Thoughts on Embracing the Social Internet Over Social Media

The author suggests everyone "acquire your own damn digital land." And I think this is the way forward. In 2005 or the pre-FB era being a "techie" was a personal distinction. I feel that now most people have become "techies" in varying degrees, either out of necessity or general interest. I mention this because I think I think there's so many more people now that are fully capable of operating their own site or blog than there were in the pre-FB era or the pre-smart phone era.

I think one of the greatest joys of "getting online" back in the day was the sense of adventure that the internet provided - strange, funny, obscure, intriguing, informative "websites" lurked everywhere. And stumbling on one of them and bookmarking them is/was a strange thrill. Contrast this to scrolling through a uniform looking "newsfeed" you have no control over. I think something like a "back to the internet" movement just might make it's own momentum.

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I do not revel in the glorious autonomy of, say, permanent academics whose self-help blogger reflexes have become so internalized that it's no longer clear whether they recognize that a post is opportunist piggybacking on trending slacktivist topics. If I can't tell from the general tenor of your blog whether you can tell that you're baldly shilling your books, your self-perception in the matter has ceased to hold relevance.

My first thought upon seeing affiliate marketing links on a self-serious blog is usually something more along the lines of: why does this creature believe they should be paid to have tastes in others' works?

For the most part, I'm not going to visit at all. But when I do, I am going — 100% of the time — to strip tracking parameters, affiliate codes, and all the other bullshit off any link prior to visiting.

Knowing that a platform's design serves to background any given individual user's capitalism of-the-soul in the service of a more homogeneous, impersonal assault from the proprietors is an extremely valuable thing. De-emphasizing personal schemes allows platform-centric economies of scale to double as behavioral peacekeeping. If I only have to circumnavigate a user's terrible ideology, vainglorious twitter feuds, etc. to accrue value from the subset of their posts I find worthwhile, I'm doing better, curatorially-speaking, than if I had to concern myself with that user's schemes to monetize their mere existence in my vicinity.

Constraints on affordances limit a small proportion of content-creating elites. You know you're one of those when your whining about the platform becomes action in leaving the platform, self-publishing in parallel, or otherwise upregulating personal agency.

For everyone else, though, those same constraints make the world go round.

The average internet user has no business whatsoever running their own services, per every single survey of digital skills ever conducted. And a CS prof writing otherwise is either (a) grossly incompetent in his stated area of expertise or (b) allowing himself to shoehorn flights of fancy into his writing in the service of pushing schlock.

A profile you lose because you didn't pay $4 last month, or didn't get security updates for, or […] is simply not a plausible centerpiece of alternative social media under any demographically-literate view of the world.

Homestead the noosphere all you want. Tenements will still need building too.

Not sure what exact shape the author imagines this might take, but I've had this idea (dream) in the back of my mind for a long time.. We need a standardized protocol that is open (I.E. not controlled by or dependent on 1 or 2 companies), private and secure by default, and dead simple to setup. For a while a few years ago I was really excited about the Bittorrent Bleep concept. The fact that it's been discontinued demonstrates just how important it is for these protocols to be open source and have multiple implementations!

Imagine a protocol that was P2P, supported chat/messages/voice/video, group messaging, integrated microblogging, ability to follow your friends and rank their posts with your own algorithm! Imagine if it was modular. You could choose from a half dozen post ranking algorithm plugins, or write your own, or sign up for extra-value services from companies that were competing for your business (maybe providing curated post lists or cloud storage of your posts/PMs).

I realize that absolutely none of this is innovative on it's own. We've been able to send encrypted messages/host blogs/script our own algorithms forever. But it's highly fragmented and requires a certain technical acumen that many people just don't have. My grandparent's aren't going to host and configure their own blog. Not going to happen. But, while it lasted, Bittorrent Bleep was entirely doable for them.

If Snapchat were an open Facebook implementation, it would not have taken off.