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Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things: Three Decades of Survival in the Desert of Social Media (open.substack.com)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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This article from 2022 does a very good job of capturing the social media landscape and the condition of political discourse right now. It highlights one thing that I've been hearing a lot and agree with, the cruelty is the point.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

That was a long wordy read, but definitely some interesting observations. I've been on the internet since its inception so I've seen it all. In fact the author is talking about teething on the internet in the AOL days, but I even predate that starting with local BBS systems over a 1200 baud modem (if anyone is old enough to remember those days).

My BBS provided my first internet connection using the initial release of Netscape Navigator, at a whopping bandwidth of 2.4kbps. A photo would come up line by line. You had to have patience then, but it was so new we didn't know any better.

Anyway I've always felt the institutionalization of things wrecks them. Not just with the internet, but with other hobbies and interests for me as well. It's pretty much the way world works, realize an idea, popularize it, monetize it, destroy it. It's a vicious cycle, but there's no avoiding it in our profit driven society.

Social media has definitely fallen by the wayside of monetization. Maybe FOSS and the Fediverse can avoid that fate. I think it can at least for much longer than the capitalized ventures preceding it.