Adam ruins the social networks conversation
In this video Adam Conover argues that people cannot leave Twitter because everyone is there and Mastodon is hard to use. He thinks that the best is to transform Twitter into a nationalized, gov-owned public good platform.
Well…
He may be right that people are not going to leave Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and the like since “everyone is there”. Which, let’s be honest, is an indirect way of saying that humans are mindless sheep who will go to the popular party regardless if they are fucked in the ass all day. So let’s not brush this aside. Humans are mindless idiots, at least most of them. And busy for that matter. That should scare the shit out of us and to make us try to find a solution for that, not a solution for Twitter and the like.
Second, Mastodon is not the fucking “fediverse”. The fediverse is a big network made up of many different platforms. It is like calling the mail, GMAIL. As if it is only Gmail. Also, if Mastodon is hard to use, and for that matter other platforms like Friendica and so forth, then humans must be true idiots because it takes you a minute to understand how these work. They are as “complicated” as Twitter, Facebook and the like. The people who think that using Linux or a federated platform is “hard”, are those that need any little excuse to not change their habits. When people start to use new platforms like Zoom, TikTok and the like, they put up with whatever new interfaces they have to navigate, just to use them because “these apps are trendy and everyone uses them”.
Lastly, a gov owned social network is not like a gov owned educational network like PBS….PBS produces specific content that it controls. A social network is made up of the content that people produce….if the gov would control that, it would be censored like hell. Terrible idea!
The solution is decentralization. Else you have a giant company or gov that decides what we are allowed to post. Therefore, small instances of locally-moderated groups of people, that create a giant network. Welcome to the Fediverse.
Now let’s continue to educate people about it rather than dreaming about the gov taking over a multi-billion dollar ad-based company and making it usable and free for all of us.