this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
21 points (76.9% liked)
Asklemmy
43162 readers
1514 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I think that's a good take on things.
Ultimately it still holds true. Information does want to be free. You just can't mix that with misinformation, have everything on the same level and a general audience completely oblivious to the fact and uneducated.
Things have changed. Back in those times it was a small elite on the internet. People who could afford computers and an internet connection and make some use out of it. You needed some amount of intelligence because you had to put some effort in to get online, learn about the tools because that wasn't easy or provided to you. So you'd generally be at least somewhat intelligent if you ended up on the internet. And that's beneficial when it comes to receiving unfiltered information. Combined with the fact that there were comparatively more academics and students, because that was the origin of the internet.
And it wasn't that common to push your agenda there or advertise for your skewed political views in the way people do it nowadays. Due to the nature of the internet and the amount of people there, it wasn't worth the effort. You'd be better off focusing somewhere else where you could influence more people. So the dynamics were just different due to history and circumstances.
Things have changed. Nowadays everyone is online all the time. It's the place to influence people and make money. And that's the other part of the problem. The actual people, connecting them and providing information to them (or to each other) isn't what's most of the internet is about, anymore. Motivations are gathering data about people and selling them, making people become addicted to your platform so they spend more time there and you can make more money. Everyone is competing for attention. And bad, emotional stories are what works best. Giving people the "simple truths" they seek instead of an intellectual and nuanced view. Factuality just gets in the way of all of that.
I sometimes like to compare that to the Age of Reason / Enlightenment. Back then it was monarchs, bad dynamics and missing education. Now it's big tech companies, bad dynamics and insufficient education. People need to get emancipated, educated and leave the current "immature state of ignorance" (to quote Kant.)
Information and education are key. And the internet, algorithms and AI are just tools. They can be used for progress, or to enslave us. At least the internet has the potential (and was build) to connect people and provide a level playing field to everyone. But it can be used for a variety of different things. And choosing the right things isn't something that can be solved by technology alone.