By now, I’m sure you’ve heard about the Reddit protests and blackouts but what exactly is going on with Reddit? Why are people protesting and why did the pro...
A video about the effectiveness of the Reddit protest
Social media platforms have a pattern of building up a sense of learned helplessness. Cory Doctorow describes it in his famous enshittification article, even paying the muskrat the $8 for his tweets to continue reaching his followers. What’s remarkable is that Doctorow is an incredibly influential blogger. He knows how the blogosphere works better than anyone out there. He absolutely could probably link to an RSS feed in his bio and say deuces forever to bird site, letting anyone who’s interested in following him follow him that old school way. Furthermore, he could even find a plume instance if he wanted to be able to have people follow him via rss AND activity pub. But he, like so many social media users, is conditioned to believe that the social media platform where he interacts with his followers or friends is the only option, and that leaving that platform will leave his friends and followers behind.
It’s a fallacy and an addiction, rolled into one. Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook in particular give users little numbers they can make go up that people get addicted to. Reddit is a fully gamified social platform, and it’s addictive. People keep going back to find where they can post a comment to get the dopamine rush of seeing a comment take off awash in made up fake internet points. The best solution is for the biggest users to quit cold turkey. It may not be overnight that users notice that Reddit’s quality has gone down since the start of June, and then downturned even more at the start of July, but over time, if enough of the big deal posters who were posting all the best things are gone for good, the average random user will notice that they’re not seeing as much good stuff as they used to, and moreover, that their slightly more technical friend is already seeing everything before them because they’re on a different platform, and will leave.
The best thing we can do to support a healthier internet is to hold strong on these noncommercial distributive governance platforms, and to not give up and go back just because it’s easier to find our friends who are still on the old platforms. I deleted my facebook account in 2017 after my identity was stolen, and I noticed a general improvement in my life immediately after, even though people kept telling me if I wasn’t on there they wouldn’t know how to reach me. They just emailed me. That’s all it took. And I didn’t have to deal with any of the feed issues of the algorithm only feeding people things to make them upset. It was great.
So just… If you’re reading this, keep being on Lemmy and KBin. You’ll be a lot happier if we all stick to it, I think
The ones who stay probably do see themselves as powerless, which is a pretty self-fulfilling prophecy.
Social media platforms have a pattern of building up a sense of learned helplessness. Cory Doctorow describes it in his famous enshittification article, even paying the muskrat the $8 for his tweets to continue reaching his followers. What’s remarkable is that Doctorow is an incredibly influential blogger. He knows how the blogosphere works better than anyone out there. He absolutely could probably link to an RSS feed in his bio and say deuces forever to bird site, letting anyone who’s interested in following him follow him that old school way. Furthermore, he could even find a plume instance if he wanted to be able to have people follow him via rss AND activity pub. But he, like so many social media users, is conditioned to believe that the social media platform where he interacts with his followers or friends is the only option, and that leaving that platform will leave his friends and followers behind.
It’s a fallacy and an addiction, rolled into one. Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook in particular give users little numbers they can make go up that people get addicted to. Reddit is a fully gamified social platform, and it’s addictive. People keep going back to find where they can post a comment to get the dopamine rush of seeing a comment take off awash in made up fake internet points. The best solution is for the biggest users to quit cold turkey. It may not be overnight that users notice that Reddit’s quality has gone down since the start of June, and then downturned even more at the start of July, but over time, if enough of the big deal posters who were posting all the best things are gone for good, the average random user will notice that they’re not seeing as much good stuff as they used to, and moreover, that their slightly more technical friend is already seeing everything before them because they’re on a different platform, and will leave.
The best thing we can do to support a healthier internet is to hold strong on these noncommercial distributive governance platforms, and to not give up and go back just because it’s easier to find our friends who are still on the old platforms. I deleted my facebook account in 2017 after my identity was stolen, and I noticed a general improvement in my life immediately after, even though people kept telling me if I wasn’t on there they wouldn’t know how to reach me. They just emailed me. That’s all it took. And I didn’t have to deal with any of the feed issues of the algorithm only feeding people things to make them upset. It was great.
So just… If you’re reading this, keep being on Lemmy and KBin. You’ll be a lot happier if we all stick to it, I think