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Top-level
 Now you got to understand that for the past 10 years, I haven't liked modern social media. I don't like the trolls, the harassment, the SWATting, the absolute nightmare that Twitter and Facebook have become. So why did the Cancun airport incident effect me so much? Because it's different when you think an unknown gunman is going to kill you and your family -- you're telling the whole world -- and trolls come after you. That's when I realized the true stakes of Big Social. 5 comments
Big Social is broken and cannot be fixed because each social network is owned by one corporate entity. They control the communications infrastructure, the features, the relevancy algorithms, and the publishing. They own your virtual self because they own your personal data. As I said: how data is organized, social organization follows. This is the fundamental flaw of Big Social. Why Big Social is so *evil*: each network is devoted to building a Frankenstein version of yourself. This Frankenstein has most of your atributes: a face, romantic history, shopping preferences, etc.. Everything that Big Social can find out, catalogue, and define as "you" is actively being built every single day. They follow you. They know your wants and desires. But just like Frankenstein's monster, this version of you lacks soul. What makes Big Social even more nefarious is that they claim ownership of this Frankenstein version of yourself. In essence, this is what Big Social's "identity verification" is: so-called consent for them to say that they, Big Social, get to define who you are. They build this Frankenstein by watching the *real* you, surveilling you. It's why the likes of Facebook try to discover everything about you, even the amount of dirt on your smartphone camera. As a human being, this offends me. Yesterday, I said that the Fediverse is the biggest communications revolution in a generation. A few skeptical folk said, "Those are big words -- just hype." On the contrary. The Fediverse is our best chance to completely destroy the Big Social paradigm. This is why you all need to *learn* about the Fediverse. Not just Mastodon. Not just specific instances of Mastodon. Rather, learn about the entire Fediverse system. I know it seems big and abstract. But it's ideas that change the world. |
Gregory's Server
What you also need to know is that, in my own way, I had a hand in building Big Social.
I feel terrible for what I contributed.
Like others, I thought, "Hey, maybe we can fix this whole thing with more diverse hires and getting the input of experts in diverse professions."
But this thing is unfixable. And the problem lies at the crossroads of technology and sociology:
How data is organized, social organization follows.