240
They stole the internet from the people and we have to take it back
(media.kbin.social)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
240 points (100.0% liked)
Reddit Migration
196 readers
1 users here now
### About Community Tracking and helping #redditmigration to Kbin and the Fediverse. Say hello to the decentralized and open future. To see latest reeddit blackout info, see here: https://reddark.untone.uk/
founded 1 year ago
I mean, did they steal it? Or did people largely willingly give it away? People willingly left the older decentralized platforms in favor of centralized corporate platforms because, for one reason or another, they felt it was a better use of their time. The old-school forums weren't killed; people stopped using them and left for Reddit and Facebook and Instagram etc.
If we want to reverse this, we need to understand why this happened, what those service provided that lured people, and how we can build better alternatives, and I think there's more to this than just "corporation bad".
Edit: Downvote if you like, but I'd much prefer an actual response, because I think there is an interesting conversation to be had about this.
Of course there's more to this than "corpo bad", it's the economic system that drives these businesses to focus on profit over the quality of the user experience--but I think that's the core to all the "corpo bad" arguments when you really boil them down. These websites and services have become so ubiquitous for two reasons:
The first reason, is that people tend towards simplification, if you can give them a centralized location where they can have all their needs met, they prefer it to the effort it takes to use multiple locations/services. A great example is the popularity and convenience of stores like Walmart or Costco where you can do all of your shopping in one quick go. Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and even YouTube to a lesser degree all offer these one-stop-shop kind-of models by allowing you to connect with a vast amount of people, discuss a large number of topics, and view multiple forms of media. So, unless they have a good reason to remain diversified, people tend towards simplification.
The second reason is also psychological in nature. These companies, (whom we will refer to as FaRT), have designed and redesigned their entire systems to drive up refresh rates, click-through rates, and otherwise increase advertising visibility. In addition to hacking the addiction mechanisms, and the desire for people to feel important, they take it even further using deception and "dark UI". Even when you utilize many of the adblocking systems, for example, FaRT inject advertising content directly into the same stream of other user content(the best example is direct corpo sponsorship of big name YouTube content creators, but at-least that money goes directly to the creators). Plus, advertisers are getting much, much better at disguising this content so that you are less likely to skip it before seeing it.
So it's a two-sided coin, a major part of the problem is that "corpo bad", and now that they're taking it to a degree of harming the public experience for profits (which is why cable television died), it's our responsibility to step out of our comfort zones and show them that we are willing to inconvenience ourselves a little for a better UX.
There comes a breaking point where people and organizations who are dependent on Facebook ads will actually move from the jaws of this giant corporations for more freedom and control. We are certainly seeing it now by example. I'm someone who just left Reddit and actually am here to invest in this platform and you can't say well I'm the exception.