Notices by bm (bigolifacks@geekdom.social)

Quote's too big to fit here but @pluralistic's counterarguments to surveillance capitalism are a low-key highlight of every lecture he gives on #enshittification

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/26/ursula-franklin/

There is no ad-tech mind control ray—if it's a paid product, you're still the product.

> UK PM Kier Starmer has just handed the keys to the British economy over to Jeff Bezos.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/22/autocrats-of-trade/#dingo-babysitter

@pluralistic

(If memory serves, Oobah Butler 𝘢𝘭𝘴𝘰 did a bit of DIY pothole filling and found a way to bill it to Amazon...)

@pluralistic

Well. The Napster wars anecdote put a lot of my pacing across the floor into perspective. I'd like to wait until there's some proper federation, but I'm also impulsive, and a small-time artist, and feeling the pressure to join ASAP, because artists have been 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 there.

@pluralistic I done backed it

Even when social media platforms promise you an audience, I try to write under the assumption of the old, good internet. I can market myself all I want, anywhere, everywhere, all at once - never did the World Wide Web promise anyone an audience:

https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2023/11/11/therapy/#wishful

8/

The only thing the web ever guaranteed is that willing senders - that is, me - can leave things on the network "long enough for others to find it, after the fact."

9/

When social media platforms make you a promise of an audience, what's really being said is that they're offering you to play a game that, if you win, will give you a following almost overnight; from that point, people will say your work just… 'happened.'

10/

This audience generator, this lottery/gacha/"market logic," is called #twiddling. It's not a fair game. I urge you, with every fibre of my being, to listen to this excerpt from a talk @pluralistic gave at DEF CON 32 last year about #enshittification:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EmstuO0Em8&t=878s

11/

I write for the love of the game, but I can't lie, I yearn for the qualitative feedback that @pluralistic writes about here:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/21/blockheads-r-us/

These are my values, too.

7/

Well, I'm on this 'good Twitter,' and sometimes, I get interactions from strangers who haven't followed @ap.brid.gy (My friends, on the other hand, have been more frugal). It's alright, I guess.

12/

And BlueSky really 𝘪𝘴 'the good Twitter,' in the best and worst possible ways. It's all you lot want - or, so I'm led to believe.

13/

But the only companies who claim to provide that experience are the same ones who turn 'the good Twitter' into 'the bad Twitter' once they know you can't leave. Or, yknow, get bought out.

14/

Bolting for the exits to BlueSky because it's 'the good Twitter' isn't a very good reason, IMO, but it's absolutely not your fault that most social platforms lack fire exits (h/t @pluralistic):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/14/fire-exits/

15/

> #Bluesky lacks the one federated feature that is absolutely necessary for me to trust it: the ability to leave Bluesky and go to another host and continue to talk to the people I've entered into community with there.

@pluralistic

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/#tie-yourself-to-a-federated-mast

Had the opportunity to play some #RivalsOfAether 2 at #BraveheartBrawl 2024. I only entered Rivals and went 0-2, but almost everyone I spoke to who'd entered both Rivals and #SSBU were flat-out fed up with the latter.

When you have to enter Ultimate because you need an excuse to be there on the first day, that speaks more to its network effects than it does your own enjoyment:

"God, I hate this video game, but I just can't leave."