Big Tech: Convenience is a Trap
Big Tech: Convenience is a Trap
A video essay on what we give up in exchange for the convenience that social media and algorithms provide.
23 comments
-
-
Tangentially related: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/09/18/is-it-convenient-would-i-enjoy-it-wrong-question/
-
Never thought I'd see an MMM article on here, but it's definitely relevant.
-
-
That's what Richard Stallman has been preaching since the 80's
-
I mean, he worked (before going feral) in the place where much of what made our world different from the 80s was pioneered. Even if we hear about Berkeley or Stanford more.
It's a situation where you want to follow those having potentially the best inside information. About the culture of the people involved, about their ideas.
It's still unsettling how in Tolkien's world Melkor is the weird one out, while the rest of Valar are good. Really seems to be inverted in tech.
And also delay-tolerant not perpetually directly networked systems don't have to be inconvenient. They are made that by directed effort.
-
I'm not a big social media user myself. Lemmy is pretty much it, unless I count watching videos on YouTube social media. I still feel a lot of the points he makes in the video.
Richard Stallman is a household name to tech enthusiasts, but there's a whole young generation that's being brought up in a world where this stuff was already there. I'm lucky I remember not having the internet as a child and I worry about how this is effecting the people who are oblivious to it.
-
-
Fuck, I rather be inconvenience then dealing with this shit. I'll make my own way and have with self hosting.
-
That's 18 minutes I don't need to spend learning a minutes worth. (He starts out complaining about the lost time he's invested...)
-
This is true of the overwhelming majority of YouTube videos I see submitted here. The information density is just abysmal compared to a page of text.
-
Harder to monetize a page of text
-
-
-
I have long said that convenience and security are opposite ends of the same line.
-
Not just you, that's a pretty common principle.
-
-
What is explicitly convenient about social media?
-
23 comments
I've been thinking that MK Ultra was successful.
They learned how to control people's minds. While it might not have been as easy as they had hoped, they learned that by dictating the path of least resistance, they can control what most people are going to think and do.