new blog, about twitter buyout and how microblogging sucks

content/blog/the-internet-is-broken-due-to-structural-injustice.md

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+---
+title: "The internet is broken due to structural injustice"
+date: "2022-10-27"
+---
+
+Over the past few years, I've come to realize that the Internet as we know
+it is utterly broken.  Lately, I've also been pondering how participants
+in the modern Internet have enabled and perpetuated harm to society at
+large.  Repeatedly, we have seen the independence of the commons chipped
+away by powerful men who wish for participants to serve their own whims,
+while those who raise concerns with these developments are either shunned,
+banned or doxed.
+
+On Friday, October 28th, we will see another demonstration of these structural
+injustices where the commons takes another loss to the whims of a powerful man.
+Last time, [it was freenode's takeover by Andrew Lee][fn], and this time it
+will be Twitter's takeover by Elon Musk.  No, really, the deal is already
+concluded: [TWTR will be delisted from NASDAQ on Friday][twtr-delisting].
+
+   [fn]: https://ariadne.space/2021/05/20/the-whole-freenode-kerfluffle/
+   [twtr-delisting]: https://seekingalpha.com/news/3896099-twitter-delisting-from-nyse-effective-on-friday-after-musk-completes-deal
+
+Will this be the end of Twitter?  Probably not, but it will be the end of the
+current relationship the commons shares with Twitter.  Instead of acting as
+a self-described "public square," it will further evolve into a chaotic
+cacophony of trolling and counter-trolling driven in the name of algorithmic
+engagement.  Some will move to other microblogging services and networks,
+and will likely discover that everything which made Twitter horrible likely
+applies in some way to the replacement.
+
+## Are social platforms working as designed?
+
+The reality is that **microblogging sucks**, but Twitter managed to make it
+addictive for a few reasons, [which is *why* the most popular alternative,
+Mastodon][masto], is basically a copy of the underlying formula, but tweaked to
+work on the ActivityPub federated network (the so-called fediverse).
+
+   [masto]: https://joinmastodon.org/
+
+The formula is not that hard to understand if you understand how people
+think and react to stimulation.  People are inherently social creatures,
+and because of the formula used by Twitter, have tried their best to use
+Twitter *despite* the inherent conceptual flaws behind microblogging.
+
+If you've ever sat down at a slot machine, you will likely note that they are
+constantly making noises as you interact with them.  These sounds are
+designed to stimulate the reward center in your brain and thus cause it
+to release endorphins.  In the same way, microblogging and other social
+platform formulas have built rich notification systems to ensure that
+users experience pleasure from being online.  Don't believe me?  Try
+muting the notifications from Twitter or Mastodon and see if you remain
+interested in it: odds are, after a while, you won't.
+
+The other key part of the formula: sew discord amongst the users.  This
+can be done organically (by users) or algorithmically.  People have an
+inherent desire to be *right*, and this keeps the engagement loop going
+as people fight over stupid things like whether Android or iPhones are
+better.  The things being argued over do not even have to have any basis
+in reality: people are more than happy to hold positions which falter to
+any modicum of dialectical analysis, such as whether *furries are actually
+shitting in litter boxes in schools* (obviously this is bullshit if you think
+about it for more than 10 seconds).
+
+Eventually these pointless arguments evolve into arguments which have
+actual societal impact: *are trans people legitimate* and *do they deserve
+rights*?  Obviously, they are, and they do, but in a world where
+microblogging discourse is the primary form of media ingestion, the consumer
+is manipulated with fight-or-flight challenges to make their own
+280-character thought piece on the discourse of the day, which leads them
+to consider the possibility that *perhaps* Chudlord18 might be on to something
+when he points out that George Soros was seen at the last Bilderberg
+meeting, even though all of the contents of Chudlord18's post was fake news.
+
+Sadly, as we see in the world today, it turns out that fascism is the
+most optimized ideology available given the limited cognitive bandwidth
+constraints of a 280-character post.  This is because the answer is always
+simple with fascism: generally a death threat towards the marginalized group
+of the day will do just fine, which easily fits into 280 characters:
+"Storm the capitol building!"?  Yep, even congressional members can be
+marginalized under the right circumstances, *and* it's under 280 characters.
+
+## Spamming and scamming
+
+Fascism is hardly the only problem that these networks face.  Almost every
+day I get spam like this on either Twitter or Mastodon:
+
+![Spam messages for an affinity-fundraising scam from a Mastodon user](/images/mastodon-spam.png)
+
+Spam like this is a huge problem with Mastodon, but not with Pleroma, another
+ActivityPub server, which provides a robust message filtering facility.
+However, due to the combination of mismanagement of the Pleroma project and
+an absolutely absurd fediverse turf war, admins of Pleroma instances are
+written off by some Mastodon admins as being evil, even if they are otherwise
+harmless.
+
+Between this and the architectural complexity of deploying a BEAM application
+like Pleroma on Kubernetes, by comparison to how easy it is to deploy Mastodon
+using Knative on Kubernetes, I am using Mastodon.  Since the project mismanagement
+issues are largely resolved now, I might suck it up and convert the instance to
+Pleroma in the near future just so I can deal with the spam in a more automated
+way.
+
+I'll probably continue to use Mastodon (or maybe Pleroma if I switch my instance
+to it), but lately I've been using microblogging platforms less and less, as I
+have realized that ultimately the format doesn't provide the sense of community
+I am looking for.
+
+And this is ultimately the problem with the fediverse: everything on the fediverse
+is a clone of a proprietary platform, with basically the same social downsides.
+It turns out when you take something useful, and turn it into a "social experience,"
+you basically ruin its utility.
+
+## Social tools which are actually respectful
+
+To me, social tools exist to facilitate communication with my friends, and perhaps
+expansion of my friend group to others which have the same interests.  It turns out
+that we already had good social tools for this all along: blogs and IRC.  Because of
+certain realities -- it is inherently easier to clone an open protocol and turn it
+into a proprietary service -- for most people, these social tools turned into
+centralized platforms like Dreamwidth and Discord.
+
+Microblogging forces you to shout at people, while IRC (now for the most part Discord)
+facilitates thoughtful conversation.  Social photo sharing encourages the editing of
+photographs to make people appear more attractive for additional likes, while posting
+photos of yourself to your blog removes that dopamine loop and lets you just focus on
+living and occasionally documenting your life.
+
+Yes, the point is that these tools are largely boring.  They aren't *meant* to dominate
+your life, they are meant to facilitate communication with your friends.  They exist to
+serve the needs of the commons.
+
+Maybe somebody will eventually build the tools I am ultimately looking for.  In the
+meantime, I've expanded my list of contact points to include services I previously
+kept mostly private.
+
+But either way, for the most part, I won't be investing my time in microblogging anymore,
+be it on Twitter or Mastodon.