"A web that you don’t understand is one that’s not user-driven, or driven by user utility. It’s one where people don’t have agency over the technology they depend upon, and where changes aren’t contrived to address a specific user need.

At the risk of sounding as conspiratorial as the author of the original Dead Internet Theory, I believe the emergence of this incomprehensibility was borne of deliberate decisions made by people at the very top of Big Tech. Furthermore, I believe these people are profoundly anti-person, and see people as resources to be tapped rather than collaborators within a vast, global digital ecosystem.

In many respects, I think this phenomena is down to two things: first, many of the tech products we use were founded by people who were still in the throes of youth, and became billionaires and global tech icons before their brains were even fully developed. They’ve been insulated from people from a young age, never lived a normal life, and they’ve been told — repeatedly — that they are geniuses and visionaries. While I don’t think this explanation excuses any of their behavior, I also think it goes some way into explaining the scarcely-disguised antipathy these people show for their fellow humans.
(...)
The other factor behind this phenomenon is that many of the people running these companies are former management consultants spawned from hell (read: McKinsey) and then set loose on what amounts to “essential infrastructure” for the digital age. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, is a former McKinsey consultant. Sheryl Sandberg, the former Chief Operating Officer of Facebook was one, too.

Management consultants have one job — it’s to recommend strategies to cowardly CEOs that they probably thought of themselves, but are too chicken to put their name behind themselves, that invariably screw over employees, consumers, and the planet."

https://whatwelost.substack.com/p/how-the-internet-died

#DeadInternet#Commons#DigitalCommons#OpenWeb#SocialMedia#AISlop#AI

"Check out as guest" should be an option on every digital store front.

Creating an account should not be required.

Providing your phone number should not be required.

2FA should not be required.

Using the app should not be required.

Using Chrome should not be required.

The site should work with screen readers and magnifiers.

It should be low bandwidth and tolerate high latency.

The vendors contact information and address should always be clearly and clearly presented, with a real email address and direct-to-human phone number.

#Netiquette#Techwank#DeadInternet#HumanInternet

"A web that you don’t understand is one that’s not user-driven, or driven by user utility. It’s one where people don’t have agency over the technology they depend upon, and where changes aren’t contrived to address a specific user need.

At the risk of sounding as conspiratorial as the author of the original Dead Internet Theory, I believe the emergence of this incomprehensibility was borne of deliberate decisions made by people at the very top of Big Tech. Furthermore, I believe these people are profoundly anti-person, and see people as resources to be tapped rather than collaborators within a vast, global digital ecosystem.

In many respects, I think this phenomena is down to two things: first, many of the tech products we use were founded by people who were still in the throes of youth, and became billionaires and global tech icons before their brains were even fully developed. They’ve been insulated from people from a young age, never lived a normal life, and they’ve been told — repeatedly — that they are geniuses and visionaries. While I don’t think this explanation excuses any of their behavior, I also think it goes some way into explaining the scarcely-disguised antipathy these people show for their fellow humans.
(...)
The other factor behind this phenomenon is that many of the people running these companies are former management consultants spawned from hell (read: McKinsey) and then set loose on what amounts to “essential infrastructure” for the digital age. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, is a former McKinsey consultant. Sheryl Sandberg, the former Chief Operating Officer of Facebook was one, too.

Management consultants have one job — it’s to recommend strategies to cowardly CEOs that they probably thought of themselves, but are too chicken to put their name behind themselves, that invariably screw over employees, consumers, and the planet."

https://whatwelost.substack.com/p/how-the-internet-died

#DeadInternet#Commons#DigitalCommons#OpenWeb#SocialMedia#AISlop#AI

"Check out as guest" should be an option on every digital store front.

Creating an account should not be required.

Providing your phone number should not be required.

2FA should not be required.

Using the app should not be required.

Using Chrome should not be required.

The site should work with screen readers and magnifiers.

It should be low bandwidth and tolerate high latency.

The vendors contact information and address should always be clearly and clearly presented, with a real email address and direct-to-human phone number.

#Netiquette#Techwank#DeadInternet#HumanInternet

@GeePawHill I'm worried this will encourage oversharing increasing #surveillance for activists, and in this political climate we should all aspire to be surveillance targets, 2ndly it encourages vendor lock-in to specific #mastodon instances at least until profile migration is added and 3rdly, from what I've seen of agentic #LLM s they probably alr can create a convincing mastodon post history if you exclude personal photos and videos which again can both be bad for #privacy #deadinternet