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20240316
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another draft today, sorry, I dont have the time for spellchecking and stuff.
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The beauty of social media, that people can provide feedback on any given topic is at the same time it's biggest curse.
When posting an article then you can get 2 kinds of replies, those who agree, and those who disagree.
But if you are not allowed to write what's on your mind, then what's the point of having social media?
Are we not allowed to write anything that others may disagree with? Or should we tone things down (self censorship) Should we only write nothing burges so that there never is any real discussion?
If I write anything that people disagree with then I'm open to all feedback, but that does not mean that I then am going to be forced to shut up.
When I come across something I disagree with then I should also be allowed to reply. Or what's the point of having the reply option at all. Are we all supposed to be yes-men or what?
If this is a problem then why doe it exist? Then why is there no 'solution'. No there will be a 'policy' but that policy will come with a policy police system, and a crackdown to enforce it. But nobody questions if that policy steps on basic rights. So is such a policy even legal? Sould these policies even exist?
I can see it is a problem, but I don't see these policies as a solution. In fact they appear to be a bigger problem as it skews the entire public arena with whatever bias is in such a policy.
Now, I also don't have a solution that I can magically present here. But I'm convinced that these policies are not the way forward. When there are just one or two platforms who have comparable policies then such a dictorship like system could work. But once there are hundreds or thousands, or tens of thousands of platforms out there then how on earth can people keep track of all the polisies and eventual changes of these policies? Is this realy an improvement, is this any better then the big platforms? Sure we will have more choice, but are people really going to ready those policies? Or will they just mentally check the 'i agree' box. And just go ahead? I think I know the answer, as we already know that people fast forward on those things. Meaning that the platforms will turn in to little police-states where the enforcers crack the whip all of the time.
This is why it looks like social media is on a collision course with itself.
While I'm happy to see a fresh wind blowing over the social media landscape, I also have my reservations as I can see this mushroom grow like a mold. I'm sure some people are being trained well on the big platformsto go along to get along. But just as many, if not more, seem to be massively annoyed by this 'eenheids worst' common average sausage. As it is not very natural to live like this. A relationship with anyone stands or falls on the capabillity to deal with disagreements. Those who avoid disagreements and tip-toe around them usually have very bad relationship's according to some psychologists.
Jung came up with the archetypes. And that meas that roughly 75% of humanity disagrees with whatever is given. And of those 25%, 75% will not fully aree. Meaning that 25% of the 25% may eventyally really agree. I don't have a better way to explain this at this point in time.
Now, I don't want Freudian or Jungian complex solutions for straigt forward human behaviour. The best way would be to not have any policies at all, and instead have a system where people can behave naturally.
I would propose to instead of making a quick copy of a failed system like facebook, build something better, and I think this is already the plan, but it seems the social media expectations of the group of people who grew up with that is pulling everyone back into the old funnel.
Let me put it differently, facebook and it's competitors are all based on data wealth and top-down control hierarchies. Where I and probably all GNU/Linux heads would like to like to give the users bottom-up control over their own lives. For those who are familiar with CatB (the book The Cathedral & The Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond) I don't have to say more.
This requires a lot of people to snap out of the facebook hypnosis and to find a connection with the bazaar principle.
I have seen questions where a user asks the devs to please add an option to 'silence' another so that all of us who don't like to read that persons writings are not bothered by it. But that is top-down as then that person is being censored. The question should have been, please give the user the option to temporary not see certain other users in the feed. As you don't want to silence anyone forever, but just like in a pub you may want to ignore cerain people for a few days. On certain topics, but not forever as it's not natural. Kids try it by putting the fingers in their ears and angry kick their feet, but in the end they have to communicate again.
It's probably not easy to find an elegant solution that does not mushroom into a self-nuke-bload-ware-bubble. But I would like to set challenge to move away from policy based top-down control and look for options that give everyone a bottom-up control over their own communications.
Yes, I did repeat myself as this seems to be the crux of the matter.
None of these idea's are mine just like most ot other stuff I tend to write about. I merely repeat stuff that I find interesting, and if others have a problem with that thats OK. But I shall not be silenced by default. But you should be allowed to ignore me, and I should be allowed to ignore you. But only if we can run into eachother on a later day and then discuss another topic. We may not be friends, but we should be able to share our thoughts.
Yeah yeah, I'm getting way to phillamasophisticated here...
THINK my dear friends and REASON. We all have this grey blob between our ears that thinks a lot but forgets to reason when it needs to.