this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2024
1252 points (98.2% liked)
Technology
60085 readers
3114 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That is actually an advantage. Centralized platforms are able to achieve larger audiences, increasing the chance that I will be able to find content I actually care about.
Only as long as the centralized authority stays aligned with you. Then you have the same problem.
Pretty much how Bluesky took off at all. It's just the polarization of the platform style reflecting the polarization of society: Twitter/X went right-wing so the (center-)left made their own platform. It's the same thing the right did when Twitter was politically censoring right-wing content before Musk bought it and Trump made Truth Social, the only difference being that Bluesky got the Big Tech and mainstream media blessing. Musk said he would stop that sort of censorship but just reversed it to censor left-wing content. Nobody actually wants a truly free platform, they just want their echo chamber.
Centralized platforms get top-down control. You're trading your freedom for convenience.
Stop pining for the algorithms. They're making you stupider by guaranteeing that you only see the content you want to see, and never the content you need to see.
That's giving the algorithms too much credit. They don't encode user desires they encode user engagement bait. Like everything under our capitalist system the motivation is profit: in this case ad revenue. Sometimes positive things or agreeable things drive engagement, sometimes negative or divisive things. As long as users spend time scrolling on the platform they'll both be given equal weight.
As with anything profit motive driven it's just about what makes more money not what makes more sense or what makes better outcomes. The core assumption of capitalism (at least how it's sold) is that profit causing activity correlates with improvements to human well-being. How anyone still believes that, I'm not sure.
On Bluesky you can choose which algorithm/s you want to see though and even create your own.
Something something bittorrent.
what?
An example of a non centralized network that has no issues with discoverability.