Unless you’ve lived in ex-USSR.

Globalization ruined it.

Not like in politics (though similar), but in the sense that instead of a space of generally sane people where you don’t have to follow any conventions of fashion or social expectations of idiots, like a park where people sit in grass and eat sandwiches, it has turned into something like a mall built in place of that park, with guards, ads, bullshit and shopping apes.

There definitely was trash. You just didn’t have to see it. You’d not go to a central recommendations system, like in social nets or search engines. You’d go to web directories and your friends. Like for many things you still do.

Now there’s the fake social pressure of being on corporate platforms. Why fake? Because you still really need and talk to the same amount people you would back then, even fewer.

That fake social pressure was their killer invention. Human psychology is unprepared for critically evaluating the emotions from being able to scroll through half the world of other people right now. They don’t generally use that seemingly easy ability to reach anyone anywhere, while when it was a bit harder, they would, but the fake feeling of having it is very strong.

It’s a mouse trap.

Why was it a bad idea? Seems like a wonderful idea. Minus Gab.

Some kind of web of trust and inheriting ignored users based on it and weights - and it will work.

Nukes are an option, yes.

But as the recent event with exploding pagers has reminded us, global logistics and also systems’ complexity allow for many funny things.

but for the vast majority of people such limited devices will never be adopted and any business producing them will either be niche expensive or fail.

I don’t think that’s true.

Cause the fish is starting, slowly, to suspect that it’s in a net.

All this is creeping surveillance, and the end goal is not commercial, it’s political.

One commandment parents of many people of my age (28) have failed to imprint is - you shall say “nay” and you shall tell jerks to eat shit and die.

There are many distractions, somehow the computer program processing your unencrypted communications being called “AI” becomes important, somehow the difference between that program and the people controlling it becomes important, somehow them being able to censor you becomes important, and somehow requirements to confirm identity become normal.

I felt hot all-encompassing shame many times in my childhood for not remembering things which were unimportant, but people around would remember those. Only now I understand that something in my childhood was a gift.

Seeing what is happening by most general and vague descriptions might help to judge things more soberly.

But younger folks are one shiti event from being believers and we got a lot of shit floating down our way.

They stubbornly ignore the technical component and are even irritated for you daring to suppose that there’s anything important in preventing that shit other than their social and political activity.

They refuse to understand that most of said activity on compromised bot-infested platforms (all the mainstream) is bent in the direction power wants.

The threats are not directly visible, they are abstract, theoretical, hard to feel and touch. While you are near, a real person saying to them that something you know better than them is more important than they think, and something they know better than you is less important than they think.

That tends to create resistance.

That’s a wrong speech to deliver to a cute girl asking how to make things better.

You’ve started with philosophy and economics and olden days.

If we want to explain today’s tech and possible directions of fixing it to “normal” people, we need to start with what they need to do that they do with smartphones.

That’s what businesses do too - they take something hard and suboptimal, make the road shorter and take their toll. Sometimes stealing part of what you are carrying on that road, or replacing it with their unwanted shit, or just stuffing their unwanted shit into your pockets.

So what we should think about is - what to replace their finger-poking box with, so that it’d be better fit for how they use it.

I’ve written my luddite idea in another comment. Split it into a few dedicated devices, much simpler in their essence. Since smartphones are used today mostly not as universal machines, and this difference can be optimized.

That’s only IMHO.

Now, of course, you can simply install some Libre operating system and use Lemmy, or Mastodon or whatever. But computers are so embedded into society that it is simply impossible to go without these services unless you want to get yourself isolated (and potentially in trouble with the authorities).

Just install Linux and see for yourself that it’s not that hard and definitely won’t get you in trouble.

Of course, you’ll see all the same shit, but it won’t be as pervasive.

Besides, from prior experience, most people are unwilling to use technologies unless it is physically placed in front of them, whether through social influences, advertising or word of mouth, which generally corporate services do better than Libre alternatives.

Yes, that’s true. Which is why I’m sort of a luddite - I want simpler devices with more limited (and likely not universal) functionality, so that they’d just work when they should and not work when they shouldn’t. That is what should be given to ignorant people. Not something complex and spyware-ridden.

Sort of like … pagers, from the recent association with that terrorist act committed by Israel.

I think there’s a very big niche for simple electronic devices. Like you’d still often use hammer and nails at home, not an electric device with screwdriver mode, drill mode, hammer mode etc.

A separate device for texting and voice\video calls, with simple firmware to which support of different protocols can be added (distributed, say, just as plugins). A separate device for listening to music. A separate device to take photos and videos, I think we had something like this, what was it called I wonder, lol.

It may well be that the combined cost and efficiency for each application of a bunch of such simple devices will be better than with a smartphone. In such a case using them is optimal. It’s also good for economy - instead of a rather powerful machine requiring TSMC-produced stuff they’d need a few MCs that can be produced in many places of our planet, competition and decentralization are good for everyone. It’s also good for security - instead of very complex Android and iOS software stacks you’d have dedicated devices with smaller attack surface. It’s good for your mental health - human brain works better with dedicated physical things. It’s even good for fashion, I think even clubbing girls are starting to get tired of big dumb square pieces of glass with fingerprints all over them.

And it’s good for the industry.

but as paper slowly disappears from our lives, this becomes harder and harder. Now you would likely be fired if you refused to use Teams or Slack or whatever your company uses. No one uses fax or writes mail or watches live TV anymore.

I’d use something like a Star Wars datapad with a e-ink display, too.

What you wrote is not an old fart rant. It’s the only sane position on that. Not everything new is progress. Not everything new is better. Not everything more complex is more functional for one’s practical needs.

No. It’s those who are gaslighting us to think this way.

Same as the early Soviet years of gaslighting how every revolution has the initial violent period and you have to be strict with the enemies of it. Or similar Soviet gaslighting of the 50s, where everything is to blame - the restoration after the war, the capitalist world, and what not, - for all problems. Or the 60s, where they were expected to wait 20 years more to the utter victory and passenger starships between Earth and Mars. Or the 70s, where the Soviet propaganda pretended that USSR is just a normal country, not a totalitarian one. Or the 80s, where nobody believed anything except democracy which was one thing present in speeches and not in reality, so they believed that USSR only has to become really democratic to suddenly turn into USA, cheap edition.

It (the Web) is corrupt, oligopolized and unsanitary, because nation-states saw its potential for propaganda and control, crooks saw its potential for scams big enough to bend laws for them, and stupid people saw its potential to confirm their stupid opinions.

It’s fascinating how the absolute majority of people is trying to solve both social and technical problems at the same time via only social or only technical means. Again and again.

You need both.

Fediverse works right for moderation, but technically communities and users are part of an instance, and an instance is a physical thing that may go down. Just like most of our Web has vanished. And also, of course, it uses Web technologies.

Further my idea as to what should be done about this (one approach is Nostr, unloved here because of people who use it ; I also think it’s too primitive):

The storage must be full p2p. Like Freenet, but probably optimized so that people would only store what they themselves need, and give some space to others in the communities they participate in. Not to all the network, like Freenet, but only to whom they want.

The identities should be “federated”, as in communities allowing moderation. Moderation should be done via signed “delete” records, and users would then not replicate “deleted” information.

This way even when “an instance goes down” (say, instance admin has lost their private key or something like that), its stuff will still be replicated.

One can even make “an instance” inherit another instance (again, instance admin has lost their private key or, say, someone has stolen it), so that its users would replicate that.

One can imagine many mechanisms on top of that. But what’s described would allow libraries and allows a thing similar to DNS (again, like a community, to which you subscribe for naming service that associates names with entities) and a thing similar to a static website, and something like Usenet with user identities, moderation and communities.

Dynamic websites are possible too - but I’m not really knowledgeable about smart contracts and such required for it.

I’m actually describing something in the middle of a few things far smarter people are already doing.

This would allow agility between social and technical solutions.

Malware and porn banners are going to make this a feature always turned off.

They have a few legacy things working in their favor. Hardware compatibility is one, but seems to be a thing of the past now when people don’t care. Application compatibility is another, and that is with Windows, not with NT.

And they don’t have to change the core parts, because NT is fine. Windows is not, it’s a heap of legacy, but it’s not realistically replaceable.

Unless they develop from scratch a new subsystem, like Embrasures or Walls or Bars, and gradually deprecate Windows. Doesn’t seem very realistic too, but if they still were a software company and not a malware company, they’d probably start doing this sometime about now.

Well, was spyware-ridden Kazaa malware?

I mean, I agree.

It remained in the OS business to the extent that is required for the malware business.

Also NT is not a bad OS (except for being closed, proprietary and probably messy by now). The Windows subsystem over it would suck just as bad if it would run on something Unix.

Those mass disinformation campaigns are being done by (sometimes “almost”) nation state level actors. Governments are going to counter only some of them.

As for my own opinion - in 2020 during Artsakh war there were a few Turkish immigrant events in European countries where they’d march, yell Turkish neo-Nazi stuff, yell that they are looking for Armenians and so on. I don’t remember governments of those countries (who are already in charge of regulating fascists on their streets) doing anything about that.

I think this is going to be the same here - a regulation is a price tag in disguise. Smaller actors will be barred from doing those disinformation campaigns, bigger ones or friendly with the right governments will not be.

Killing and splitting corporations is better, but the previous part about price tag is the exact reason they are not doing this. Those governments want to have bot campaigns of their own, to manufacture consent, to see what people are saying, to control the public discourse. They just don’t want others to do it too.

This is a toad fucking a viper, as they say in Russian.

I guess his PoV is that Xitter is his property, thus when he does whatever there, it’s not censorship, but when state demands from him to do whatever there, it is.

But his position would be easier to defend were he not Elon Musk.

Most of all about neo-colonial politics. Many actions presented as the opposite of that are in fact neo-colonial. Such as the kind of governments and forces and “recognized borders” all European and related countries (including USA and Russia) support very firmly (as in - helping suppress every movement contrarian to them with any amount of cruelty being allowed).

Well, thx, but I already have a couple of noname Chinese cables with braided cover (to avoid breaking) which seem to be as good as anything else I’ve touched, and were kinda cheap.

No strategy was involved in buying them, though, so I’ll remember you advice.