the birdsite was a plague even before musk came along. lots of people found the culture that developed, and the sort of behavior the platform seemed to encourage, pretty anti-social all on its own. dorsey, as the dude who was ostensibly steering that ship, bears some responsibility as to how twitter shook out. more generally though, trusting people that were deeply involved in the rise of web 2.0 and the surveillance economy that came with it is kinda impossible for a lot of folks. twitter is spyware. reddit is spyware. google is spyware. all of it is infested with ads and exploitation and nfts. dorsey is a capitalist, and it seems naive to many to assume that the next thing he makes is not going to be just as poisoned by the incentives of a profit motive as twitter was. dorsey still stands to make a lot of money off of whatever he builds, and the most profitable thing about modern social media platforms is selling peoples personal data to advertising companies.
in other words, the social media empires that built the modern web are dogshit not because the people building them made a mistake, or failed to consider the consequences of their influence, but because they wanted it to be built this way to maximize shareholder profits. any internet infrastructure built by the same people, or funded by venture capitalists, therefore, is not to be trusted. we’ve seen and are currently seeing what happens to platforms run for a profit motive eventually, and what sort of bullshit the people running those platforms can get up to if they choose to, and continuing to grant these people control over our digital lives is foolish, especially when alternatives now exist.
Could you elaborate? Genuinely curious as to why
the birdsite was a plague even before musk came along. lots of people found the culture that developed, and the sort of behavior the platform seemed to encourage, pretty anti-social all on its own. dorsey, as the dude who was ostensibly steering that ship, bears some responsibility as to how twitter shook out. more generally though, trusting people that were deeply involved in the rise of web 2.0 and the surveillance economy that came with it is kinda impossible for a lot of folks. twitter is spyware. reddit is spyware. google is spyware. all of it is infested with ads and exploitation and nfts. dorsey is a capitalist, and it seems naive to many to assume that the next thing he makes is not going to be just as poisoned by the incentives of a profit motive as twitter was. dorsey still stands to make a lot of money off of whatever he builds, and the most profitable thing about modern social media platforms is selling peoples personal data to advertising companies.
in other words, the social media empires that built the modern web are dogshit not because the people building them made a mistake, or failed to consider the consequences of their influence, but because they wanted it to be built this way to maximize shareholder profits. any internet infrastructure built by the same people, or funded by venture capitalists, therefore, is not to be trusted. we’ve seen and are currently seeing what happens to platforms run for a profit motive eventually, and what sort of bullshit the people running those platforms can get up to if they choose to, and continuing to grant these people control over our digital lives is foolish, especially when alternatives now exist.