When I was growing up the internet was a place to be liberated from the world say what you want to say, be whoever you want and form genuine communities with shared interests. Now the internet feels like a tool to enslave the mind with identity echo chambers and any deviation leads you to being banned and blocked shunned and silenced within a void that is inescapable. Novel unique websites coded manually by hobbyists running servers for free in the commons allowing people access to the free flow of information under the banner of “information should be free” has largely gone away with corpratisation. I miss the days when the internet was populated largely by nerds aiming to make a better world not this controlled censored hell hole of profiteering.
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I agree and now I find myself moving my entire digital life off of big tech platforms and towards free software to escape this madness.
The good old internet still exists and lemmy is living proof. You just need to dig a little because the corporate search engines won’t show you. sdf.org for example is a nice little corner of the internet.
As long as the internet remains open, even if it’s in our own private corner, then we’ll always have a place to go, even if the place changes. If Google’s “internet DRM” ever becomes a thing, we’re completely fucked.
net neutrality/bandwith per site did not change much thankfully at least i wasn’t affected
Same here, I’ve become extremely disillusioned by how dystopian big tech has become. It’s a nice change of pace to use platforms like Lemmy or Mastodon where it’s just every day people running instances rather than a place for big tech to collect and profit off your data
“Enslave” is a bit harsh, considering there are about 38-50 million people who are currently slaves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century
We’re choosing to allow a lot of the things these companies are doing to us; but we could choose to walk away at the cost of some shiny things.
“Choosing” something doesn’t always prevent slavery. Wage slavery, for example, is a perfectly reasonable use of the word, though still not as bad as chattel slavery or other forms of slavery. It basically implies the non-existence of meaningful choice. However, you’re perfectly correct to say the OP is not enslaved in this case.
Wanted to say something like this, I’m sympathetic to OP’s sentiments but I don’t like words like “slavery” being used as metaphors.
The complaining of censorship makes me think this is written by some guy just posting some bigoted shit lol. Also it’s true a lot of stuff has moved under centralized services, but this is very exaggerated.
Also this is just sounds ridiculous lol.
I thought this was gonna be a post about feeling the burden of wage slavery and debt necessity, which is a real thing. But you’re right, it sounds like they’re upset because they can’t say the n-word on Facebook lol
When you want to feel like a victim while being extremely privileged.
Yup. That bit got me suspicious as hell. Looking at their activity, you are correct.
Your first sentence made me wonder, so I looked at their post history. I can’t say for sure what their stance is. Maybe communist?
Try watching the documentary the great hack
As bad as it is, harvesting user data for an election campaign is not censorship.
Never made that claim
Then why are you replying this to a comment about your complaints on censorship?
Collecting information isn’t censorship, banning and blocking someone for a different opinion is censorship.
I’m sympathetic to the argument that the internet is captured by corporate capitalism.
I don’t really understand why you think the fediverse censors you though? The source is open, you can literally make your own instance.
Well I type removed and it gets censored, in my country removed refers to a type of food, removed also refers to a cigarette and removed also refers to someone who is annoying. So yes the fediverse censors it’s no different than other platforms.
Gets censored by who? If you run your own instance you have control over what gets said.
Everyone has the freedom to decide who to be friends with, what conversations to participate in, and who to let into their house.
Me, I’m on kbin.social, that’s Ernest’s house. If I don’t like it I can go host my own kbin or lemmy somewhere else.
You’re on Lemmy.ml, if you don’t like the rules there you can make your own lemmy instance.
That’s the beauty of the fediverse.
Its a bit strange because, before, a few of us were here and getting to know the internet and everything it had to offer.
Nowadays, everyone is on the internet but most of them are confined to the apps they use and what those apps show them.
So it seems people are being silently manipulated without ever knowing there are many more things out there, but even then, the will to explore new things might not suit them, and they prefer to “live in the matrix”.
Internet mass manipulation is getting ever more developed and used as a tool to achieve an agenda.
You just described AOL in the 90s.
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEE gna gna gna skssssssssshSKSSSSSSSSSSH
I heard this in my brain.
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This, they just described what it was like being on the internet and not being on AOL but seeing them all happy in their You’ve Got Mail walled garden.
I agree with your premise, but no, I don’t feel like the internet is just " echo chambers and any deviation leads you to being banned and blocked shunned and silenced". And anytime I see someone complain about being systematically censored or banned, you’ve gotta look at what they’re posting.
https://lemmy.ml/comment/1697612
https://lemmy.ml/comment/1692669
https://lemmy.ml/comment/1693235
https://lemmy.ml/comment/1696649
https://lemmy.ml/comment/1693539
https://lemmy.ml/comment/1677203
https://lemmy.ml/comment/1676143
https://lemmy.ml/comment/1696276
Just a quick 5 minutes of scrolling. So maybe people dislike what you’re saying because what you’re saying is anti-LGBT, anti-rights, pro-forced birth, conservative, tankie apologia? Also a fan of Andrew Tate so pro-rape, pro-human trafficking. I mean your record is speaking for itself.
Thanks for doing the digging on the very same suspicion I had. It’s kind of amazing how reliable a tell this tone is.
State’s rights to do what?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=-ZB2ftCl2Vk
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
I fucking knew it was gonna be goobus
@greyscale it was too good not to share.
It’s always the people you most expect.
How does highlighting the positive aspect of someone’s message equate to being pro-rape? I don’t think anyone can possibly be pro-rape…
No it’s not, why should positions be bannable? What if you got banned for simply having an opinion?
I’d need to know what communities/subreddits it was. But many subreddits restrict types of posting that may be seen as hate speech or against the community’s limited scope. Posting pro-tankie stuff to socialist communities, anti-abortion stuff to women’s communities, anti-lgbt stuff in general, etc, could get you banned. Most of that is probably fine in more general subs but I can’t imagine the pro-Andrew Tate stuff would fly in XX, for instance.
I said in r/atheist that I disagreed with abortion and that got me a permanent ban. Just for that opinion alone, I triedexplainning to the mod but they went on a tirade that I hated women against women’s rights etc etc which is completely untrue, I just disagree with abortion.
If you’re anti-abortion, you’re anti-woman. You can’t say you care about women if you deny our right to healthcare. Sorry, but you suck.
That is flawed logic, I want to develop the economy so people can afford to have a family and women don’t feel the need to abort their child because they can’t afford to have or raise a child. It would be preferable if people took personal responsibility and not have sex if they can’t afford children and not delve into hendonism having sex to have fun. I think it’s wrong for men to be pro-abortion just to exploit women into having sex without consequences for yourself.
The fact that you think that’s the only reason (or even just the main reason) people get abortions shows how you, like most anti-abortionists, haven’t bothered to look at the facts and have your head so far stuck in the sand that its not even worth talking to you.
There are other reasons but it’s largely to do with being in a capitalist system with the cost of living causing hardship straining the ability to afford a home let alone raise a family.
So are things like non-viable pregnancies due to the inability to afford a home? How about rape? How about a minor kicked out because their parents don’t approve, is their inexperience, immaturity, and lack of support just because they can’t afford a house? What if it’s a viable pregnancy, but the baby will be brain dead and require constant care; is cost of living the only burden the parents have to be concerned about? What if there’s only a chance it’s non-viable, but delaying the abortion puts the mother at risk; at what percent chance is a person allowed to terminate the pregnancy and not put their body at risk? 50% chance of living? 10%? Less than 1%?
These aren’t exceptions, these are the types of reasons people get abortions. Let me say it again with emphasis: These aren’t exceptions, these are the types of reasons people get abortions. It is so God damn ignorant to think the main reason people get abortions is because they’re poor and can’t afford to have kids. And to plow ahead and support anti-abortion legislation isn’t just ignorant, it’s dangerously idiotic.
As we are already seeing in states that have banned abortion, even ones that have some half assed medical exemption, doctors just won’t perform them. Or they’ll wait to perform them until it’s much more risky; like when the patient is literally bleeding out. What doctor is going to risk getting constantly sued (and let’s just set aside how fucking asinine it is to allow lawsuits from third-parties in no way affected) because some jackass isn’t convinced it was REALLY medically necessary?
Here’s an idea, how about we leave the decision of abortion up to doctors and their patient’s? That way, we don’t have to try and legislate around all the very legitimate reasons people get abortions. Do you think it’s immoral? Great, no one’s forcing you to get one and others having them has literally zero impact on your life.
Those are issues yes, however from the information I’ve looked at the majority of abortions are because of affordability. First off you can’t get pregnant just because of getting kicked out of a house, however housing should be allocated for that scenario. You’re assuming I would pass laws to ban it, your not seeking out what I intend, the point is to develop the economy and provide for people in abundance so women no longer feel the need to get an abortion because they can’t afford to raise a family.
So you don’t want to ban it, but rather change the circumstances in society and individual people’s lives so they don’t want to get them in the first place? Congratulations! You’re pro-choice.
The fact you view politics as a zero sum sports game is the problem in pro or anti, us vs them. You’re mistaken I’m against the practice I just go about it a different way.
You can be against abortion and still be pro-choice. No one is pro-abortion. You want to go about it in a way that changes the circumstances in people’s lives so they choose not to have an abortion. So you do think the person’s choice matters. And you can see circumstances for why someone would choose to abort. But note how you don’t want to take actually away their choice, just change the circumstances so they don’t make that choice. That’s because…
You’re pro-choice.
No I’m against the practice and I don’t believe in the ideology of liberalism I am not pro-choice choice is an illusion presented from the environment.
You don’t want to institute a ban, but would rather influence people’s choices. That’s pro-choice, dumbass. Anyways you cut it, that’s pro-choice.
Influence no, a material solution with a planned economy to serve everyone’s needs in society so everyone has necessities and luxuries to afford and have a happy and healthy life. My solution goes beyond your simple petty plaster over a gaping wound.
Please keep going with that train of thought
What is your intended outcome of them having a happy and healthy life? Is it so they… choose… not to have abortions?
The intended outcome is to develop the economy, develop the productive forces to provide for everyone in a planned economy. And hopefully bring the death rate down caused by capitalism.
Serious question: do you want to ban abortion before you have developed your country’s economy to “provide for everyone”, or after?
N.B: 45% of the abortions in the world are unsafe. It is a leading cause of maternal mortality and millions of women are hospitalized each year due to complications of unsafe abortions.
I want to provide material abundance so women don’t feel the need to have to have them.
@foresight what if my partner and I just don’t want kids? Even if we’re economically secure? Are we not allowed to fuck because it offends your sensibilities? Because, uh, no. Don’t like abortion? Don’t have an abortion. I’m all for reducing the number by economic and social improvements, but there are cases where a woman does not for whatever reason want to grow another human inside of her body and that’s her right.
That they majority doesn’t need one because people in a planned economy wouldn’t have to the stress of affording a mortgage as housing would be allocated, wouldn’t have to worry about work because jobs would be allocated, wouldn’t have to worry about utility bills because resources would be allocated for need with the change of the economic calculation and wouldn’t worry about inflation causing food prices to fluctuate. Come on it’s not that hard to determine the factors.
What opinion?
See the reply below, not explaining again
So, bigoted opinions? Yeah those should be banned.
If we’re talking about whether or not you like pineapples on pizza, no one gives a damn which way you lean.
If we’re talking about human rights, there’s a very clear wrong answer. If your ‘opinion’ falls on the Nazi side of that aisle, this might be your cue to ask yourself “are we the baddies?”
The larger point with pineapple was that where do you draw the line, in the future pineapple might be considered bigoted, just like the saying “stick a n##### on a rape charge” in considered bigoted despite it being normal before my time. In my day disagreeing with someone wasn’t considered trolling or hate speech. What is considered hate speech etc is largely down to perspective, being a nerd was considered a bad thing until we appropriated it and turned it into a compliment, would it not be better to turn offense to a compliment and just stop being so damn butthurt?
You’re conflating disagreeing with behaving like a Nazi. I don’t give a fuck what was acceptable back in your day. Today we draw the line at human rights If you get butthurt at being ridiculed for lamenting at the opposition you face when you try to marginalize other groups, then keep that shit to yourself. Or better yet, make an effort to actually get to know some people from the groups you’re directing hatred at - might find you actually start caring about them, and suddenly their rights will mean more to you than the pushback you get for posting slurs online
Typing removed should not be an offence, buying a bag of faggots from a van should not be a crime and smoking a removed should not be punishable by law. I would like the UK not to be an Orwellian woke hell hole.
All I’m saying is why can’t you just be a better person and be respectful without being told to or by an authority or the big other, if you need to be told or ordered to be a better person, then your not really a good person are you?
Instead of playing whack-a-mole how about seeing what inflames that ideology in their environment and fix that, at least if they’re vocal you can identify them and see where it comes from and fix that instead of forcing them underground and hiding it. No, no opinion should be banned, at least with bigoted opinions there an identifier that there is something wrong in the urban planning in which they live that needs to be fix, your solution is to ban and ignore the problems.
I get what you’re talking about, but maybe it’s being a decently-educated American with a black mom talking, but “enslaved” is not the right word for this.
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“there was once a time when the sky was open, when the twilight beckoned one forth, when the nascent rivers of the internet flowed free with information”, he waxed nostalgic.
“Fuck you and keep your ideas to yourself”, he says when someone says something he dislikes.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Lol, spot on
Well that’s taking what I said out of context
Well you gave enough of a shit to express your not giving a shit, so maybe you give at least a little bit of a shit? Enough to express yourself anyways.
And it doesn’t appear that the above individual was attempting to enforce any kind of “you can’t say that”. More like its probably not the most nuanced or well thought out way of expressing your opinion, as it equates restrictions on internet speech with slavery.
It is intriguing that in expressing your lack of giving a shit on the aforementioned opinion you have basically shut down a possibly genuine discussion on the topic and dismissed an expression of the very free speech you are supposedly bemoaning the demise of.
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If by imperialism, you are inferring a supposed encroachment on a traditionalist culture, I would posit that cultures have never been a static entity, holding onto a static identity. Rather, cultures have been, and always will be an ever evolving and constantly changing collaboration of individuals who hopefully continually evolve as they continually re evaluate who they wish to be collectively.
There will always be backlash against this change of culture and values, which you are obviously exemplifying here, but I’ll point out that historically this kind of holding onto the past has never really worked out nor has such resistance ever lasted in the face of the general trend of humanity becoming more and more accepting of different ways of living and loving.
I encourage you to consider not holding on so tightly to the past and instead find your place as a peaceful member of the ever changing and evolving and more accepting society that will, in spite of the adversity to it, eventually come to be.
No I mean using woke shit as an excuse to push imperialism to maintain the global system of exploitation for cheap labour.
Well now you’ve peaked my interest. If you would please elaborate?
Please fuck of to whatever “Free speech” site idiots like you fuck off to these days.
This is suppose to be open source freedom of speech you know free as in freedom not beer
For me it kind of feels this way, because there’s only a handful of sites I visit regularly, and if one of those sites is unavailable, it feels like I don’t know what to do. In a sense, I am trapped in this new browsing habit that has made me get used to constant short form content that is exciting, and a lack of it is now crippling. At least replacing reddit with lemmy has helped me recover a little bit, because I find that I’m unable to stay on lemmy for hours at a time like I was on reddit.
The relative lack of content is an actual benefit to me too. When I doomscroll too long, it stops being rewarding and I now find something IRL to do. A much healthier mindset to occupy.
At the risk of sounding like exactly what you decry, I’m going to pick on your choice of language, hopefully it will seem like it’s for good enough reason. I largely sense a similar, regretful shift in the way the internet is experienced and have some mixed feelings about it, but I would be very cautious in using a term like ‘enslaved’. When you choose to fire up your own high-tech information device to access the publicly available internet and you don’t find the experience exhilarating or thrilling, or fulfilling, in comparison to some relatively rose-tinted view of the same experience had during your childhood can you honestly say that that is similar to enslavement?
However, semantics aside, yeh it’s kind of a shame some of the quirky rough around the edges character of the internet has changed a bit since it became more mainstream and since corporate participation has refined and figured out how to extract much more efficiently from it. That said, as is often said when this sentiment is expressed, the old style of web is still there, you just don’t see it. Nothing stops people from hand coding a website if they want to, but it’s unlikely to be the top of any given search result from Google, and we all use Google. Similarly, unlike decades past, there is just so much stuff on the web that these types of things will likely not be noticed. There’s kind of a paradoxical relationship with how much more in general is available online with how much less varied our consumption of it is. Pretty much every web experience through a browser is going to start with www.google.com, either through the page itself or a default search bar and after that for many it’s going to be facebook, or reddit or amazon. Out of billions of pages, it tends to come down to about 4 for most and then a smattering of other larger media presences accessed via the portal of one of those 4. It can seem like there’s nothing else there in such a case and though not really true, it kind of in practice is true because you’ll much less likely find someone’s home made hobbyist website through major portals than you might have when by virtue of little else being available, that’s what a search engine returned or word-of-mouth recommended.
How bad a thing this is, is nuanced. The web is vastly more useful than it ever was, although the forces at work that made it so seem to be engaging in cannabilising themselves and one another and crippling their own utility in the never ending quest for more profit. I miss some of the feel of the earlier web, although when I was coming of age and using it heavily in the early 2000s, it was very well established already so I don’t have quite the same basis of comparison as someone who might have used it throughout the 80s or 90s. I think I have detected something of a shift away from the ‘edgy’ persona adopted by most on forums, but then it’s hard to separate my usage and interests at the time from the general web itself. I think, for one thing, there still remained even in the early 2000s, a nicheness and ‘geek’ culture to those who spent time on forums that tended to skew the demographic towards teenage boys although I have no evidence for this, this has gone unless you seek it out. I personally haven’t really had too much of a problem with shunning and banning, in fact that type of thing tended to happen more in my earliest web experiences where there seemed to be more places that had issues with swearing, however I have seen a similar puritanical streak that results in this. However I’ve only really perceived that on major platforms as they’ve reached their stage of the life cycle where they can cash-in and must become investor and advertiser friendly. That arc, a more recent arc in my opinion does match what you’re saying but I view that more of a change in how those specific platforms rather than the web itself operate. So it’s harder now than maybe 5-10 years ago to speak your mind with little to no consequence or backlash on a major platform whose reach and influence amplifies that opinion to millions and millions of people. I think you have about the same capacity to speak your mind now as you ever did on the web, but lost the ability to use corporate machinery to do it and not also expect human beings to react to it and to even be silenced when doing so flies against the interests of the owners of the corporate machinery.
Maybe just stop posting racist homophobic shit?
And where is that?
Complaint about state of current internet/censorship of ideas? CHECK Hyperbolic comparison to slavery? CHECK “MUH FREE SPEECH”? CHECK
Nothing to see here fellas, just another person who doesn’t (can’t?) realize that people are not required to entertain your shitty ideas about how a society with less human rights for “others” is actually the best society.
Ask yourself what results in the outcome of, everyone owning everything or everyone owning nothing.
What is the United States of America?
No, the point is they result in the same outcome just with a different path.
Yeah but will I be able to say the n word there?
I would prefer to be able to criticise identity politics and peoples self serving egos that maintain the status quo of capitalism
You should try lemmy, it’s almost everything what you describe you are missing. Jokes aside, I think that what you refer is mainstream internet, which like music is usually shitty if it’s mainstream, to find the good stuff you have to take your time to dig deeper. Internet is an incredible tool and it’s being used both to enslave and to free people.
Funny, yeah years ago it was easier to find interesting unique content. To quote slavoj zizek “when you think you escape it into your dreams, that is when you are within ideology”.
I get what you mean, but I also feel like the fediverse has given many of us a return to some of the freedoms and feelings of the early internet.
I’m writing this from an instance I admin, an instance that exists, specifically to make a better world for queer and gender diverse folk. We prioritise minority safety over “federate with everyone”, but that freedom to exist without institutionalised transphobia being ignored like it is on most social media platforms, with the ability for us to exist and communicate without being dogpiled by haters, and to actively remove the bigots, that is a freedom I haven’t felt in a long time!
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The BBS and early Internet days were dominated by people who read non-fiction books. RTFM was a common saying in those days.
“Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us . . . But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture’s being drained by laughter?”
Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death
Yeah, buddy… Tik Tok wrapped in a bow.
RTFM is offensive now
Holy shit, go outside homie
Take thy upvote with grace
Well, I’ve had a look at the way you argue - maybe you should, too. It’s not even about specific views or opinions, although full disclosure, I disagree strongly with quite a lot of it. The way you discuss things looks extremely insincere.
Course it’s about specific views and opinions if I discoursed the opposite it would all be given a complete pass like how I was up to 3 years ago and prior. I changed my approach and how I look at things and all a sudden I get all this abuse and harassment for just having an opinion.
So when I talk about your style of discussion seeming insincere, this… is exactly it.
Why does style matter, you don’t like my style so you can say I’m wrong? Or exploiting the fact I communicate differently? Or are you coming up with excuses to defend your ideology?
It sounds like your actual problem is that you hate the freedom other people have to disagree with you and critique you, and you would prefer to enslave everyone else into conforming to your ideology.
No stop assuming and jumping to conclusions
You’re really telling me that on your own post full of assumptions and jumping to conclusions?
You need to take some of your own medicine because hypocrite doesn’t look good on you.
I try my best but I’m just highlighting the problems
Can you seriously not see how your “opinion” hurts people? My opinion is that dicks are icky and no one should be allowed to have one. Me and millions of other like-minded individuals are going to vote this into law. Lots of people are going to bleed out and die from their dick removal. Let’s talk about how awesome my hero is, they cut thousands of dicks off and encouraged other people to do the same! That makes you feel good, right? No? Why are you so mad? It’s just my opinion!
You know slave holders also had that same opinion to have control over their slaves.
Um.
You are aware that slave holders used to chop the men’s penis off to stop them reproducing to control their numbers right?
So let’s do away with democratic principles of discourse because a tiny few doesn’t like a opinion?, how is society meant to advance without discourse or communicate? Are you suggesting everyone should live in fear of reprisals because a group threatens violence? It is wrong, I don’t like a lot of other peoples opinions and you know what I do? I move on, why would the opinion of pineapple belonging on pizza bother me, I would not be offended by an opinion that much that it requires banning and harassment. Just move the hell on.
Dude, what?
Well if you can’t discuss things how is society meant to move forward?
Nice hyperbole. No, I don’t feel enslaved. Give me a fucking break. Enslaved, really? Be the fucking change you want to see, if you are feeling “enslaved.”
The issue with the corporate internet is that running large websites cost money. The larger the community, the more costs it takes to run. The balance between moderation and a free-for-all is delicate. Fully open allows too much spam and trolling to still remain useful, too much and people start writing in code to bypass censors. You want to go back to seedy chatrooms with a couple dozen regulars, I’m sure you can still find a few places to scratch that itch.
Federation is a great concept, and we’ll see where it goes, but social media splintering from a Twitter/Meta/Reddit stranglehold to a more splintered collection of sites has both advantages and disadvantages. On one hand, when everyone is in one place, you get a lot of idiots. On the other, you have to go to multiple places to find everyone/everything you’re looking for. Seems a lot of people like the ease of one-stop-shopping, so that’s how we got here.