for the vast majority of users, the TOS are acceptable vs. the service provided vs. the cost to roll their own.
I’m trying to get friends onto Signal, but the stickiness of Facebook messenger is huge. Despite the horrific terms of service, etc. - people simply just don’t care.
If we thoroughly contextualize and sell the reality that there is poison in the kool-aid people would walk miles for fresh water.
Fear is a great motivator, whether based on truth or lies.
The tradeoff is probably more accurately reflected as slavery vs independence. It is just that the convenience of high tech slavery is super uber convenient.
You say that, but I think that most people just don’t care.
Most people don’t live and breathe computers.
Most people want to do what all their friends are doing
This is the only reason Facebook (for example) exists.
People know they take all your data.
People don’t care enough to lose contact with their friends and family, be left out of social gatherings, etc.
I’ve spent the past 2 years occasionally trying to get people off Facebook messenger and onto signal. A full three of my friends have done so. But everybody still needs messenger anyway because that’s what everybody else is using.
The network effect is the problem, people want to be where others are.
Facebook also has the same problem Myspace did, if your parents are on it you don’t want them getting update notifications. In fact if they had not purchased Snapchat and Whatsapp they would be a threat now.
Probably some other challenger would grab the advertisement market share otherwise.
at xkcd comic.