Hey guys, I had an idea that maybe the richest people in the world are buying up all the media so that they can control and censor public discourse and anything they disagree with.
I know it’s a bit out there, and I can’t prove it, but it’s just this crazy thought I had!
Post was removed by AI mod
Reason: Subversive thoughts
Tell me we’re not an oligarchy.
I would, but I don’t like lying.
Fancy that!
There’s a reason Elon bought Twitter, and it wasn’t just so he could wave his dick through the world’s biggest megaphone.
Bluesky will fall in line as well. You don’t have platforms with hundreds of millions of users without big pockets, and if you’ve got big pockets it would seem the world is already working exactly the way you want it to.
bluesky is already falling in line, its getting there.
The Alt-right and capitalism ladies & gentlemen! Hope it was worth it.
And none of you saw this coming? Really? State owned media news and “entertainment” outlets refusing to disparage the king?
And STILL y’all use them - knowing full well that all your information is sold on the open market and all your secrets are no more?
And then bitch about it. Fucking hell - America and the rest of the world devolves into dumb shits.
If you don’t want to be “cut off” by the people you’re protesting against, DON’T USE THEIR MEDIA.
state sponsored mass surveillance using AI cameras.
Convenience is a hell of a drug. As soon as you ask someone to uproot their social media presence to the fediverse their eyes begin to glaze over. They don’t understand it and want to be part of a giant and almost all-encompassing community which is not where we’re currently at right now.
It takes multiple instances of censorship, frustration, and offending the wrong bot to be forced out of their online shell and even then they might still go for the next corporate-owned social media because it’s “easier” than understanding what federation means.
Bit late for those fears, but okay
I wish activist organizations would stop making Instagram their primary/sole updates platform and have more sane communication options that aren’t crazy addictive and centralized (for which there are quite a few options). Encouraging more people onto Instagram is counterintuitive
That’s where people are these days, unfortunately.
Guess some people don’t like hearing the truth. Maybe if they post to peer tube instead they can get 5 views and maybe even a like.
We have to be able to meet people where they are, wherever they might be.
That’s assuming that they stumble on it. If all of those members know where to go, they will probably use an alternative platform. After all we all heard of a better option to redit and here we are
But how many people actually left Reddit to go here versus how many are still there?
Lemmy underestimate the vile power of network effect.
some went back to lemmy after coming here. i think some LURK on reddit instead though, after they were forced out, or tried to create a new account. all the content is there.
That’s a good point. It should really be a two-pronged approach. One is setting up and maintaining an alternative to the mainstream social media sites, while the other is out in the muck trying to inform people and let them know where to go.
It isn’t that I object to people reluctantly using the big-tech social platforms, it’s that they seemingly do so enthusiastically.
I’m not disputing. Enthusiasm is precisely why they are in Instagram.
You misspelled AI bot accounts. It is unfortunate though.
These absolute dumb fucks shouldn’t be using facebook or instagram to begin with.
Can’t spell metastasis without META: They are a cancer, delete your accounts today and stop letting them spread their sickness into you, your friends, or your family.
Terrible headline. Implies that censorship isn’t happening, but we are on a slippery slope.
It should “Awareness of big tech censorship grows after…”
Of look! All those things we said would happen are happening. Quelle surprise.
Qui aurait pu le prévoir? Pikachu.exe
Walang sinuman ang makakapaghula nito. Isang ganap na sorpresa ito.
Obh obh, cò thog an tùr babel a rithist?
Më thonë se gjyshi im e ndërtoi, por prindërit e mi nuk janë njerëz shumë të besueshëm.
Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah-nagl fhtagn.
हमरा हिसाब से ऊ इंतजार करत रह सकेला आ सपना देखत रह सकेला।
every time the Americans go ‘oh shit I think we’re obviously living in a fascist regime!’ they forget about it within a week, this is like the 8th time in the last 2 years that this headline has run.
I think we remember it every day, but that doesn’t mean we suddenly reach the critical mass necessary to change it. For those of us who recognize what’s happening for what it is, it’s at the forefront of our minds.
Literally two days ago they were running the same headline in response to Starlink and Ukraine.
Don’t you DARE suggest they get off their cowardly asses or they’ll start throwing MAGA-level language at you real fast
It’s always the same responses:
“Nothing can be done” (we tried nothing and are all out of ideas)
“What are you doing about it?” (Can’t somebody else do it? We welcome foreign interference!)
And then endless excuses for why nothing will work so they won’t even try.
I’ve even seen the people giving these responses mock others for moving away from the US.
“It’s a very big country, you see.”
The downvotes on this post are hilarious. Just a bunch of the most pants-pissing white liberal cowards who keep telling themselves they’re not part of the problem.
Though I will ALSO mock Americans who would rather flee the country than stay and fight back.
Remember how all the cons that thought “the Twitter files” were such a big deal and were constantly mewling about things like “Section 230”?
And all because they were merely being mildly hemmed in on saying openly racist shit on a private platforms, spreading harmful conspiracy theories about a pandemic, and wanting a Russian psyop about a hard drive, oops, I mean, “laptop” spread far and wide on the same private platforms.
Wonder where all these free speech maximalists are now?
I submit that the conservatives have always been rather problematic in their mental state, but a few things definitely broke their brains: 1. A black man being elected twice, and generally well-regarded by most of America and the world. 2. Their Qanon bullshit stories did not result in Podesta, Clinton, Obama, etc., being arrested by donnie douchebag. 3. Covid. and finally, 4. Their J6 scheme failed
By the time they hit 2021, their brains were so utterly broken. Claiming that “Big Tech” post Cambridge Analytica was “liberal”, LOL. Quite the fucking take. And what conservatives have been the least bit cancelled? I still hear from all of these assholes all the time, way too much.
If you are fighting someone why the fuck would you use the platform of those you are fighting against?
There are plenty of options that you can use which haven’t been invaded by parasites.
To reach the greatest number of people. In the fediverse you’d reach a dozen nerds at maximum, but everyone and their dog is still in Facebook and other corporate social media platforms
I know BUT there was plenty of time to get them to move somewhere else and keep the momentum and now it will take time to build it back up.
The Arab Spring was the “Facebook Revolution”.
One man’s revolutionary is another man’s terrorist.
That maybe so but then why use a platform which is controlled by those that would classify you as a terrorist and can’t block your actions against them?
No kings is about the separation of powers and the exercise of the First Amendment.
It’s worth having an Instagram account precisely because this might happen.
If only there were, I don’t know, a social media network of services that use the same protocol to talk to each other, and has no central authority? Something that, and this may be a stretch here, that is created and ran by the people?
Maybe someday. 🤷
Hmm. You might be onto something. Perhaps some kind of universal protocol that would allow for a federation of independent social media nodes, a fedi-verse, if you will.
I heard that this utopian “freddy-verse” does in fact exist. I wonder how it can be accessed, does anyone know?
It’s complicated.
Yeah, how would we even know if we were using it right now?
I do think the fediverse is better than the corporate built alternatives but the more time I’ve spent here the less I believe that it is a great solution. People are the fundamental problem and people control every instance, moderate every community, and post every comment (excluding bots which are their own problem). The amount of infighting I’ve witnessed here over trivial bullshit is astounding. People are constantly calling for defederation over one offense or another. Much of it rivals Reddit in it’s pettiness.
It’s true that no single entity controls it all, and that is an improvement, but everything still gets fragmented so much that I don’t think I believe it can reasonably grow beyond what it is now. Not without running into variations of the same problems as the others at least.
I think the simple truth of the matter is that humans can’t help this kind of tribal behavior. We group ourselves together using all kinds of labels, some broad and some incredibly specific, but the end result is always the same. Those with the labels I gave myself which are most important to me are my friends and those without them are my enemy. Until that primal need to exclude others is gone, any communal space we create will devolve to the point that there are effectively multiple siloed echo chambers that rarely overlap.
That was more of a rant than I initially intended, but the point is that I don’t think the fediverse would have solved this problem. If a federated version of Instagram was the dominant service for that kind of activity then the No Kings account there would have been censored by many groups for many reasons. Enough so that I don’t know that the impact would be any different.
I think what you’re saying is that fediverse is a better solution but it will not scale and I agree.
Pretty much, yeah. Marginally better at least, depending on what you want it to be.
I dont think the fediverse will be able to withstand a sophisticated threat in its current form.
Once the number of MAUs makes it worth manipulating, it will be impossible to manage.
There will be a few large well managed instances with no federation, and a disparate assortment of tiny instances with very limited federation.
I think a some kind of Web of Trust would have to be implemented. Like with GPG decide which servers and users you trust.
I don’t know how that could work.
At the server level we already have that - federating with a server includes that server in the web of trust.
At the user level, how would new users become trusted? That seems unachievable given how difficult it is to attract users just in general without something like that. I’ve been on the fediverse for years but I don’t know any other users that would “trust” me.
Agreed. The only reason this is not overrun with spam and bots is because it is small.
A possible solution could be reputation, but that gets dangerously close to Reddit Karma.
Nah, bots can farm reputation better than humans can.
The problem is that federation assumes good intent of the admins of other instances. If someone builds a network of instances intended to manipulate votes et cetera, I can’t see how the fediverse could resist that.
Instance A can’t trust that votes from instance B are legit. As soon as there’s no trust then federating even with an aparently trustworthy instance becomes too costly in terms of time and effort.
There’s an awareness problem, though; the people only on corporate social media need to be told about mbin/piefed/lemmy (and then explained how to sign up and use it because instances, etc.) and it’s not really effective to use only things in the fediverse to do that.
