Seriously: you are choosing to use the systems you use.
And you can make different choices.
This applies to almost everything about how you use the Internet; everything other than your choice of provider, in fact. And maybe that as well, if you’re fortunate enough to live in a place with more than one.
But today let’s talk about social media, since recent attempts to get the governments of the world to take over people’s social media experience are getting way out of control.
There’s no argument that many, possibly most, social media platforms are in many ways actively unpleasant to use and can have negative psychological effects of their users.
- TikTok
- oh, so many others
These are cesspits of the worst that the Internet has to offer that just flat-out suck to use, are constantly trying to slurp up as much information about their users as they can find and exist mostly to rent your personal eyeballs to advertisers.
They suck, and the experience of using them sucks.
Some, like Twitter and maybe facebook, were once OK but have come to suck.
Some, like TikTok, have always sucked; were, in fact, designed to suck.
Because they don’t have to be a pleasure to use and a positive force for society to make money; they actually make more money if they’re kinda annoying and a slight drag on society.
And they make a lot more money, in the short term, if they absolutely suck to use and actively try to drag their users down into the swamps with the stupidest and most venal people in the world. Oh, and pour State and corporate “influence operations” directly into their users’ brains.
But you can just quit.
You don’t actually need them; no one needs them. They need you, and can’t continue to exist without at least some of you, but none of you need them.
If you do want to continue with social media, but without the horror show that the commercial platforms seem to inevitably become, then you can choose one that’s not like this.
They do exist.
I use the one most people will have heard about as “Mastodon”, though Mastodon itself is just the most common piece of software involved; it’s more accurately thought of as “fedi”, for the fact that it’s made up of a federation of independent systems.
(Or “the fediverse” for the terminally online.)
You can have a social media experience with no ads to annoy and distract you and no “algorithm” choosing what you see.
You follow the accounts you want, and you see only what you want to see.
But you have to choose that.
And you have to put some effort into learning how it works.
You have to choose an instance where you’ll have an account (I use one hosted by OKSocial, since I’m an admin with that project).
You have to find people and bots you want to follow. You have to find other instances, look through their timelines for people talking about things that interest you.
You have to do it yourself.
Stop trying to get the State to make the Internet into what you want.
Other people want different things from what you want..
Other people have a right to have an Internet experience that’s different from what you want.
And they have a right to have their own Internet experience without being forced to hand over a government identification document to anyone.
