The whole “one individual talking to another” aspect of the internet of the 00s is gone. It feels more and more like an “everyone is talking to you and hearing you, like it or not”. Facebook is only an example of that - and even if it didn’t enshittify, I find unlikely that it would’ve kept that aspect.
I also wonder if my experiences with Orkut wouldn’t be similar to the ones of the author with FB, if only Google didn’t kill Orkut. (It was a big thing here.)
I’ve actually considered starting a Friendica or other instance exclusively for friends and family to share pictures and communicate, invite only…
… But even if I managed the insane technical aspects and convinced people to try it, I only fear the mainstream social media giants have already trained them to be their worst selves at this point. I can see the bickering drama threads now, eating up my gigabytes…
I just hate how fragmented and walled the most connected Internet ever is…I felt more connection when I had everyone between Yahoo and MSN Messengers, or took the time to check out friends’ MySpace pages.
My peeve with the illustration there is that it shows the dark forest (adtech shit and bots) as separate from the cozy web (chat streams like discord, slack, whatsapp), because said streams are largely run by the dark forest.
That’s a great analogy. And a fair point - it got burrowed, but it’s still there.
At least when we deal with individuals using the platform. The platform is still listening to you, and sharing it with advertisers; that’s the whole model behind Meta (WhatsApp) and Snapchat. They’re still hearing you, and want to talk with you (shhh, I’ve heard you bought [product]? Here are some offers for even more [product]!), regardless of what you want.
The whole “one individual talking to another” aspect of the internet of the 00s is gone. It feels more and more like an “everyone is talking to you and hearing you, like it or not”. Facebook is only an example of that - and even if it didn’t enshittify, I find unlikely that it would’ve kept that aspect.
I also wonder if my experiences with Orkut wouldn’t be similar to the ones of the author with FB, if only Google didn’t kill Orkut. (It was a big thing here.)
I’ve actually considered starting a Friendica or other instance exclusively for friends and family to share pictures and communicate, invite only…
… But even if I managed the insane technical aspects and convinced people to try it, I only fear the mainstream social media giants have already trained them to be their worst selves at this point. I can see the bickering drama threads now, eating up my gigabytes…
I just hate how fragmented and walled the most connected Internet ever is…I felt more connection when I had everyone between Yahoo and MSN Messengers, or took the time to check out friends’ MySpace pages.
It’s not gone, it has gone underground, i like this model to describe the current internet
My peeve with the illustration there is that it shows the dark forest (adtech shit and bots) as separate from the cozy web (chat streams like discord, slack, whatsapp), because said streams are largely run by the dark forest.
That’s a great analogy. And a fair point - it got burrowed, but it’s still there.
At least when we deal with individuals using the platform. The platform is still listening to you, and sharing it with advertisers; that’s the whole model behind Meta (WhatsApp) and Snapchat. They’re still hearing you, and want to talk with you (shhh, I’ve heard you bought [product]? Here are some offers for even more [product]!), regardless of what you want.
And that’s one of the many reasons why we want private communications, we want no creepy megacorp listening in
I have plenty of Discord and Matrix rooms where I’m specifically there to talk to - and be talked to by - a select group of specific people.
It might a practice I maintain because I (and those people) have been with the Internet since before AOL.