This has probably been posted already, but this article came to mind when reddit entered its death spiral. An interesting observation on the rise and fall of social media.

  • deweydecibel@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    God I love this rant.

    Prodigy was upset that people were, by and large, using the free communication service they tossed on there just to have more content and not their weird Random Garbage You Don’t Need Storefront. And in many ways, that complaint has only gotten louder over the decades. Stop talking to each other and start buying things. Stop providing content for free and start paying us for the privilege. Stop shining sunlight on horrors and start advocating for more of them. Stop making communities and start weaponizing misinformation to benefit your betters.

    It’s the same. It’s always been the same. Stop benefitting from the internet, it’s not for you to enjoy, it’s for us to use to extract money from you. Stop finding beauty and connection in the world, loneliness is more profitable and easier to control.

    Stop being human. A mindless bot who makes regular purchases is all that’s really needed.

    I feel this in my damn bones.

    Hello, world. Come in from the cold. This will be a good place. For awhile. And then we’ll make another one.

    • 1024_Kibibytes@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      Hello, world. Come in from the cold. This will be a good place. For awhile. And then we’ll make another one.

      I hope you’re right. I’m betting on the Fediverse, and the fact that it is not corporate owned and can be forked anytime it needs it. I’m hoping that really all it needs to run is servers, moderators and administrators willing to moderate and administer. I’m hoping that the lack of corporate involvement allows it to continue and be a place where we can actually build communities.

      • EtnaAtsume@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Not corporate-owned…yet.

        In my experience, which is pretty similar to the author’s, it always finds a way.

        Until then, pull up a chair.

        • 1024_Kibibytes@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          Agreed, it does seem to always find a way. Hopefully it takes longer due to the nature of each instance being separate. The recent apoplexy at Threads joining the Fedivervse seems to indicate that many users are aware of the need to not have anything to do with any monied interests beyond server costs.

      • 1024_Kibibytes@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        As an aside, we need to do away with the idea that corporations are people. We need to remember that they are run by people but are not people themselves.

        • Boz (he/him)@lemmy.one
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          YEP. The US “corporate personhood” law has always struck me as one of the most on-the-nose examples of dystopian capitalist BS, tbh.