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- cross-posted to:
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If there’s one thing I’d hoped people had learned going into the next four years of Donald Trump as president, it’s that spending lots of time online posting about what people in power are saying and doing is not going to accomplish anything. If anything, it’s exactly what they want.
Many of my journalist colleagues have attempted to beat back the tide under banners like “fighting disinformation” and “accountability.” While these efforts are admirable, the past few years have changed my own internal calculus. Thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Hannah Arendt warned us that the point of this deluge is not to persuade, but to overwhelm and paralyze our capacity to act. More recently, researchers have found that the viral outrage disseminated on social media in response to these ridiculous claims actually reduces the effectiveness of collective action. The result is a media environment that keeps us in a state of debilitating fear and anger, endlessly reacting to our oppressors instead of organizing against them.
Cross’ book contains a meticulous catalog of social media sins which many people who follow and care about current events are probably guilty of—myself very much included. She documents how tech platforms encourage us, through their design affordances, to post and seethe and doomscroll into the void, always reacting and never acting.
But perhaps the greatest of these sins is convincing ourselves that posting is a form of political activism, when it is at best a coping mechanism—an individualist solution to problems that can only be solved by collective action. This, says Cross, is the primary way tech platforms atomize and alienate us, creating “a solipsism that says you are the main protagonist in a sea of NPCs.”
In the days since the inauguration, I’ve watched people on Bluesky and Instagram fall into these same old traps. My timeline is full of reactive hot takes and gotchas by people who still seem to think they can quote-dunk their way out of fascism—or who know they can’t, but simply can’t resist taking the bait. The media is more than willing to work up their appetites. Legacy news outlets cynically chase clicks (and ad dollars) by disseminating whatever sensational nonsense those in power are spewing.
This in turn fuels yet another round of online outrage, edgy takes, and screenshots exposing the “hypocrisy” of people who never cared about being seen as hypocrites, because that’s not the point. Even violent fantasies about putting billionaires to the guillotine are rendered inept in these online spaces—just another pressure release valve to harmlessly dissipate our rage instead of compelling ourselves to organize and act.
This is the opposite of what media, social or otherwise, is supposed to do. Of course it’s important to stay informed, and journalists can still provide the valuable information we need to take action. But this process has been short-circuited by tech platforms and a media environment built around seeking reaction for its own sake.
“For most people, social media gives you this sense that unless you care about everything, you care about nothing. You must try to swallow the world while it’s on fire,” said Cross. “But we didn’t evolve to be able to absorb this much info. It makes you devalue the work you can do in your community.”
It’s not that social media is fundamentally evil or bereft of any good qualities. Some of my best post-Twitter moments have been spent goofing around with mutuals on Bluesky, or waxing romantic about the joys of human creativity and art-making in an increasingly AI-infested world. But when it comes to addressing the problems we face, no amount of posting or passive info consumption is going to substitute the hard, unsexy work of organizing.
The greatest thing that social media ever did for humanity was in its ability to allow all of us to talk to each other in an open platform.
Those private corporate platforms have slowly been eroded and controlled to only waste our time and designed to keep us all angry, afraid, anxious and confused.
Open decentralized social media is bringing us back to that era 20 years ago when social media was just starting and people just talked and openly discussed the issues of the day with one another. It doesn’t matter what kind of platform we have or can create, as long as it is decentralized and controlled by people, everyone will always find value in it because it allows us to talk to one another. The greatest thing I’ve ever found in taking part in the fediverse was in connecting to like minded people who want to talk about the important issues of the day without all the distractions of advertising and without having having to give up my privacy or security and have my identity sold to the highest bidder.
Same. I’ve learned a lot since I joined Lemmy.
I genuinely believe centralised social media was created to make you feel like you’re doing something.
While I like to agree with that vision of decentralized social media, even here on lemmy we have our own pitfalls. Echo chambers are unchecked and defederation (even justified) happens.
I don’t assume everyone here is a real person. There was a article recently that AI was training “persuasiveness” using reddit subreddits. I have to believe a similar trial exists on the fediverse least I be caught off guard.
Plus, there are a lot of folks here (it seems like a majority sometimes in my personal experience) that are quick to advocate violence/sabotage in lieu of negotiation and debate. That reaks of puppeteering; there can’t be that many arseholes here, right?
I know I have some strong biases that lean towards peace, and I’m confused sometimes why a comment of mine in the fediverse gathers double digit upvotes steadily only to plummet to the negatives overnight. I get old reddit botnet vibes on some topics.
I suppose I want to like lemmy, the freedom, these communities, but it is still polarizing and influenceable by [insert tech/political/financial interests]. I don’t trust this enough to recommend to friends and family, but my presence here makes it a fraction more what I want to be.
Something like 80% of all theft at this point is unpaid wages.
You have to understand that a system that calls corporations people is inherently violent. Profit is unpaid labor, so the existence of a tax code that not only allows -but celebrates and defends- billionaires is class warfare. If you steal $1000 from a store, the police show up. If the store steals $1000 from your paycheck the police tell you to get a lawyer with a $5k retainer. The store’s existence isn’t hampered by the $1,000 while most families would be ruined without out.
However, the only instance of the crime the system cares about is the one against the corporation.
Corporations are the only people that don’t have to worry about eating. Corporations are the only people that don’t have hands for handcuffs. Corporations are the only people the law cares about.
Corporations own the media. Corporations own the red ones. Corporations own the blue ones. Corporations own the food. Corporations are eager to own everything the DNC will meet the RNC half way in privatizing.
We are here because infinite money now equates to infinite speech. We as individuals have ever less speech because we have ever less money. Unions are being crippled now and soon protesting itself will become a crime against the state.
It will be a crime to speak out. It will be a crime to be different. It will be a crime to work too slow or think too much.
When every notion of freedom becomes a crime, crime becomes our only freedom.
Ready Player 2 mother fuckers.
That’s because there are a lot of marginlized folks here - gay, trans, autistic, linux users - who have spent decades disucssing politely and negotiating.
Problem is the people throwing Nazi salutes and writing all these executive orders have, quite clearly, said they want us all either dead or in camps.
Now I wouldn’t dream of speaking for everyone else, but I’m certainly not going to be attempting to politely debate myself out of a one-way train ride, if it comes to that.
So, yeah, while I don’t encourage violence for the sake of violence, the neoliberal ‘oh dear we must all be very polite at all times and let rationality solve all our issues!’ is dead and worthless.
I’ve taken classes for and armed myself, and I have zero qualms with defending myself and friends and family by any means necessary if it comes down to a situation where it’s us-or-them, regardless of who ‘them’ is.
If you told me even five years ago that I’d be carrying a gun and be fully prepared to use deadly force to defend myself I’d have called you goofy, and if you told me that I’d be willing to use it against agents of the state if they came after me, I’d think you have lost your damn mind.
But, well, it’s been a long 5 years, and frankly, IMO, the rule of law and the trust in any governmental institutions have been eroded into nothing.
I feel seen
Amazing take, no notes. I’ve done my due diligence, I’ve voted, I’ve canvassed for campaigns, I’ve donated to the right people.
I will NOT be debating with fascists or agitators while my friends and family members get taken away for being trans or the wrong shade of brown (or a Linux user lol). Someone in a more privileged position than me can.
I used that time to get my carry license instead.
Hahahaha you said linux users in the same breath of marginalized folk.
The cloud is linux. I don’t think social media is where we’re marginalized.
I agree with everything else you’ve said.
https://socialistra.org
That was a joke. And besides, only certain distributions count anyways. Keep an eye out for our Slackware brothers, they need our help and support in these times.
Yeah I got the joke, that’s why I laughed. Sorry if it came off as snarky. Text doesn’t do a good job of relating humor or laughter sometimes.
In regards to Slackware…woosh. My first edit of this missed the joke completely. Yes Slackware needs our help, all 32bit distros could use a little help honestly.
I read in another thread that Elon is telling gov employees to stop using Slack due to FOIA…
If you’re being told to get off Slack by your new illegal oberlords the below may be of interest.
Mattermost is a great substitute for self hosting comms. So is Element over Matrix or just the signal app.
https://mattermost.com/download/
https://element.io/matrix-benefits
https://signal.org/download/
For those interested, if you’re organizing use E2E comms and if you’re researching use Tor Browser. Better yet use a Tails USB on a coffee shop wifi.
https://www.tomsguide.com/how-to/how-to-use-signal
https://www.torproject.org/download/
https://tails.net/doc/first_steps/index.en.html
And don’t communicate over email, even encrypted email.
For a place to start looking for aid and assistance. If there’s a fridge or book or tool share that’s not there, notify them please so they can update the site.
https://mutualaidhub.org
If you’re looking for a place to help, look up Food Not Bombs plus whatever city is closest to you.
http://foodnotbombs.net/new_site/volunteer.php
I understand it’s an http site. Don’t sign up for anything that doesn’t pass your vibe check.
That’s probably time zones. I’m in Europe, and I’ve noticed that if I post something that’s not in line with mainline American thinking, I’ll wake up to a bunch of downvotes. The same could be true for Oceania/Asia or Europe/africa, depending on where you are.
Yes we’re missing two things
Fuck negotiating and debate. That’s what has allowed the rich to erode or steal everything we could have had. That’s what allows wimpy politicians to get walked all over as the bullies take over again and again.
I am definitely one of those “to arms” types because I think talking is over. That’s all the oligarchs want, more talk. When a forum for discussion is introduced the controlling powers study it for monetization and misinformation purposes. When they figure out how to manipulate the fediverse and platforms like Bluesky it’ll be over. It’s important we keep ads off of them or they’ll dictate the discussion
oh my sweet summer child
I was doing that just fine 30/40 years ago with BBS, newsgroups, and later with forums such as Lemmy. Social media put a name or a face on people, and was combined with the regular “eternal septembers,” but it didn’t bring anything useful to the conversation IMHO.
It did break down the barriers for those less technical by bringing the conversation to a web browser that was certainly more accessible as opposed to a terminal, for better or worse. It’s not far off from the fediverse in that it does take some technical understanding to navigate, which does create a sort of barrier. Now, whether that is good or bad is a subject of debate, and I’m inclined to agree that the more accessible a platform is, the more watered down the conversations become.
I beg your pardon, but what about web forums? I don’t think anything technical was required with those.
They were good, but is there good forum platforms nowadays that are mobile friendly, have apps etc.?
You are the exception, not the rule. Just because you have an easy time with something does not mean everyone does. Everyone experiences interaction in a different way.
Just because it brings no value to your life does not mean that opinion is universal.
That was the whole point of my answer.
Only for the moment. Spammers have already found us, but so far in small numbers. All the other bad parts of social media are already here too, just so far not in large amounts and so you can find useful content. But those who gain from the garbage are coming and decentralization doesn’t help.
The next step, in my opinion, is strong privacy and decentralized organization that fully leverages constitutional rights.
I.e. a privacy preserving social media where labour unions, political parties and religious groups can federate with each other. Servers hosted on their premises and members register through an on-premise process.
A church in a foreign country could generate a thousand aliases and distribute them to their federated sister organizations in a privacy preserving way. Only the church knows which organizations got which aliases and they protect this information.
Your local labour union chapter picks up 20 of those aliases and distributes them to members. They are the only one who knows the person behind the alias.
An observer in this private fediverse trying to obtain the identity would first need to approach the church. The church can stall them and warn downstream through a canary.
The labour union chapter observes the canary and immediately wipes all information.
And if that fails, then full I2P and Tor, with nodes hosted on-premise of churches, political parties and labour unions.
Hate to say it, but there’s the very real possibility those days are numbered.
As it sits, those of us that are savvy need to be actively using and promoting privacy-centric communications methodology to ensure we have a means to communicate safely and effectively as time goes on and those tights are further eroded. I don’t see the internet completely dying, given the technical nature of it, but peering and connectivity will likely be hampered in the coming months and years, so it is in our best interest to find and employ feasible solutions now to attempt getting out ahead of anything those muppets come up with.
You are missing the point.
Those days might be numbered, but these places are the last bastion.
They will invade private homes, businesses and offices with impunity first.
Churches in particular have a long history of being relatively safe in (civil) war.
Not immune, just relatively.
Yeah, the US Constitution is just a piece of paper now because nobody’s enforcing it.
It may be a good time to note that the constitution page on whitehouse.gov is still 404ing.
It’s available on congress.gov and archived under bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov, but the current admin has yet to put it back.
Oh god, I haven’t checked the White House website since it went full fascist. A big-ass picture of Dear Leader right at the top. North Korea, China, Russia…even those countries don’t have anything so blatantly cult of personality on the front page of their government websites.
Unless the mods remove your posts.
Then start your own server and post whatever you want.
Doesn’t really work once spaces are established. Most of reddits problems aren’t the admins, it’s the volunteer subreddit mods which function just the same as lemmy.
Remember, there were plenty of rounds of moderator purges on reddit, especially when subs would lock down in protest. Any mod with ethics and a backbone would’ve been shown the door. So I think it’s fair to say a lot of the moderation problems were at least in part caused by the admins.
At least on Lemmy, different instances have different ethoses, so communities can be more in line with the instance they’re on, and there isn’t this need for absolute centralised conformity.
Also, having public mod logs is a big step towards transparency. Sure there are still problems, but it’s definitely no where near as bad IMO.