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Dan Goodin

It should be clear now that it was and remains a catastrophic mistake for people to view privately owned social media platforms as any kind of public resource. People didn't know better a decade ago. They have no excuse now.

11 comments
Irenes (many)

@GuillaumeRossolini @dangoodin as you say (we do sympathize with people whose livelihoods depend on those platforms)

jbaggs

@dangoodin It certainly didn't help that they were marketed that way. (Digital town square nonsense.)

Ryan Randall :OpenAccess: :hc:

@jbaggs @dangoodin Right.

Despite all the "town square" rhetoric, they're much more like privatized food courts.

Each private platform's equivalent of mall security can & will remove you based on their whims. Or the mall owner's whims. Or possible impacts on profit.

(And actual public spaces do have similar problems, as anyone who's paid attention to the frequent consequences of protesting or just being Black in the presence of police forces knows. But there are at least more avenues for demanding accountability, due process, etc in actual public spaces.)

@jbaggs @dangoodin Right.

Despite all the "town square" rhetoric, they're much more like privatized food courts.

Each private platform's equivalent of mall security can & will remove you based on their whims. Or the mall owner's whims. Or possible impacts on profit.

(And actual public spaces do have similar problems, as anyone who's paid attention to the frequent consequences of protesting or just being Black in the presence of police forces knows. But there are at least more avenues for demanding...

Thad

@dangoodin People *should* have known better a decade ago; we went through this same thing with AOL back at the turn of the century.

I'm afraid the necessity of open platforms and decentralization is something people are going to have to re-learn every generation.

Jim Fenton ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ฆ

@dangoodin By โ€œprivately ownedโ€ do you mean privately held companies or any corporate ownership? Iโ€™m not sure what the viable alternatives are.

Dmitry Borodaenko

@jimfenton @dangoodin "Viable" is doing too much work in your rhetorical question. You're here on Fedi, don't you find this space viable?

Jim Fenton ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ฆ

@dangoodin @angdraug Fedi is great, but still a work-in-progress. Not clear to me how well it will work at full Twitter scale. Moderation is hard.

Dmitry Borodaenko

@jimfenton @dangoodin I am an engineer. I thrive in good enough environments, and I am allergic to perfection and premature optimization.

This space is good enough, and even more importantly, it gives me more agency to maintain and improve its usefulness than any private capital controlled social platform.

Yes, democracy is hard. Democracy at scale, even harder. Still worth it, when all the alternatives are various forms of monarchy and oligarchy.

Bruno Nicoletti

@dangoodin Iโ€™d go further and say _any_ automated platform that relies on advertising for revenue will always end up deeply enshitified as they have to chase โ€œengagementโ€. And what engages most is outrage. So we end up with systems, that by design, drag you further and further in the world of grift and crazies.

Jo Jitsu

@bjn @dangoodin
I have to strongly disagree about what engages most. If Mastodon is a platform without that variable...then I can confidently say my most popular posts are just posts about beautiful things. I get the most boosts, likes, comments, etc. on really nice things most.

But I was throttled first by ad-based social media and that is how they get you to dance for the devil to get seen and they groom and channel the outrage type of engagement, rather than the joyful kind.

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