Billionaires are running the most popular social media sites and utilizing the algorithm to attempt to influence their addicted userbase on a large scale, and succeeded on many demographics and even win elections.
I don’t think it is a stretch to call it a moral panic, because its not an unbiased and transparent system that is dictating what is seen and spread. It is a huge black box propganda tool.
I think it has gotten better, since we used to not have fediverse as an option from corporate social media. And I’m happy with the level of activity.
What is mentioned as pros are cons to me haha. The idea of sharing stuff so people can just catch up on your life without even contacting you just seemed like a creepy concept to me from the beginning.
I’ve preferred people just contact me directly or I contact them instead of documenting life events for people to browse through. Then there’s facebook having all those photos and messages and personal documentation to have a very strong profile on you that adds to the additional creep factor.
Instagram is one of the shittiest social media since it goes out of its way to become unviewable for those that aren’t logged in. So its a really shitty platform to use in place of a regular site.
It does say a lot though that I’ve seen comments in this very thread suggesting rednote as a tiktok alternative. So people just doing the same thing all over again even if they use the fediverse.
I just don’t have much expectations of people changing. Better to just be happy that at least those of us that are “weird” due to being fine with being somewhat cut off from rest of mainstream social media have those options now. So not too concerned about numbers increasing, since it was never much an expectation.
Old school forums didn’t need more than a few hundred or maybe a thousand active users to be happy compared to the millions people have come to expect now.
I think it is like Linux where those who opt for it are fine with some of the shortcomings being outweighed by aspects they value more.
For the majority, negatives can be things they don’t even see as a con, but the shortcomings deal breakers.
I think from a small active community it is fine for users who value that more than being the largest mainstream social media option. But, not something the average mainstream user will go out of their way to stick with.
Its easier to sway people in the worse direction with more perceived benefits than the more difficult or less appealing ideologically better option.
Think we’ve learned most people are easily impressionable or hateful or both with how easily they get swept up in things that disturb us, and its unfortunately a minority that aren’t despite being no more privileged, educated, or smarter than peers.
I guess its kind of like gambling as an example where no matter how much people try and dissuade others from falling into it their attempts fall on deaf ears to the majority actions. And its not that people who don’t fall into it are smarter.
Sometimes the issue is that the vast collective is just already set on their own course of action, and we’re just taken along for the ride due to their vast numbers and drowned out.
Fuses… That’s like what the first Switch did to try to deal with jailbreak.
Joe Schmoe ended up in a situation no different than if tiktok had been US to begin with, since capitalistic companies will sell out everyone to keep the money flowing over shutting down. So country of origin never ended up mattering in making the app as much of a red flag as installing facebook, instagram, and twitter.
Using corporate social media that encourages people to share their faces, names, and voices are sketchy to begin with while also having the apps so intrusive they get access to everything on your phone from contacts to phone numbers.
I see people arguing country a lot, but I’ve never really understood it myself because I never believed who was collecting data would guarantee that data doesn’t end up in the hands of those unintended to get it.
Just as the tiktok transfer shows.
Yeah, they theoretically could, but even getting reddit users moving over to the fediverse has been a challenge and reddit type social is basically an old school forum with a different UI.
When it comes to tiktok, twitter, Instagram type social media I think the main draw is getting the most views possible and going viral and getting followers, which leads to them wanting to be where all the famous people are and all the companies are.
It’ll appeal to those who want to escape corporatized sites, but I don’t think it’ll appeal to core users, since they want that large audience and followers. That they would use those sites to begin with that had privacy red flags makes it a big challenge, since they are willing to give that up in exchange for attention.
Yeah, I strayed away from tiktok and before that facebook, instagram, Twitter. Social media that encourages many users to forgo their privacy and share their faces and voices just always seemed like red flags.
They use social media in hopes of becoming influencers themselves to get the bag, or follow big influencers because they have a huge emotional attachment to them.
I don’t think fediverse is going to have appeal because they aren’t in it just to have a site to have conversations or see material.
The very foundation of it having to be where the most visible and popular people are is the whole draw of social media for them. Not pseudoanonynous usernames posting comments.
I always thought those who believed their data was safe because the app was China based was dumb, since Google showed that they’d comply with the Chinese government to operate in the country years ago.
So why would yet another billion dollar seeking app be different because of it being a different country when they are just as financially motivated to not protect your data but make money off you.
Not surprising, since you’d need tp be willfully ignorant to have used tiktok when it first came out with all the privacy concerns even back then with the app doing weird things.
And those who use it despite that are pretty addicted to the content on it. They in the same category as those that continue to use twitter.
Yeah, and if Microsoft suddenly decides they want to shut Steam out then there’s not much Steam can do other than take them to court. And even if Steam exited Windows there’s still lot of popular publishers putting out Windows only games like Valorant, Battlefield 6, Fortnite, Genshin Impact, and popular software like Adobe that would lead to losing a significant chunk of the userbase that would not move to Linux due to games and software they use not being on Windows.
Another launcher whether it is Microsoft or Epic or whatever would just fill the void for third party titles and probably be glad that the main competition is banished.
So this market share situation is not quite like Sony, Nintendo, iOS, or Google who not only run a locked down OS but also are the monopoly and sometimes only storefront.
Google recently shifted to wanting to gatekeep what can be installed and wanting verification from even devs that don’t want to release on the play store, which threatens viability of alternative app repositories like F-droid. Which is what could happen to Steam if Windows suddenly decided to change their minds about how open they’ve been in allowing program installations.
So Steam situation despite their popularity is still reliant on Microsoft not turning into a bad actor. They are more Netflix. The go to choice in their segment, but can be replaced.
Even people who don’t care about usage of propaganda are affected, since these social media addicted folks have brought up how they are getting more unrelated propaganda content exposed to them even if all they want to see is cats and food recipes as an example.