Unpopular Opinion

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Decentralized social media is better, but it won't solve the issues social media causes. (lemm.ee)

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/unpopularopinion

28 comments fedilink hide all child comments

As anyone who remembers the 90s/00s can remember, the internet was supposed to liberate us. Free access to information meant everyone would be educated and informed, and able to freely communicate and organize.

That's not what happened. Corporations turned it into a tool of oppression. Technology has never and will never save us from capitalism on its own. Since the early 1900s we've been capable of providing food, housing, and medical care to everyone but we don't. Technology cannot change that.

Social media is a particularly vile tool. It allows corporations to totally shape the reality of people who use it. To the point where people are so divided it's all but impossible to oppose the government.

Decentralized social media might be better, at least for now. But it's still removing the human element from our lives. Instead of talking to each other we create little echo chambers for ourselves. The Fediverse will not fix that.

The only real solution is to reject social media entirely. Which was happening, but now I fear decentralized social media is pulling people back in.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Social media also allows people who would be isolated or in echo chambers in IRL friend and community groups to be exposed to diverse people and viewpoints. It's a double edged sword. For me personally, I know the Internet was crucial in getting me out of my IRL bubble as a young adolescent

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I have a number of friends who feel like socializing online saved their lives, largely because they are queer and grew up in small towns with no other visible queer folks around. Discovering that there were other people like them in the world kept them from feeling completely isolated.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

It was similar for me as an LGBT+ person. Ironically, my internet was censored, but I found out about trans people through Scratch (.mit.edu) at the age of 13. Also found lots of YouTube videos that were helpful to me as an agnostic atheist surrounded by religious people.