Very nicely put. I've used all this for deep reflection about my internetting as well and I don't think I have come to terms with everywhere being ruined by corporate. It's not like they don't fuck us over as well in the real world and I now realize what kind of fight we're in on- and offline. Don't want to give up any bit of space to evil corporations. I think it's easy to create really quiet Lemmy instances (or other social sites, federated or not) where one can rest from all those aggressive algorithms, and if I do it at some point I will make it very connected to real life and good for information gathering. Other than that, I like real life, I'm not interested in much virtual stuff.

12k views but probably 10k are bots and the others are too busy scrolling to ever use your knowledge. And then your content is buried on someone else's platform. I think reddit (and lemmy for that case) are horrible for keeping and spreading useful information and I wonder why people see them as the best alternative.

These products - Googles convenience products as well as the Social Media shite - were introduced gradually at the time. The single steps people took towards using these products seemed innocuous. Before you know it, your whole life is enmeshed in a privacy nightmare and the convenience and quality you were used to is gone. It's like buying an apartment in a nice place of town and then within the next two decades the area turns into a shady ghetto slum.