does anyone else feel enslaved?

When I was growing up the internet was a place to be liberated from the world say what you want to say, be whoever you want and form genuine communities with shared interests. Now the internet feels like a tool to enslave the mind with identity echo chambers and any deviation leads you to being banned and blocked shunned and silenced within a void that is inescapable. Novel unique websites coded manually by hobbyists running servers for free in the commons allowing people access to the free flow of information under the banner of “information should be free” has largely gone away with corpratisation. I miss the days when the internet was populated largely by nerds aiming to make a better world not this controlled censored hell hole of profiteering.

AndreTelevise,

Echo chambers are what happens often when you trust personalized algorithms. You pick specifically the things you agrree with, and then later you don’t get exposed to things beyond your own worldview and interests. And recently, algorithms have been proliferating all over the internet and there’s a lot of discouragement from using smaller services - a lot of it has to do with how the variety of content on the bigger social media networks is not yet replicated on smaller sites. The fact that smaller sites have now become usable thanks to Reddit and Twitter going down the drain makes me feel like on one hand I feel more free now because I can explore all sorts of sites and more people will be there, but on the other hand I am intimidated by the sheer amount of alternatives and my mind can’t manage with all of them at once, so I minimize my general social media usage. The fediverse is, in a way, consisting of “novel unique websites coded manually by hobbyists running servers for free”.

hsl,
@hsl@wayfarershaven.eu avatar

This conversation has gotten out of hand. There are too many comments that are making it personal rather than focusing on the discussion. Locking it now.

1984,
@1984@lemmy.today avatar

I’m adding diamond strength to your lock. :)

boatswain,

Cory Doctorow may have you covered; he just posted recently about his next book, which sounds like it deals with what you’re talking about, and tries to find ways to fix it: mamot.fr/

neocamel,

Thanks for this! Love his writing. Just pledged for the audiobook on Kickstarter.

dotslashme,

For sure, I’m slowly quitting the www and moving more towards gemini instead.

toastal,

I like the idea, but Gemini lacks the accessibility & performance HTTP brings & the spec has issue too. I’d rather see like a new compliance suite for the non-shitty web because the last year’s tech is/was good, but some of the reigns should be pulled in—especially the web appification of web pages that have no business being anything other than just a static page.

Encode1307,

This guy is why I think karma was a useful metric. I looked at his profile on voyager, saw a negative number and had a pretty good grasp on what he was all about.

Foresight,

So you judge appearances than content of character… The kkk is waiting for your application

Encode1307,

No I’m definitely judging the content of your character and finding it wanting.

Jimmycrackcrack,

At the risk of sounding like exactly what you decry, I’m going to pick on your choice of language, hopefully it will seem like it’s for good enough reason. I largely sense a similar, regretful shift in the way the internet is experienced and have some mixed feelings about it, but I would be very cautious in using a term like ‘enslaved’. When you choose to fire up your own high-tech information device to access the publicly available internet and you don’t find the experience exhilarating or thrilling, or fulfilling, in comparison to some relatively rose-tinted view of the same experience had during your childhood can you honestly say that that is similar to enslavement?

However, semantics aside, yeh it’s kind of a shame some of the quirky rough around the edges character of the internet has changed a bit since it became more mainstream and since corporate participation has refined and figured out how to extract much more efficiently from it. That said, as is often said when this sentiment is expressed, the old style of web is still there, you just don’t see it. Nothing stops people from hand coding a website if they want to, but it’s unlikely to be the top of any given search result from Google, and we all use Google. Similarly, unlike decades past, there is just so much stuff on the web that these types of things will likely not be noticed. There’s kind of a paradoxical relationship with how much more in general is available online with how much less varied our consumption of it is. Pretty much every web experience through a browser is going to start with www.google.com, either through the page itself or a default search bar and after that for many it’s going to be facebook, or reddit or amazon. Out of billions of pages, it tends to come down to about 4 for most and then a smattering of other larger media presences accessed via the portal of one of those 4. It can seem like there’s nothing else there in such a case and though not really true, it kind of in practice is true because you’ll much less likely find someone’s home made hobbyist website through major portals than you might have when by virtue of little else being available, that’s what a search engine returned or word-of-mouth recommended.

How bad a thing this is, is nuanced. The web is vastly more useful than it ever was, although the forces at work that made it so seem to be engaging in cannabilising themselves and one another and crippling their own utility in the never ending quest for more profit. I miss some of the feel of the earlier web, although when I was coming of age and using it heavily in the early 2000s, it was very well established already so I don’t have quite the same basis of comparison as someone who might have used it throughout the 80s or 90s. I think I have detected something of a shift away from the ‘edgy’ persona adopted by most on forums, but then it’s hard to separate my usage and interests at the time from the general web itself. I think, for one thing, there still remained even in the early 2000s, a nicheness and ‘geek’ culture to those who spent time on forums that tended to skew the demographic towards teenage boys although I have no evidence for this, this has gone unless you seek it out. I personally haven’t really had too much of a problem with shunning and banning, in fact that type of thing tended to happen more in my earliest web experiences where there seemed to be more places that had issues with swearing, however I have seen a similar puritanical streak that results in this. However I’ve only really perceived that on major platforms as they’ve reached their stage of the life cycle where they can cash-in and must become investor and advertiser friendly. That arc, a more recent arc in my opinion does match what you’re saying but I view that more of a change in how those specific platforms rather than the web itself operate. So it’s harder now than maybe 5-10 years ago to speak your mind with little to no consequence or backlash on a major platform whose reach and influence amplifies that opinion to millions and millions of people. I think you have about the same capacity to speak your mind now as you ever did on the web, but lost the ability to use corporate machinery to do it and not also expect human beings to react to it and to even be silenced when doing so flies against the interests of the owners of the corporate machinery.

Whirlybird,

Now the internet feels like a tool to enslave the mind with identity echo chambers and any deviation leads you to being banned and blocked shunned and silenced within a void that is inescapable

This so much. Go against the narrative and you’re banned even for breaking no rules. Reddit is in the endgame of this at the moment. The admins and their power mods decide on the narrative and if you don’t play along and circle jerk you get banned, often from subs you have never even been to.

Unfortunately in my short time here I’m seeing much the same, though at least the bannings aren’t at the same extent yet. Give it time though.

Foresight,

Yup exactly the word removed is censored, I could really do with a pack of fags and smoking a removed

Norgoroth666,

Maybe just stop posting racist homophobic shit?

Foresight,

And where is that?

teawrecks,

Have you tried to post something that was censored? I haven’t run into that, though I’ve heard a lot of people complaining that they’ve been censored. The worst I’ve gotten is downvoted, which is not the same as being censored.

Whirlybird,

Have a look at the mod log for MaliciousCompliance on Lemmy.world if you want to see censorship and extreme mod abuse.

aussie.zone/modlog/917

If you dare say “biological sex exists and is different to gender” - a pretty factual statement that not even trans people would deny - you’ll have your comment deleted and be banned.

Have to hope those same power tripping mods aren’t also mods in many other subs, but unfortunately the most active one doing all the censoring and banning is.

Lemminary,

I have seen a couple of comments removed by mods that I thought were perfectly fine, so there’s that. 🤷‍♂️ I just hope it doesn’t become a regular thing.

ada,
@ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I get what you mean, but I also feel like the fediverse has given many of us a return to some of the freedoms and feelings of the early internet.

I’m writing this from an instance I admin, an instance that exists, specifically to make a better world for queer and gender diverse folk. We prioritise minority safety over “federate with everyone”, but that freedom to exist without institutionalised transphobia being ignored like it is on most social media platforms, with the ability for us to exist and communicate without being dogpiled by haters, and to actively remove the bigots, that is a freedom I haven’t felt in a long time!

Foresight,

Your joking right? The whole of society caters to you lot! Especially reddit!

Varixable,

Complaint about state of current internet/censorship of ideas? CHECK Hyperbolic comparison to slavery? CHECK “MUH FREE SPEECH”? CHECK

Nothing to see here fellas, just another person who doesn’t (can’t?) realize that people are not required to entertain your shitty ideas about how a society with less human rights for “others” is actually the best society.

Foresight,

Ask yourself what results in the outcome of, everyone owning everything or everyone owning nothing.

Varixable,

What is the United States of America?

Foresight,

No, the point is they result in the same outcome just with a different path.

Varixable,

Yeah but will I be able to say the n word there?

Foresight,

I would prefer to be able to criticise identity politics and peoples self serving egos that maintain the status quo of capitalism

MystikIncarnate,

I feel enslaved pretty much all the time. Whether you’re watching TV, listening to the radio, surfing the web, or simply existing somewhere that other people exist, like going to work, there’s so much hidden oppression that goes unnoticed.

Sure, the internet is a haven of free speech, but free speech isn’t free, and I don’t mean in the way that people have fought and died for it, though they absolutely have. Freedom of speech isn’t freedom from consequences. So if you go on the internet, and talk about doing the illegal, and the police come and arrest you for plotting to do the illegal (eg, murder, or any number of traitorous acts), you had the freedom to say those things, but not the freedom from being held accountable for saying them.

On top of that, you’re constantly bombarded with information, especially on the internet about what products to buy to “improve” your life. Buy buy buy. Be a good consumer of goods and services. Don’t learn to do things yourself, you’ll get hurt or die, just… Pay someone else to do it, so they can do it “right”. Anything from plumbing to automotive repair, to cleaning your own house, just pay someone. The electronification of everything adds DRM to most everything so now you need to spend thousands of dollars on training and tools just to fix your own damn tractor, and companies like John Deere want us to believe it’s for the best to do it this way, so only certified experts do the work so it’s done correctly. But who said it needs to be done how they want it done, or that their way is better?

At work, if you start speaking your mind, you’ll find yourself in front of HR very quickly. You have to restrict your impulses, movements and speech to only what your co-workers will allow for, and what management wants you to be able to do, you’ll get paid what they want to pay you, and be happy about it, or you’ll find yourself destitute.

Yeah, we’re “free” to select from a hundred horrible options of how we want to be oppressed, and slave away until we die, bombarded with “experts” who charge a small fortune just to see if that pain you have is indigestion, or pancreatitis, which will kill you in a matter of hours, or not.

We’re free to live how others are willing to accept that we can. Buying our way to a mediocre existence, filled with existential dread, suffering, and little more than robbery, but because we have the illusion of choice we think that’s freedom.

Everything is a system of control. Whether you buy a house, get a job, or simply look at the TV, or the world around you, you’re bombarded with information on what you should do, what you should say, how you should dress, what to think, where to go, and exactly how to enslave yourself to a system you didn’t create, that wasn’t made for you to succeed in, that will never stop holding you down, and takes everything from you. That includes, and is not limited to, drivers licensing, billboards, advertisements, employment, bank accounts, religion, consumerism, malls, shops, the news/media, the music you listen to, and yes, especially the internet.

If you can’t see that this is the case, you’re probably too blind to realize it. You’re being dazzled by the flowery language and rhetoric of the situation, thinking you know things, when all you know is what they want you to know. Companies are the root of the problem, deeply engrained in the capitalist dream and consumerist culture.

But hey, the weather is kinda nice today, so let’s enjoy that while we can and not think about the hell that is a life in today’s society.

forgotmylastusername,

Nobody really indexes those types of sites anymore. I suppose a lot of those site operators are more than happy to remain separate from the big tech net.

angstylittlecatboy,

I get what you’re talking about, but maybe it’s being a decently-educated American with a black mom talking, but “enslaved” is not the right word for this.

Foresight,

Yeah I don’t give a shit what you yanks think and your bubble, maybe when you keep your own cultural bullshit to yourselves and not enforce it onto ours and everyone else’s country then maybe I’ll change my mind, until then I’d still prefer to buy a bag of faggots from a van.

z3rOR0ne,
@z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml avatar

Well you gave enough of a shit to express your not giving a shit, so maybe you give at least a little bit of a shit? Enough to express yourself anyways.

And it doesn’t appear that the above individual was attempting to enforce any kind of “you can’t say that”. More like its probably not the most nuanced or well thought out way of expressing your opinion, as it equates restrictions on internet speech with slavery.

It is intriguing that in expressing your lack of giving a shit on the aforementioned opinion you have basically shut down a possibly genuine discussion on the topic and dismissed an expression of the very free speech you are supposedly bemoaning the demise of.

Foresight,

I don’t like woke imperialism, you can cover your empire in rainbow flags all you want but imperialism is still imperialism still exploits the poor for your own gain.

z3rOR0ne,
@z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml avatar

If by imperialism, you are inferring a supposed encroachment on a traditionalist culture, I would posit that cultures have never been a static entity, holding onto a static identity. Rather, cultures have been, and always will be an ever evolving and constantly changing collaboration of individuals who hopefully continually evolve as they continually re evaluate who they wish to be collectively.

There will always be backlash against this change of culture and values, which you are obviously exemplifying here, but I’ll point out that historically this kind of holding onto the past has never really worked out nor has such resistance ever lasted in the face of the general trend of humanity becoming more and more accepting of different ways of living and loving.

I encourage you to consider not holding on so tightly to the past and instead find your place as a peaceful member of the ever changing and evolving and more accepting society that will, in spite of the adversity to it, eventually come to be.

Foresight,

No I mean using woke shit as an excuse to push imperialism to maintain the global system of exploitation for cheap labour.

z3rOR0ne,
@z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml avatar

Well now you’ve peaked my interest. If you would please elaborate?

papertowels, (edited )

“there was once a time when the sky was open, when the twilight beckoned one forth, when the nascent rivers of the internet flowed free with information”, he waxed nostalgic.

“Fuck you and keep your ideas to yourself”, he says when someone says something he dislikes.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Encode1307,

Lol, spot on

Foresight,

Well that’s taking what I said out of context

vzq,

Please fuck of to whatever “Free speech” site idiots like you fuck off to these days.

Foresight,

This is suppose to be open source freedom of speech you know free as in freedom not beer

socsa,

Only to the sweet siren’s call of Casamigos Brand Tequila!

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