Reminder: Big Tech sucks no matter who is in charge

All the more reason to double down on the open web.

Animal Farm: The digital pen

The power and profit from manipulating masses of menticided people is not to be underestimated. Nations across the world are considering it as part of their ‘digital sovereignty’. The people, are not as dull as social engineers would hope, and are beginning to turn away from the most egregious abuses. This is impacting growth & engagement figures, and also impacts their ability to collect more data for artificial intelligence. Despite years of troubling decisions, these companies are now beginning realize they need actual people on their sites. The most overt sign would be Mark Zuckerberg’s interview on Joe Rogan, but this is no isolated incident. There has been a long trend of people beginning to recognize how abusive social media giants can be. The industry even has a cute term for it ’techlash’.
The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation describes it as:

“New technologies and the tech companies that provide them are accused of fueling a myriad of economic and societal problems—from destroying individual privacy to amplifying biases, destroying jobs, and snuffing out competition.

Techlash 2025: The Outlook for Tech Policy in the Trump Administration

Of course, the ITIF argues that these are myths and exaggerations, but despite their damage control, it matches people’s lived experiences. The problems created by corporate consolidation of cyberspace will manifest no matter which company the public flocks to. Even worse, these problems become normalized, making the intrusions feel acceptable. The answer is not new platforms, but new paradigms. There is a great deal of potential already being demonstrated in the decentralized social media networks such as Nostr and the Fediverse. It’s important to remember if you just want information, RSS still can’t be beat! By truly committing ourselves to a better digital future, the road ahead becomes much more clear.

Zuckerberg cooling marks

Zuckerberg’s interview on Joe Rogan is a great introduction to the concept of cooling the mark. Skilled con artists have recognized that many people are smart enough to decipher schemes as they happen. This creates a problem where those who recognize the fraud or abuse end up willing to do something about it. Instead the scammer has to spend time consoling the victim. By arguing that the scheme was not only not a problem, the con artist can slip in that it was actually good for the victim.

As such, Zuckerberg is outright saying out loud what many had seen first-hand, but never seen addressed for years. Many commenting on the interview have been attempting to create a mark-cooling narrative that lessons have been learned and that mistakes will be corrected in the future. This presumes that Meta’s actions during the Covid Crisis, or other political events were not intended from the beginning. By re-contextualizing the overreaches of the last years, not only is history re-written but actual important lessons are buried. Even worse, by reframing reality with the same assumptions the problem was created with, the groundwork for future offenses is being laid.

One of the questions people have to ask themselves is “Why the sudden pivot on censorship?”. Failing to consider this is to fall into the same trap of not asking why specific overt measures were put into place at the start. No serious individual can truly swallow the idea that governments and corporations are only now seeing the error of their ways. In fact, the Streisand Effect has been well understood for two decades. Instead of naively chalking it all up to ignorance, one needs to consider a more sophisticated game of mindwar.

All strong emotions are prone to being weaponized. By putting people in a situation where they are desperate you can leverage their dissatisfaction to run all kinds of cons and schemes. It is my perspective, that what many experienced as ‘The Culture War’ was a carefully crafted psychological event. In hindsight, it is clear that many people with a variety of concerns had their voices silenced in an orchestrated and coordinated fashion. It is too easy to presume that the eventual state of having to “tone down” the overt manipulation wasn’t known from the beginning. That limited window would be a very valuable opportunity to discover what techniques are able to manufacture consent without as much resistance.

Social Media: Learning the right lessons

Speech not reach

Elon Musk notably announced a new standard of “Freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach”. There are natural barriers that make widespread information dissemination difficult, but modern-day social media companies are artificial structures. They have two major functions: attracting people to consume content, then selling their information and attention to others. Selling attention shifts incentives on the platform, prioritizing that which is profitable to promote. This means that there is a specific reason for every dominating narrative.

People often mistake social media platforms for a level playing field. Truly ‘organic’ discovery and growth is something that can only be possible in a radically different environment. This is something that already exists in some form on the open web. Outside of these consolidated platforms, nobody is funneled to spend time on specific sites over others. Your web browser gives you access to the limitless potential of the entire world wide web. There are still barriers, but they are somewhat limited to what is inherent to the technology, rather than having artificial gate-keeping organizations. The way to actually ‘fix’ online free expression is to create a ‘web browser for social’. People need a tool that allows them to communicate in an interoperable permission-less way. If you’ve been following the Fediverse, you would know that there are exciting things on this front already.

Mitra: A tool to rebuild online free expression

Platform Migration

Just prior to the United states banning Tiktok, many people have flocked to another social media app ‘Rednote’. This strategy is highly unlikely to be effective. Even if the community successfully migrates in significant numbers, countries all over the world are building the technological capacity to segregate themselves from ‘foreign influence’. Digital ‘sovereignty’ for your government, but at your expense. Switching from platform-to-platform will never be sufficient to actually resolve these problems.

The fact of the matter is that almost every social media app is going to be a spying nightmare. Nit-picking a particular one can be missing the point. No matter what platforms you’re on you should consider sticking to the web version, rather than the apps. It’s worth thinking about how every bit of data you provide these platforms can be leveraged by governments and other partners against you.

It is vital now more than ever that people and communities begin to consider how to build up their own independent digital infrastructure. Without doing this, people will always be subjects of the whims of governments and corporations alike. It is incredibly ironic that localizing the Internet will also have significant advantages to combating world-wide censorship. With a truly sovereign community infrastructure, it is much harder for outside forces to prevent messages from reaching it. As more and more people worldwide rebuild cyberspace from the ground up, you would be surprised how much better the web could be.

Operation: Hearth

Turning away from the trough of menticide

It is high time we reject Big Tech for what it is rather than who’s in charge of it. In hindsight, it is clear to see that social media giants were specifically designed as public control systems. One has to understand that every corporate (or state-run) social media platform is its own rigged game, with varying degrees of fairness. Continuing to migrate to the most perceived ‘free’ option merely entrenches the mechanism itself: the commodification of parasocial interactions. What’s worse than profit off destroying minds is the real power that can be gained by manipulating those minds.

Attention Democracy with William Maggos

‘Slop’ and ‘brainrot’ are both terms to describe content with little informational value maximized for social media metrics. On any platform designed to capture one’s attention, these addictive and demeaning forms of content will proliferate widely. If you’re not used to listening to those with different perspectives than you, it’s going to be very hard to identify what percentage of your feed is pure slop. The brainrot is the long-term effects of not proactively managing your attention, and merely ‘doomscrolling’ until your dopamine centers can’t respond anymore. The truth is, liberating yourself from these machinations still leaves many others trapped in it. Many are justifiably concerned about the effects of these platforms and want to either push for reform or outright ban these platforms.

Banning particular platforms will only mitigate the most egregious examples. The better option is to build ‘digital town square’ on a foundation that doesn’t foster these problems. This is not about just slapping a web3 token on top of social media, but truly understanding what participation in the Free and Open Web means. Big Tech CEOs, including Mark Zuckerberg have repeated over and over again that reducing online harms at scale is impossible, so we need to stop pretending that they’re going to miraculously figure it out. We are responsible for our participation online, and it requires us to consider what models we empower with it.

Why Support the Libre Solutions Network?

Anti-slop protocols

It’s clear that many people are going to continue to use mainstream social media, often without exploring the decentralized alternatives. This is a shame, but it’s at least a situation that can be mitigated. Taking the time to protect yourself from ‘slop’ will go a long way to reduce social media’s impact on you. It’s a bit of effort and might even be controversial, but you may find these techniques effective.

• Keep your purpose in mind

Don’t visit a social media site to merely gaze at what the algorithm decides for you, remember what you actually want out of visiting in the first place.

• Use the web version, rather than the app

This is a great way to keep you from being distracted by notifications and also reduces the information the platform can learn from you.

• Organize people you find insightful into lists

This is massively better than just waiting for their updates to be put into your feed.

• Make use of mute feature

Sometimes you can mute words as well! It can be helpful when a big story is getting too much attention to simply ignore posts where that phrase is used.

It’s also a great idea to mute accounts that specialize in slop or otherwise inflammatory content.

• Engage Judiciously

Leaving a ’like’ can feel like such a small thing, but the algorithms tend to take it quite seriously. Your engagement is largely what drives your experience so make sure you’re being deliberate.

• Don’t respond to a post with massive engagement

If a hundred thousand people have already liked the post, and there are thousands of comments, reconsider the benefit in adding yours to the pile. If you want to respond to an overall conversation, it’s better to take the time to write your own long-form post about the discussion.

• Ignore anyone too big

Any massively public figure inherently has to maximize for the lowest common denominator. Consider finding accounts that others may not be aware of that have real merit. “Too big” can be a judgement call. My own metric is if your IRL contacts have heard of them, that’s way past the ’too big’ scale.

• Prioritize length

This signal is a bit noisy since people can use chatGPT to generate large amounts of text, but it still holds relatively well. If someone is willing to take the time to frame their argument well, it’s often more worth considering than a simple one-line reaction.

• Resist the urge to stay current

It’s only natural to want to be on top of breaking issues. On the other hand, unless you’re personally involved, fact finding takes time. There is a great deal of noise that can be added by good-faith speculation and outright shameless attempts to capitalize on breaking news. Prioritizing which events are worth understanding in detail can definitely go a long way.

These are of course, suggestions and aspirations. Feel free to take on what you think can help you stay focused and discard the ones that aren’t desirable or even supported on your platform of choice. The most important thing is to be deliberate about what you’re doing and not let platforms themselves dictate your participation. Of course, like many other things this is easier said than done.

For those with spare time, resources, and creativity at hand, it may be seriously worth considering creating your own platforms. The Internet may be dead, but we can salvage the Free and Open Web by doubling-down on building it ourselves. While having your own website may not bring in huge amounts of views, you would be surprised at the quality feedback you get with quality contributions. Consider what you would like to see the digital town square look like, and what you can do to build that future.