Laying Down in the Coffin Being Nailed Shut by the Services You Use
During this whole net neutrality debacle, I found myself wondering what I was even using the Internet for anymore, if I could honestly argue that I was protecting it for the value it gives me or only what I remembered it used to give me. So I took some time to monitor my Internet usage and what it did for me.
Conclusion: the Internet is already destroyed. For just a small sample of what I mean, switch your Facebook timeline to Most Recent versus Top Stories. In a quick glance you'll see a very, very different experience, more different than what it used to be back when doing that switch was a top-level command (now it's buried). Facebook's algorithms have already throttled the information you're receiving far before any ISPs have started adjusting to the new rules.
Warren Ellis completes the rest of it for me:
> "Discovery on Tumblr is busted, Twitter's too loud and awful, Facebook decides what you're seeing for you, don't even with Mastodon, Snapchat got murdered by Instagram Stories, Instagram algo-management is getting aggressive..."
> "Having been on the net for more than twenty years, and having been so deeply connected with it for so much of that time, it's really still kind of weird to see it all in such a state of ruin. The "Wild West" aspect left a long time ago, of course, but I'm not sure I ever expected the aftermath years to look like cheap post-apocalyptic fiction.
Which brings us to how last year Americans clutched pearls over 'echo chambers.' It's just like Americans to blame themselves for issues beyond their control.
Be clear about this:
You're not in an echo chamber of your own making, you're in a coffin that the services you use are nailing shut.
If you want good information, better information, diverse information -- you have to go back to print.
Don't take it personally. Everyone thought television was 'the most democratic medium' before the broadcast channels crystalized to just a few corporations. It's the cycle of how mass media develops.
Conclusion: the Internet is already destroyed. For just a small sample of what I mean, switch your Facebook timeline to Most Recent versus Top Stories. In a quick glance you'll see a very, very different experience, more different than what it used to be back when doing that switch was a top-level command (now it's buried). Facebook's algorithms have already throttled the information you're receiving far before any ISPs have started adjusting to the new rules.
Warren Ellis completes the rest of it for me:
> "Discovery on Tumblr is busted, Twitter's too loud and awful, Facebook decides what you're seeing for you, don't even with Mastodon, Snapchat got murdered by Instagram Stories, Instagram algo-management is getting aggressive..."
> "Having been on the net for more than twenty years, and having been so deeply connected with it for so much of that time, it's really still kind of weird to see it all in such a state of ruin. The "Wild West" aspect left a long time ago, of course, but I'm not sure I ever expected the aftermath years to look like cheap post-apocalyptic fiction.
Which brings us to how last year Americans clutched pearls over 'echo chambers.' It's just like Americans to blame themselves for issues beyond their control.
Be clear about this:
You're not in an echo chamber of your own making, you're in a coffin that the services you use are nailing shut.
If you want good information, better information, diverse information -- you have to go back to print.
Don't take it personally. Everyone thought television was 'the most democratic medium' before the broadcast channels crystalized to just a few corporations. It's the cycle of how mass media develops.