71–80 of 147 posts
I feel like most folks haven't read either link. The strike calls for striking against traditional, centralized social media, _not_ other social media (such as the Fediverse).
This is great. Celebs need to be on boarded more than Geeks. Getting an Obama or Kim Kardashian to show support would have major global impact. A cascade would start.
I feel like most folks haven't read either link. The strike calls for striking against traditional, centralized social media, _not_ other social media (such as the Fediverse).
The best example of something decentralised, that is/was actually used, in the linked FAQ seems to be RSS/Atom. In the age of medium, aggregators like iTunes/Spotify and whatnot, that doesn't seem like something that's on a rising slope either. Despite the Twitter conversation in there I'd be hard pressed to see any incentive for this type of corporation to embrace openness when their current alternative is more lucrative.
Even if this strike gains momentum in the tech-savvy niche it's unlikely to even be noticed by regular users or even the non-tech influencers those people follow. It lacks an immediately actionable goal and common incentive. Another open standard, another decentralised social $X, that's not something that drives a critical mass away from any of these platforms. The platforms also have enough money to just buy up new players and continue their current paradigm.
I like the rules put forward by that decentralisation manifesto, I'm just not sure the general public cares or can care. A general user today likely didn't experience the internet as a set of communities. The experience is, imho, one of commercial interests that drives the masses, which drowns any visible incentive a regular user might gain from the technical approach this movement suggests.
Why not do a no Internet day? Will be easier to communicate that. Give people a taste of normal life. They will automatically quit on social media. Like every Sunday no Internet day.
This is great. Celebs need to be on boarded more than Geeks. Getting an Obama or Kim Kardashian to show support would have major global impact. A cascade would start.
I created Timelines - a social network that allows people to own their data. Timelines stores your data in a specific folder on your Google Drive which is sandboxed from all your other data on Google drive. Check it out! https://www.timelines.co
There are already options for decentralized social media. So clearly the majority of people is not in favor of using them, or they would simply do so (without a strike). Therefore, this is about a minority trying to force the majority of people to adapt to their preferences. I can not sympathize with such a cause, even though I personally would prefer decentralized solutions. It reminds me of the town that voted to b…
I think you're oversimplifying people. Lots of people want to lose weight while also loving the taste of delicious food that makes them gain weight. Same with smoking, drinking, recycling, etc. It really comes down to the cost on people to do something. If your building didn't provide a recycling bin, you probably wouldn't take the trouble to take all your recycling to a recycling facility. If none of your friends us…
The problem is the network effect. But then who are the protestors protesting to? They should protest to their friends to switch over to decentralized SM. Maybe they are just not important enough to have their friends follow them to better services?
Instead of going on a strike, why not evangelize those solutions to your friends?
As for losing weight: it is true that sometimes people like to have their hands forced. It is called an Ulysses contract, from Ulysses tying himself to the mast so that he couldn't jump into the sea to follow the sirens.
Calling for the government in the case of Social Media seems way overblown, though. There are no health issues involved like with unhealthy food. And for unhealthy food, people make those choices by buying smaller packages or using different shops. Arguably not really a case for government intervention, either.
I feel that even if everybody who cared went on strike, the difference in daily visitors would probably be in the error margin. I think most people who really care have already left the centralised social media or scaled it down to the point that a non-strike day is an exception. I do not disagree with the message, but I seriously doubt that this will have any effect.
I think there could be some useful purposes for everyone outside of social media: unifying those people, helping them find each other, mobilizing them to take community measures. I think it's safe to say that at this point we're not looking for another social network to replace Facebook or another search engine to replace Google - we need to start finding ways to work decentralized but still come together -this is go…
Mastodon (which seems to be the biggest alternative being proposed) is still a joke, even the name and branding sounds awful IMO. And who in their right mind thought calling a post a “toot” (https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/toot) was a good idea.
Besides the branding, decentralisation comes with its own issues like the lack of network-wide content moderation and agreement on what content is acceptable. There are solutions (more like hacks) around this where instance admins can choose not to federate with instances they don’t like the policies of, but it then causes problems for end-users where they can’t communicate with their peers on those banned instances despite all of them being on Mastodon. Good luck explaining to a non-technical person why they can’t talk to/see the posts of certain people despite them all being on Mastodon, and the solution is to spend time choosing an instance with policies you agree with and making sure your friends are on it or on a similar instance that’s not banned by yours, and then hoping the instances stay online without any kind of funding (there’s also no knowledge of whether they would scale to the size of mainstream social networks).
The solution IMO is not Mastodon or any of these fringe social networks. The main problem is the lack of an ethical business model in mainstream social media. The solution would be to vote with your wallets and fund a better Facebook alternative - it could even show the current social networks that there’s profit to be made treating their users with respect and make the situation better for everyone else too.