Comment on Breaking Free From Social Media Silos With The Fediverse
masterspace@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
The internet inherently creates information silos, because of the nature of how it works.
Cable TV, Newspapers, the Radio, etc. were all broad-cast networks, as in one person talks and that gets cast broadly to all listeners on the network.
Channels provided some level of user choice in what they listened to, but not very much. At most they still picked between only a handful of different options.
The internet fundamentally isn’t a broadcast network though, it’s a messaging network. When you publish a video on YouTube it isn’t broad cast to every one with an internet channel, instead, the users goes out and looks for the information they want and requests and YouTube sends it back to them.
This inherently creates filter bubbles because the information you receive is based on your own existing preferences and requests to a greater extent than with broadcast information mediums.
tad_lispy@lemm.ee 4 days ago
What you wrote is probably true, but it’s not the end of the story. Ownership model of corporate social media creates incentives to polarize and divide people. It drives engagement and creates moats. Also, billionaire owners of those media have their own political goals, and are happy to use the platforms they own to advance them.
masterspace@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
Undoubtedly, but we still chose to come to Lemmy because we visited it and saw a bunch of people that we mostly agreed with on it.
Think about how many Lemmy users block hexbear or lemmy.ml, or would spot in disgust when they visit gab or voat or something.
Users prune those sources because they aren’t interested in hearing wildly toxic fringe ideas (or flat out being propagandized to), but it’s still fundamentally up to you as a user to decide what you consider rationale and worthy of discussion, and then going forward the content you see on here is only what’s shared by very like minded individuals.
Don’t get me wrong, I think that Reddit as a comparison intentionally promotes rage bait constantly, both in comments and posts, and that drives people to go even more nuts and become more polarized compared to a more neutral algorithm like Lemmy, but even open and decentralized social media platforms create filter bubbles.
tad_lispy@lemm.ee 3 days ago
Sure. It’s in our nature to surround ourselves with like-minded people. Back in the old days, people would subscribe to a newspaper, watch TV and listen to radio stations, or go to pubs with folks they felt comfortable with, and that would often lead to gruopthink. There is only so much we can do about it with different platforms. The rest is up to us, individually and collectively. Being polite, open minded, thoughtful and critical takes effort. But it’s also in our nature.
FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Correct.
The corporate media platforms have algorithmically-driven content that is unregulated.
The fediverse doesn’t, which means you get two distinctly separate experiences.