> our digital lives are now lived within black box straight-jacketing walled gardens, mediated by undemocratically wielded algorithms and protocols.
> all i see today are walls instead of bridges.
Whenever I read these comments I wonder if people are using a different Internet than I am, because this isn't my experience at all.
I can access whatever I want, discuss whatever I want, and interact with whoever I want online. We have a multitude of platforms to choose from and I don't even have to pay for most of them. Honestly I don't even look at ads because I downloaded a free ad-blocker plugin for my free web browser and it all just works.
Even my social media is nothing like the dystopian claims I see online. I don't use Facebook much, but whenever I open the app it's just fun photos and updates from the people I want to keep in touch with. I have zero problems with that because I enjoy seeing the people around me happy, having fun, and succeeding.
I suspect these dystopian viewpoints come less from real-world experience and more from bouncing ideas around in echo chambers. It seems the people who are most opinionated about what social media is or isn't are those with the least direct experience in the matter, instead substituting hyper-dramatized accounts from news stories, HN comments, and agenda-pushing documentaries like "The Social Dilemma". There's a certain sense of elitism involved wherein the anti-social-media and anti-silicon-valley people feel that they are the only ones who see through the facade and understand what's really going on.
it's very possible for you to have the experience you're describing from a system, and for the system to be predatory and extractive.
Just as many people live in nice suburbs and work in cities where there's extreme poverty. They get a good life, don't often have to contend with the pain and suffering of others, and can dismiss those claims as exaggeration.
> whenever I open the app it's just fun photos and updates from the people I want to keep in touch with. I have zero problems with that because I enjoy seeing the people around me happy, having fun, and succeeding.
Zuck, is that you? (i'm joking. surely Zuck has better things to do than hang out on online forums...)
it's interesting how you engage with only a small portion of my comment. it seems you didn't bother clicking through to the deeper critiques of the tech industry that i referenced (Wendy Liu's Abolish Silicon Valley Tribune article/essay). you casually dismiss serious in-depth critiques of today's system with anecdotal information ("I can access whatever I want, discuss whatever I want"); also by suggesting that i yearn to feel a sense of elitism or be a part of some sort of 'in-group'; that i don't have a facebook account, and that i live inside of an echo-chamber, all without actually engaging with the material and any of the arguments.
would you consider that maybe it is you who is living inside the Silicon Valley echo-chamber? your blanket statements and straw man arguments are suspiciously echo-chamber -like [1]
anyway, hope you're having fun up there on Elysium
> all i see today are walls instead of bridges.
Whenever I read these comments I wonder if people are using a different Internet than I am, because this isn't my experience at all.
I can access whatever I want, discuss whatever I want, and interact with whoever I want online. We have a multitude of platforms to choose from and I don't even have to pay for most of them. Honestly I don't even look at ads because I downloaded a free ad-blocker plugin for my free web browser and it all just works.
Even my social media is nothing like the dystopian claims I see online. I don't use Facebook much, but whenever I open the app it's just fun photos and updates from the people I want to keep in touch with. I have zero problems with that because I enjoy seeing the people around me happy, having fun, and succeeding.
I suspect these dystopian viewpoints come less from real-world experience and more from bouncing ideas around in echo chambers. It seems the people who are most opinionated about what social media is or isn't are those with the least direct experience in the matter, instead substituting hyper-dramatized accounts from news stories, HN comments, and agenda-pushing documentaries like "The Social Dilemma". There's a certain sense of elitism involved wherein the anti-social-media and anti-silicon-valley people feel that they are the only ones who see through the facade and understand what's really going on.