Wherever I get to maintain a proper "digital hygiene"*, I don't have any of these issues that people love to complain about. But I would bet that whatever regulation gets to be approved, it would not only be ineffective to solve the issues that affect the majority, it would make it harder for the minority that still manages to get away from them.
* a simple set of rules to live by.
- prefer free-software solutions for all use cases that satisfies your hard requirements, even if they miss on the "nice-to-haves".
- self-host as much as possible: see all services you are paying currently and look for existing open self-hosted alternatives. Get an old computer or laptop and run these. Invite your friends and family. If you are not technical, find someone in your close circle that is and ask if they are interested in doing it, offer to help with the costs.
- If you don't want to self-host, find service providers that offer these open source services.
- use Brave: complain about crypto all you want, it is the only web browser that gives control to the user and that promotes a business model where creators are rewarded directly by the consumers.
- use the received BAT to be as generous as possible with open source developers. 5 bucks a month might not mean much, but if 10% of internet users did that I guarantee we would kill all the app stores and their abusive practices.
- Do not rely on streaming services. I'd rather pay for a private tracker to download what I want than finance Disney/Comcast/HBO/Amazon/Apple to increase their cultural dominance even further
- use alternative frontends whenever you have to access youtube, twitter, medium.
telling a bunch of software engineers to do things themselves is never going to solve the problem, it’s like telling the pope to go to church
the problem is everything else happening to the average people in the world around you - you’re subject to it whether you like it or not. As long as you live in a society problems that facebook twitter and other social media platforms you dont use are causing are going to be your problems too, no matter how deep you bury your head in niche web browsers and self-hosted blogging platforms.
Did you read the part where I said "invite your friends and family", or you just jumped to write such a thoughtful response?
My parents don't care about Facebook, Twitter or whatsapp. They care about being able to see and talk with their grandkids. If I tell them that they can do that by using a different app, they will install the app without second thought.
If they want to continue using Facebook/Google, they can. But the important thing to me is that now they are less dependent on Facebook and they have an option.
It's always worth remembering that only 5% of the adult US populace can complete a task like finding and applying for a job using only web technology†. Being able to self host is a skill that maybe 0.1% of the populace can do, being generous.
An important life lesson is knowing that just because you can do something doesn't mean everybody, or even a majority of people can.
I don't like to just drop links, but please read https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict... and see if you understand how it applies to what I am proposing.
It requires too many technical skills to work.
Alternatively, it requires too much money to hire the technical skills to work.
If it doesn't work for the majority (even a reasonably sized minority) of people, regardless of being borne of the best of intentions, it's not a viable alternative. Period.
> It requires too many technical skills to work.
What is about Mastodon that requires technical skills that Facebook or Twitter do not? The fact that they are required to know the name of the instance when setting up a client?
Just like they learned (conditioned could be a better word) into putting all their data into their shiny smartphones, people can learn something like "to use this you need your username and the server name, like email addresses". And if you tell me that some people don't even know that and had someone else setting up their facebook for them, why can't this "someone else" set up an ActivityPub client as well?
> Alternatively, it requires too much money to hire the technical skills to work.
I don't think I charged anything from my friends and family that asked to get access to my matrix server. I also don't charge anything from those that got an account on the Jellyfin box I run. I also didn't send an invoice to my wife or parents for helping them setup Element on their phones.
"Ah, but this doesn't scale!"
Sure, if it's just me doing it won't. But there are already other people that learned once and managed to teach others.
> it's not a viable alternative.
Do us both a favor. Instead of making absolute statements based on incomplete information and your prejudices, find a way to prove me wrong.
Get one of your current vices (Twitter? Instagram? TikTok? WhatsApp? iMessage?), and do your best effort to use the open alternatives that exist. For the social networking stuff, you will quickly see that the only "problem" is that the people you are used to seeing are not there. Instead of shrugging your shoulders and going back to the old ways, see how many people you can bring along with you.
I'm not even asking you to delete your current application. I'm just asking you to try to use the open alternative and help as many people as possible to join you. If you find any reasonable justification that prevents you or your peers to adopt the open alternative, then I will believe you.
I’ve been on my local school board for 20 years and the changes happening due to social media are staggering (for children and adults). My lack of participation hasn’t changed anything. Telling people not to participate will not work because you’re rivaling companies that pay experts tons of money to get people addicted to these things. As individuals we’re massively out-gunned.
I’ve started working with and donating to advocacy groups looking to regulate these companies because I haven’t seen anything else even begin to work.
I am also saying that there are a good number of people that think this is not a problem, so I don't want to waste my time and energy trying to convince them otherwise.
/s
Seriously, the free market and personal responsibility have not worked. Let’s try something else. At this point, I’ll take some potential negative externalities over this shitshow.