I absolutely agree we need this. But the problem stated in the article
The complex web of human interactions that thrived on the internet’s initial technological diversity is now corralled into globe-spanning data-extraction engines making huge fortunes for a tiny few.
is the crux of it all, and without violence or extreme governmental measures forcibly breaking up big tech companies, the banning of selling personal data, etc. (all of which would also require violence because our government absolutely will not do these things) this simply isn’t going to be fixed. Politely asking billionaires to give up their captive revenue streams, and the power they wield with their platforms, will never produce results. And “well, what if we all just delete Instagram/Facebook/et al?” isn’t an answer either. “Content creators” are tied to these platforms for their own revenue streams and livelihoods, and they’re not going to give that up either. And for the most part, a large part of the population simply does not care enough.
The rise of smartphones in the late 2000’s really heralded the beginning of this downfall. There are walled gardens to be found all up and down the pipeline: the phone OEM, the OS devs, the apps and their platforms, the app stores, the service providers, etc. And you now have a device in your pocket that has always on internet connection either through wifi or cellular, a GPS radio, accelerometers, cameras, microphones, NFC, bluetooth, and all of these way to track literally everything about your life: everywhere you go, every app you use, every website you visit, listen to everything you say, and watch everything you do. And because it’s all so convenient, we willingly allowed ourselves to accept this unprecedented level of invasiveness and control.
The people who have that kind of power will not give it up willingly. And our government is too invested and has its fingers too far into all of it to do anything about it. I truly do not believe we’ll see something come along the way FB killed MySpace. Nothing is going to do that to Meta now. They’re too big and have too much power. There’s no market solution. There’s no regulatory will.
Nothing short of violence would ever be able to fix this. And I don’t see any kind of critical mass on the part of average folk to rise up against big tech to fight back, no matter how much information you show them, or how much you explain the dire need.
I don’t know I think that it is giving a bit to much credit to these organizations. Yes they are big and powerful but they are still run by humans who both give these organizations their power and also are the weakest links of most organizations.
This is why most new systems don’t come into power until the old ones become weak enough. Like capitalism was a thing during the times of feudalism for many years without necessarily replacing the main system but eventually as feudalism and the monarchy grew weaker eventually capitalism and meritocracy in some sense won out.
I mention this because yeah I agree that some sort of push back and fighting is going to be necessary but that alone isn’t going to be the main driving force. The external conditions also need to be ripe and to me it seems like we are on the verge of something new occurring.
The internet has become an extractive and fragile monoculture.
Something that has become very apparent to me over the past year of migrating away from the big 6 sites into the dark forest is that, no honestly, the internet isn’t that; the big 6 sites are that. Places like Neocities still exist and have lots of traffic and you can go there and have an interesting time. I’ve encountered more cultural diversity on the Fediverse than I had in the past decade of using Reddit. There’s still cool stuff and interesting communities; it’s just hard to find because search engines are increasingly useless. We need better discoverability; if we fix that, then we’re golden.
