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