So the internet business model is founded on the principle of maximizing engagement.
Eyeballs = dollars
And nothing maximizes engagement like outrage.
So, the next time something on the internet makes you angry, consider who profits.
So the internet business model is founded on the principle of maximizing engagement.
Eyeballs = dollars
And nothing maximizes engagement like outrage.
So, the next time something on the internet makes you angry, consider who profits.
It's time for me to talk about the economics of New Ellijay Television #NewEllijayTelevision #NETV and it's potential future!
Let's go!
I've recently become mildly fascinated with NFC.
I can't think of anything worthwhile to *do* with the technology, but it's neat.
I've been thinking a lot about centralization and decentralization over the last few days (well, decades, but this particular train of thought has been running for a few days.)
The thing about centralized platforms (for anything! social media, electricity generation, food distribution, government, business, etc.) is they can work really well.
You get a lot of benefits from centralization, a lot of deduplication of effort. Sometimes, in the case of things like power grids, centralization is so much more efficient than decentralization that considering the latter starts to feel ridiculous.
When built correctly, centralized platforms work very well.
But, they fail horribly. Really horribly, and on a scale and in ways that are only possible for centralized platforms.
Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here, I don't know a lot about the great depression.
But I've been thinking about the great depression lately, for reasons that I assume are fairly self evident, and I'm thinking about the mechanisms that enabled it, and I'm drawing conclusions and modern parallels.
I don't know if these conclusions are right, or if these modern parallels are sensible. I don't know the inner secrets of the universe. These are just some things I'm thinking about.
If you can't install your own software on it, from the source of your choice, you are at the mercy of the person who decides what software you can install.
This is bad!
It's amazing to me how we're watching the tech world fall apart at the feet of monetization and AI and whatever other bullshit of the week, and it's all exactly the consequences that the Free Software folks have been warning about and talking about for decades.
But the free software folks are, often, aggressive ideological purists or incredibly gatekeep-y, and free software as a movement has been seriously hampered by both of those things, and also by the same monetization push that is eating everything else.
We built our entire world on computers. We embedded them in every facet of our lives. I've spent my entire life With The Machine.
And yet...
If you can't install your own operating system on it, from the source of your choice, you are at the mercy of the person who decides what operating system you can install.
(This is bad, but it's also super common. How many mobile devices only run android or lineage/free-android? How many can't even run lineage?)
And there is another way. We're here, in this place, because we needed another way.
If someone else is in charge of what you can publish, or what you can read, or who you can connect with, you are at the mercy of the algorithm. This means you watch what google (or Amazon, or Netflix, or Comcast, or Zaslav) wants you to watch, you read what facebook (or google, or Microsoft, or Elon Musk) wants you to read.
If someone else controls your distribution pipe, you can only publish what google, or facebook, or Elon Musk want you to publish, and it can only be seen by the people they want to see it.
But this other way?
Right now, it mostly depends on the kindness of strangers, and it imposes a somewhat significant additional cognitive barrier to entry.
Picking an instance feels hard. Self hosting can be complicated.
Remembering that your username has to include a URL (and that you might end up with a username like kenkyuusentaipodcastrangers@meet.communitymedia.network that takes up two full lines of the compose box? That's hard.)
Being responsible for outages, for backups, for infrastructure, for Payment.
It's all hard.
I haven't used a microsoft OS for anything other than interfacing with printers and industrial equipment in almost a decade.
(unless you count windows 3.1, but I'm not going to.)
I haven't used iOS outside of work basically ever, and I'm not working anymore.
I use popOS, Debian, and occasionally when I've made bad choices in the past, I end up with Ubuntu somewhere. (Or Ubuntu Studio, which is less of a bad choice and more of a compromise)
Eventually, if things continue in the direction they're going, I'll have Debian most places.
But I have the ability and the privilege to make those choices. Not everyone does.
But the shape of the world is changing quickly, and some of these tech companies, Microsoft in particular, are not only Too Big To Fail, they're also too big to be allowed to continue to exist without significant external governance.
Google, Amazon, Facebook... I mean, these companies shouldn't exist. Their products, such as they are, should be ripped apart and rebuilt as a million tiny things.
But Windows? I think Windows has it's place, or at least I think that it has so completely captured the modern technological world that we're worse off without it.
Which is what makes things like AI PCs that take a screenshot of your workload every 10 seconds so dangerous.
Windows is too big to continue to be owned by any company.
So what do we do?
Well, we keep doing what we've been doing here on the fediverse.
We keep building things like Peertube, and using things like peertube to build things like #NewEllijayTelevision and https://communitymedia.video and, when we can afford to do so, we financially support the people who make the software that provides an alternative to these closed worlds.
Dual power. We build the future in the rotting husk of the present.
(And yet, it is owned by a company, and we're at their mercy. And even those of us who have opted out of their ecosystem have to suffer under their decisions.
Because we're all a community. The things that happen to one of us cascade.
Microsoft exists. They can inflict a huge amount of harm at a whim and no one can stop them from doing it, and even I who have spent decades trying to escape them still depend on them for various core aspects of my life.)
"Atari acquires Intellivision brand"
https://www.gematsu.com/2024/05/atari-acquires-intellivision-brand
We're living in a weird future, populated by zombied husks of the now distant past.
Jesus christ, someone just drove a garbage truck in to the corner of the antique store.
Damage appears to be minimal, but he *hit the fucking building* with his truck.
Just threw a dude out of the coffee shop for the third time.
He has been repeatedly told not to return.
He keeps coming back.
He does it specifically to make the staff uncomfortable.
Today, he lied to my face about who he was, and then demanded a reason for being expelled.
I told him that he knew very well what he'd done, but he continued to argue for a minute until the woman he was with was like "stop, just leave. You're embarrassing me."
So, how would you handle this situation?
What is the appropriate action to take if he shows up again?
At this point, I consider him a legitimate threat.
Trying to reshape the future of television.I write and build stuff. Est. 1990. (He, Him, Etc.)http://andrewroach.netOriginal posts CC-BY-SA 4.0 - Share them, but link to the original.
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