Your whole wordlview is hinging on two conflicting realities:
- social networking is an inherently public activity, and this is the way that the majority of people want it to be.
- the only way to be free from surveillance capitalism is by having private communications, and while this is something that affects everyone, only a minority of people seem to be actively opposed to it.
The “consent-based” social media does not work well for a small business owner who wants to promote their place to their local community, or the artisan that wants to put up a gallery with their work online. They want to be found.
If you tell them that they have to choose between (a) a social network that makes it easier for them to reach their communities or (b) a niche network that is only used by a handful of people who keeps putting barriers for any kind of contact; which one do you think they will choose?
What your recent articles are trying to do is (basically) try to shove the idea that the majority should change their behavior and completely reject a public internet. You are basically saying that the “social” networks should be "anti-"social in nature. This is, quite honestly, borderline totalitarian.
But that’s not feasible for broad data harvesting by Meta.
Why? You keep writing about how evil Meta is and their infinite amount of resources. If you really believe that, why do you think they would stop at the mere wall of “federation consent”?
thenexusofprivacy@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
It’s not that I think that most people will (or should) reject a public internet. In fact I don’t even think most people will reject surveillance capitalism-based social networks. As I say in the article “many people who make their home in the free fediverses (including me!) are likely to have other accounts for now – on Threads, or in Meta’s fediverses – just as many do today on Facebook, Instagram, Xitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, and other surveillance capitalism social networks.” As you say, small business owners and artists will want the broadest possibility for their work; and there are lots of other situations where that’s what people want.
And I wouldn’t frame the choice between (a) and (b) the way you do. With queer and trans people, I’d frame it as an opportunity to have an account on a smaller pro-queer social network that’s gone to great lengths to insulate itself from hate groups like Libs of TikTok, and a choice of whether their other account is better on Threads or in Meta’s fediverses. With progressive or leftist people, I’d frame it in terms of being on a social network that’s not actively working with white supremacists, fascists, and authoritarians. With people who hate Facebook / Instagram / etc, I’d phrase it in terms of being as far away from Meta as possible. And so on …
Some will say “two accounts? I think not! And there’s a lot of stuff on Threads that’s valuable for me, so I’m not interested.” Oh well. But most people already have a bunches of accounts on various social networks – none of which are particularly queer-friendly, all of which work with white supemacists, fascists, and authoritarians – so (if signup is easy, the software’s easy to use, if it’s well-moderated and they don’t have to deal with harassment, if there are enough interesting people there, etc etc etc) won’t be averse to one more.
Also, why do you think most people want social networking to be an inherently public activity? Look at the most popular social network. Facebook gorups are extremely popular. Facebook supports friends-only posts and viritually everybody I know uses them at least part of the time. Facebook events allow posts that are only visible to people attending the event. The list goes on … And it’s not just Facebook. Reddit has private subreddits. Twitter has private profiles. Most fediverse microblogging software has local-only posts. Heck even Mastodon has followers-only posts. So, I’d say it’s the other way around. Most people want social networking to be a mix of public and private activity.
rglullis@communick.news 8 months ago
I think I get your point, but I surely don’t agree with it. Honestly, it seems that you are not really interested in dismantling Surveillance Capitalism, just afraid that “Big Fedi” will attract the attention of too many people, and ending bringing scrutiny to some marginalized groups you care about.
To put it less nicer words, you are not really concerned about privacy or Surveillance Capitalism, you are just worried about losing your echo chamber.
thenexusofprivacy@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
Right, I’m on Lemmy because I want to stay in my echo chamber. 🤣 🤣 🤣
rglullis@communick.news 8 months ago
Interesting that you didn’t argue against “not really being against Surveillance Capitalism”, but instead chose to use your presence on Lemmy as if that was enough reason to dismiss what I said.
Anyway, you said it yourself: if people are okay of having two online personas, one for the “acceptable in public” and other for the “things to be done in private”, why couldn’t that be case here, and your presence on Lemmy is just a decoy “for public messaging” and to keep trying to convince people that no one should be looking any further than that?