Man i’m a platypus, what did you expect?

  • 4 Posts
  • 17 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: June 12th, 2023
  • TerryTPlatypus@beehaw.orgtoTechnology@beehaw.org•Let the Platforms BurnEnglish
    15·
    1 year ago

    i want to watch the corporations burn too. but we’re losing something we’ll never get back.

    This perfectly highlights the precarious situation we are in. We have collectively decided to put A LOT of Internet history on a few centralized places that don’t really care about data as profit, and now it is coming back to bite us in the rear. We will lose a lot of history that we can never easily get back, whether it is deleted, or siloed behind a login/paywall screen.

    Take, for example, Twitter burning down. It affects everyone negatively. Think of all the important conversations going on about race, gender, sexuality, and protests and movements, that will be lost to time. Think of all the artist who have posted work on there, only to discover they have to shift to a new platform literally overnight because no one can see their artwork and there is a mass exodus. Think of how good reputable news sources are becoming even more fragmented as reputable, trustworthy actors flee Twitter, turning it into a swamp of misinformation and disinformation.

    Now take this scenario, and spread it across all the major sites, keeping in mind how all sites rely on each other to be useful, so damage becomes exponentially worse as more large sites decide to do restrictive policies that trap users and data within their sites. As a result, information cannot travel as freely between boundaries. Now taking into account all the damage that has been done, the Internet won’t be the frontier of possibility and community as it once was, but rather another cash cow, and medium of distribution: it will become like a more interactive version of TV.

    I wish we could go back to the mid 2000s/early 2010s era of the Internet…I miss those days… Sorry for doom ranting a little, it’s just the Internet as a concept is important to me.

  • TerryTPlatypus@beehaw.orgtoTechnology@beehaw.org•Redditors, how do you like Lemmy?
    2·
    1 year ago

    i can agree with this. I think the reason why a select few instances are growing bigger is because people don’t quite get the concept of federation yet, probably due to the fear of missing out on what others have to say outside of their instance. The main reason I joined beehaw was because it wasn’t too big, but now I am starting to realize that as long as your instance is federated to bigger ones, you basically don’t need to leave your own instance to view other communities, which is a kind of weird experience, but also kind of refreshing. I basically came into it with the fear that with decentralization I wouldn’t have access to everyone else, and everyone would be fragmented into their own communities, and those fears are partially alleviated now. There are some concerns about instances i do want to get to, like lemmygrad, but for now, I am pretty content.