Rising Interest Rates Might Herald the End of the Open Internet
Rising Interest Rates Might Herald the End of the Open Internet
Web 2.0 took off with help from the economic conditions of the 2000s. Recent moves from Reddit and Twitter signal that that era is coming to an end.
Lemmy and Mastodon seem to be doing the "open Internet" just fine. We should probably not try to draw too many conclusions from what's happening at Twitter and Reddit, both of which are turning into raging dumpster fires that go beyond just closing down the APIs.
That is the part the media doesn't understand, we don't need corporations controlling the internet. The days of being stuck behind a corporate-controlled wall are over!
Yes, I'm amazed the lack of understanding in the general and tech media about the Fediverse
I believe enough of us will support Lemmy and Mastodon servers and developers monetarily that the upward growth will be sustained and we won't need to rely on broken corporations for the majority of the flow of information. The media should be at the forefront of this but most of them just can't seem to wrap their arms around it.
At the risk of using an overused phrase… this could be called “manufacturing consent.” The media (who owns the media btw? Oh… the corporations do…weird) writers have a task before them: convince people that corporate control is good and further is inevitable. At first you get some pushback. You keep publishing similar articles for months, maybe years, and then one day take that exact action and by then the overall public has been beaten down by the deluge of “it’s gonna happen!” that most of the people who used to “care” sigh, shrug, and go “well, it was always going to happen.” Besides, what were you really ever going to do about it? (Side note this is why it’s hilarious when right wingers cry THE MEDIA IS CENSORING ME 1984! They think their crying and shitty opinions matter to those who actually run things. Spoiler: they love it when you cry online, openly. It’s cathartic for you and makes you less likely to ever do anything cough that would actually cause any type of cough cough changes)
It’s an insidious tactic. I think people generally know it’s happening, and yet it still works. Even on those who are the most aware, the most engaged, I still become fatigued and fall into nihilism eventually on most stuff. This all feeds into an overarching theme of capitalism and liberalism and how it crushes the humanity from everyone eventually and makes us all complicit in our daily destruction of ourselves and society.
Even beyond corporate media I see a lot of people having this mentality that the Fediverse has to become a behemoth to succeed. We don't need that, though. There's no profit motive, so it can actually just exist as itself. No incompetent board members making bad decisions, no selling out to make a buck, just a platform that people can actually use
The irony of an article about the end of the open internet that I can't read because there is a paywall.
Reader mode is your friend. Most browsers support it. It bypasses most paywalls because javascript doesn’t get executed and CSS gets ignored.
No ads either.
Why did I not realize this until now? Thank you!
I had to take a screenshot because the irony was so delicious.
The internet was fine before corporations brought their troll armies, bots, “adverts”, and general misinformation trash to it. Mark Metaturd and people like him aren’t the internet. He’s a symptom of elite corporate bs trying to steal more public time, money, and space.
If I could bet on it I would bet Metaturd pays for DDoS attacks on rivals.
Corporations and governments. Plenty of CCP and Kremlin accounts online.
New places will pop up like Lemmy fediverse
It's a clever take, but if true, then it may be inevitable. Politically, even if one party tries to pass the regulations proposed here, the other will 100% use the catch-all "we need to regulate AI!!!!!" scare tactics as an excuse to accept corporate bri-- I mean, to permit lobbying against any rights to free information.
It’s easier to ask for forgiveness then ask for permission
Good article!