D'oh. I'm not in the same social circles as the poster you cited, but my questions were about Apple, not Tumblr.
In general, social media is in the business of facilitating/controlling communications between people, in order to make money off data mining, via advertising (at least), plus anything else they can think of.
Unless the social media you use has a plausibly different business model, then anyone who isn't living under a rock, and isn't a naive child, should be aware of that. Tumblr apparantly was better than e.g. Facebook. But I'm disinclined to use any social media site that doesn't charge me money, and have a clear story of how they are supporting themselves via customer payments.
So I'm here on Dreamwidth, complete with Seed Acoount (which is kind of cheating - I only had to pay once).
I probably wouldn't object if the business model only involved advertising, and the advertising was as easy to skip past as print advertising, and there was no technical way for advertising to also spread snoopwars and other malware. But that's not happening, so I'm not using ad supported social media sites. Not even with adblock.
I'm not in the same social circles as the poster you cited, but my questions were about Apple, not Tumblr.<<
>>You have ahold of a different part of the same elephant -- how megacorps try to control people through social media.
>>But I'm disinclined to use any social media site that doesn't charge me money, and have a clear story of how they are supporting themselves via customer payments.<<
The problem with that is, when people have to pay for it, speech is no longer free. It creates a divide between those who can afford it and those who can't. We're not protecting the internet was a public forum, we're treating it as private property -- but people are using it as a public forum, and increasingly, that's where the important social interaction happens. When that's controlled by corporations for their own ends, the discourse is manipulated, and many people are shut out due to financial or infrastructural barriers, that causes a lot of problems. Like say, the 2016 election that we'll all be cleaning up after for decades.
Very true. I like that dreamwidth continues to have free accounts avilable, and plenty of people use them.
That still doesn't make this communication free. I take for granted reliable internet connectivity. Others don't have it.
Unfortunately, powerful people have always attempted to control/influence communications. They don't need technology to do it - mockery and shunning work too, in any group of teenagers, though violence is usually another part of the cool kids' tool kit.
And I'm tired and selfish. I can't rescue people from Facebook, or Breitbart, or Fox News - especially when they willingly flock to all of these. All I can do is try to duck the worst of it myself, and maybe influence individuals who value my opinions to join me in this project.
People will use whatever they have to try to communicate. Sometimes they find out the hard way that they are talking to a Stassi informant, or that someone similar is tapping their communications. Or if not government bad actors, then scouts for internet flash mobs. Or for a thieving ring seeking to know about their vacation plans. The means change, but the element of risk really doesn't.
At some point, perhaps, decisions about net neutrality will shut down Dreamwidth. Related decisions are pretty much killing my ISP, slowly, with no trustworthy alternatives available. Or enough people will flee here for the 4channers and breitbarters to target it, whereupon it will become as unusable as LJ frequently was, well before it became a solely Russian thing.
In some ways, those of us in the Baby Boom generation may have been exceptional in the amount of freedom available to us. A good economy meant less self censorship to maintain employability. Underdeveloped search technologies meant our pecadillos did not generally come back to haunt us. It was relatively easy to move away from whatever oppressive circumstances was one born into.
Or maybe not. Maybe I'm just in "glass half full" mode at the moment. I don't really think I have enough information to be certain.
One of the most interesting things to me is how data indexing & search engines have brought a return to self-censorship. I always remember thinking it was absurd when I read 19th-century novels and they would talk about the Bishop of D---- or a certain mister R-------- Q----- or whatever, but now we've basically taken up the same format to avoid being indexed.
That's a chilling effect. It can cause a lot of problems. One, of course, is that it makes communication less clear, which is troublesome for reporters, historians, citizens trying to research an issue, and so forth.
But the concrete costs can be much worse. Privacy protection is poor, violations are routine, and therefore people conceal information -- the more sensitive it is, the more they hide it, because the last point of control they have left is never to reveal it at all. In health care, this can kill people. It's upsetting, but it's their choice: they value privacy above survival. This makes sense when you consider that living with other people hounding you about something can be utter hell.
Either America learns to protect privacy a great deal better, or it will face worsening consequences as people hide things, lie, and otherwise attempt to protect themselves as best they can.
Of course, it's a very close parallel to sexual abuse in which people's boundaries are violated. It ruins their ability to deal naturally and moderately with boundaries. The vast majority of survivors wind up at one extreme -- either they become very promiscuous because there's no point pretending boundaries that nobody else acknowledges, or they become violently protective of their boundaries since that's the only way to have any at all. Both have negative results, for others as well as the original victim; but these are still considered better outcomes than the alternatives.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dancing_serpent
(no subject)
Date: 2018-12-15 08:48 pm (UTC)In general, social media is in the business of facilitating/controlling communications between people, in order to make money off data mining, via advertising (at least), plus anything else they can think of.
Unless the social media you use has a plausibly different business model, then anyone who isn't living under a rock, and isn't a naive child, should be aware of that. Tumblr apparantly was better than e.g. Facebook. But I'm disinclined to use any social media site that doesn't charge me money, and have a clear story of how they are supporting themselves via customer payments.
So I'm here on Dreamwidth, complete with Seed Acoount (which is kind of cheating - I only had to pay once).
I probably wouldn't object if the business model only involved advertising, and the advertising was as easy to skip past as print advertising, and there was no technical way for advertising to also spread snoopwars and other malware. But that's not happening, so I'm not using ad supported social media sites. Not even with adblock.
Well ...
Date: 2018-12-15 08:52 pm (UTC)>>You have ahold of a different part of the same elephant -- how megacorps try to control people through social media.
>>But I'm disinclined to use any social media site that doesn't charge me money, and have a clear story of how they are supporting themselves via customer payments.<<
The problem with that is, when people have to pay for it, speech is no longer free. It creates a divide between those who can afford it and those who can't. We're not protecting the internet was a public forum, we're treating it as private property -- but people are using it as a public forum, and increasingly, that's where the important social interaction happens. When that's controlled by corporations for their own ends, the discourse is manipulated, and many people are shut out due to financial or infrastructural barriers, that causes a lot of problems. Like say, the 2016 election that we'll all be cleaning up after for decades.
Re: Well ...
Date: 2018-12-15 09:30 pm (UTC)That still doesn't make this communication free. I take for granted reliable internet connectivity. Others don't have it.
Unfortunately, powerful people have always attempted to control/influence communications. They don't need technology to do it - mockery and shunning work too, in any group of teenagers, though violence is usually another part of the cool kids' tool kit.
And I'm tired and selfish. I can't rescue people from Facebook, or Breitbart, or Fox News - especially when they willingly flock to all of these. All I can do is try to duck the worst of it myself, and maybe influence individuals who value my opinions to join me in this project.
People will use whatever they have to try to communicate. Sometimes they find out the hard way that they are talking to a Stassi informant, or that someone similar is tapping their communications. Or if not government bad actors, then scouts for internet flash mobs. Or for a thieving ring seeking to know about their vacation plans. The means change, but the element of risk really doesn't.
At some point, perhaps, decisions about net neutrality will shut down Dreamwidth. Related decisions are pretty much killing my ISP, slowly, with no trustworthy alternatives available. Or enough people will flee here for the 4channers and breitbarters to target it, whereupon it will become as unusable as LJ frequently was, well before it became a solely Russian thing.
In some ways, those of us in the Baby Boom generation may have been exceptional in the amount of freedom available to us. A good economy meant less self censorship to maintain employability. Underdeveloped search technologies meant our pecadillos did not generally come back to haunt us. It was relatively easy to move away from whatever oppressive circumstances was one born into.
Or maybe not. Maybe I'm just in "glass half full" mode at the moment. I don't really think I have enough information to be certain.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-12-15 09:28 pm (UTC)~panopticon~
Yes ...
Date: 2018-12-15 09:35 pm (UTC)But the concrete costs can be much worse. Privacy protection is poor, violations are routine, and therefore people conceal information -- the more sensitive it is, the more they hide it, because the last point of control they have left is never to reveal it at all. In health care, this can kill people. It's upsetting, but it's their choice: they value privacy above survival. This makes sense when you consider that living with other people hounding you about something can be utter hell.
Either America learns to protect privacy a great deal better, or it will face worsening consequences as people hide things, lie, and otherwise attempt to protect themselves as best they can.
Of course, it's a very close parallel to sexual abuse in which people's boundaries are violated. It ruins their ability to deal naturally and moderately with boundaries. The vast majority of survivors wind up at one extreme -- either they become very promiscuous because there's no point pretending boundaries that nobody else acknowledges, or they become violently protective of their boundaries since that's the only way to have any at all. Both have negative results, for others as well as the original victim; but these are still considered better outcomes than the alternatives.
Re: Yes ...
Date: 2018-12-15 09:54 pm (UTC)