Re:Social media is broken – a new report offers ways to fix it
by 1vuio0pswjnm7 on Sunday July 04, 2021 @07:38PM
(#27733486)
All true.
The value is in the network infrastructure, not the so-called "tech companies" operating on it as middlemen, spying on internet users as a so-called "business".
We as users already pay for that infrastructure. We pay for an internet connection. The network infrastructure is already monetised.
That network infrastructure is worth something even if every single tech company ceased to exist. Would you stop paying for internet access just because some website went offline.
The large websites many people are using are 100% user-generated content, much of it being in the form of human communication. That so-called content is not going to disappear if tech companies stop spying for money. (We often hear of tech company users losing their content when the companies discontinue so-called "service". Not surprising since the companies serve
advertisers, not users.) The tech companies are not the content creators. Generally, users do not pay tech companies for service and tech companies do not pay users for content. Tech companies are middlemen.
"Tech" companies want you to believe "This is how it must be. There is no other way." They want you to believe they are "the internet". But the menu is not the meal. The map is not the territory. The middleman has no inherent value. He must leech to survive.
People online often comment that "Facebook" (not to mention many other tech company websites) could be written, for free, in a weekend, and what makes Facebook so popular is not the people who write PHP for Zuckerberg, it is the network effects, the fortuitous timing and luck that Facebook has enjoyed to become so large.
What has been done to date can be replicated by others, but Big Tech wants people to accept another "default assumption": massive scale, all under single ownership, is a requirement.
AT&T was broken up and we did not lose telephone service. Around the world, customers of one telephone company are able to call customers of other telephone companies.
The value is in the network infrastructure, not the so-called "tech companies" operating on it as middlemen, spying on internet users as a so-called "business".
We as users already pay for that infrastructure. We pay for an internet connection. The network infrastructure is already monetised.
That network infrastructure is worth something even if every single tech company ceased to exist. Would you stop paying for internet access just because some website went offline.
The large websites many people are using are 100% user-generated content, much of it being in the form of human communication. That so-called content is not going to disappear if tech companies stop spying for money. (We often hear of tech company users losing their content when the companies discontinue so-called "service". Not surprising since the companies serve advertisers, not users.) The tech companies are not the content creators. Generally, users do not pay tech companies for service and tech companies do not pay users for content. Tech companies are middlemen.
"Tech" companies want you to believe "This is how it must be. There is no other way." They want you to believe they are "the internet". But the menu is not the meal. The map is not the territory. The middleman has no inherent value. He must leech to survive.
People online often comment that "Facebook" (not to mention many other tech company websites) could be written, for free, in a weekend, and what makes Facebook so popular is not the people who write PHP for Zuckerberg, it is the network effects, the fortuitous timing and luck that Facebook has enjoyed to become so large.
What has been done to date can be replicated by others, but Big Tech wants people to accept another "default assumption": massive scale, all under single ownership, is a requirement.
AT&T was broken up and we did not lose telephone service. Around the world, customers of one telephone company are able to call customers of other telephone companies.