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Introduction to Alternative Social Media Services
Problems with Mainline Social Media Services
Evaluation of Alternative Social Media Services
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I doubt I will find many people in Gemini space who are racing to defend Big Tech right now. Nonetheless, let me grab my Stallman banner and charge into the battle against big tech in the Gem.
When it comes to social media, there are many known problems. Insufferable advertising, data mining, censorship, and propaganda to are just a few of them.
When it comes to advertising, the claim is that the web costs money to run - but of course it does. And I would buy into that cop-out, but the thing is: advertising today goes beyond funding and operation or even generating a profit -- It is now the very foundation of the modern design paradigm.
If one web site was already hard enough to maintain off of advertising revenue, why create a botnet to build *hundreds* of bogus "hella SEO'd" junk websites? If cost of hosting was a game-breaking factor, the trend would be to optimize the efficiency of the hosting. Instead, the trend is to optimize the efficiency of the advertising.
In recent years we have seen more and more censorship. Around the time of Trump's presidency, we began to see more mainstream political positions become censored, as well as more censorship and hyper-politicization of topics such as medicine. This is a major escalation of censorship, and it has been perpetuated by corporate social media giants rather than the government.
At first, I believed it was just censorship that was the problem with mass media. But it gets worse. Censorship is just one side of a larger coin. The other side of that coin is propaganda. As soon as censorship is accepted, propaganda follows.
With all the data that users generate while using big social media sites, a lot of conclusions can be deduced. The users of any given social media service, like the speakers of any given language or members of any culture, form a collective consciousness.
The data owned by Facebook represents the collective consciousness of the user base of their service. This data can be analyzed to determine what the masses feel about any given subject. It can be experimented with and used to manipulate users. Theoretically speaking, Facebook has the ability to inject information to certain groups of users, and interpret how they react to it. By repeating this process they could improve and refine their approach.
As a practical Example: If Facebook decided to, they could intentionally promote content that supports or refutes certain political positions. They could then attempt to engage in persuasion on an automated basis, constantly improving with each iteration at manipulating the opinions of their users.
Are they doing this? Probably. But can I prove it? Probably not. But is there a problem with giving any one company all that potential power? Absolutely.
This has to be analyzed carefully, because moderation happens all over the internet, and is not always considered to be bad. Not every website needs to be littered with snuff videos and pornography. The real issue is honesty with the consumer.
Moderation rolls over into "Censorship" in the following circumstances:
An example of the first type is when YouTube is marketed as and reasonably considered to be "The" place for people to make videos. It is not a themed video site, nor is it a niche video site. For all intents and purposes, it is the primary video service used by Americans. Nobody sees it as a site with an agenda, and Google explicitly aims to maintain that public perception of the service.
The same can be said of Facebook and Twitter. Nothing about these services explicitly states that they are specialized for any specific subject or group of users. In my opinion, these circumstances create an implied warranty of merchantability for these services as "Global Public Forums". In these cases, moderation should be defined according to a specific set of rules, and should be carried out uniformly.
A global public forum should not engage in shadow censorship, which is the manipulation of search rankings and feed positions based on moderation concerns (as opposed to being based on relevance).
If these global public forums were to publicly position themselves as being a niche, that would be more honest approach to the consumer, and the implied warranty of merchantability would no longer apply. They could change their rules and the atmosphere of the site at will, promoting and demoting content as they see fit. The users would thank them for perfecting their niche feed, and the whole process would at least be more honest.
The problem is that the mainstream apps are benefitting from being considered global public forums. Users are less likely to use alternative services when they have this false perception of a "global public forum" existing for them to use. This is why mainstream social media sites continue to be dishonest with their user-bases. This is why they engage in shadow-banning instead of being forthright with their intentions and reasons for moderating content.