Sometimes I wonder if I actually want to use broadly adopted technologies. When my wife and I were dating, she volunteered at a kids' camp on a native american reservation. As she was being driven out to the camp by one of the permanent staff, she pointed out a cute bunny rabbit, and was horrified when the guy thanked her, took out a gun, and killed it. He explained that while rabbits are cute, where there are rabbits there are rattlesnakes, and you don't want those around kids.
Any medium capable of communications and adopted by most of humanity is going to be a war zone. Politics, propaganda, advertising, surveillance, addiction, fraud, child porn... all the rattlesnakes are going to go where the rabbits are. Someone ought to fight this endless tide. But I can't help but be tempted to look for a place that won't have an "eternal september" because it isn't easy to adopt.
There are 8 billion people in the world. If only 1% of them are even capable of signing up for something (because it's that hard) and only 1% of those bother, that is almost a million people, which seems like far more than I ever need to talk to. And I bet the quality of discourse would be better.
Maybe this world already exists and I haven't been invited.
burnt-resistor•8mo ago
Step 1. Making and/or using viable alternatives, preferably run by self-sustaining nonprofits or social ventures that aren't social-washing and not easily raided, shutdown, or censored by any one hostile government. If it's going to be a "Youtube" or "Twitter" replacement, it has to be usable or it's an aspiration rather than a realization.