Mar 馃敟
@mar@todon.nl  路  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

I've got good news, if you're willing to follow my argument.

The toxic #capitalist system we're suffering under depends increasingly on hundreds of millions of us generating attention-grabbing content for the Big Tech platforms. I assume this is true.

In other words, if those millions of (unpaid) content generators were to stop generating attention-grabbing content for Big Tech, at least some of the Big Tech enterprises would be in crisis or even topple. That'd be good, right?

How to get there? Draw attention away from Big Tech platforms to alternative platforms that don't destroy our souls, humanity and the planet. En masse, of course. Generating attention-grabbing content then becomes a revolutionary practice to destroy the current attention economy.

The idea is that if we post and share interesting things only via wholesome networks like Mastodon, the Big Tech platforms will collapse and the toxic attention economy will eventually wither away.

So, what's the good news? It's that posting interesting things on the Fediverse is revolutionary work! And getting comrades to join the movement onto the Fediverse is revolutionary work too!
Mar 馃敟
@mar@todon.nl replied  路  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

Could the revolution really be that easy? Well, yes and no. Yes, because strengthening the open and free networks genuinely undermines the capitalists. But it's not peanuts, because we need to work together to change the course of a big and heavy monster, and that'll take time and solidarity.

And what to do with companies that scrape the Fediverse to train their AI brain-sucker models? That's a further issue, I think, and it requires separate tactics. How do we poison, sabotage or otherwise destroy these forms of exploitation?
Mar 馃敟
@mar@todon.nl replied  路  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

Oh, and no, BlueSky doesn't count as an alternative, because it's just as much a walled-garden again.

What is needed of an alternative is that it's open and free, and allows everyone to write their own software to communicate with everyone else. The ActivityPub standard (which underlies the Fediverse) is currently the best and most widely adopted we have, and it's crucial that the networks you use implement that standard properly, i.e. by allowing federation by default in principle, unless there's reason to block specific servers.