I miss the days when the internet was populated largely by nerds aiming to make a better world

The BBS and early Internet days were dominated by people who read non-fiction books. RTFM was a common saying in those days.

does anyone else feel enslaved?

“Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us . . . But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture’s being drained by laughter?”
Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death

Recorded media, electronic media, is something the founding fathers never had to deal with.

I find it is hard to understand. Because now we all carry around a smartphone and can look at Wikipedia and a variety of other sources. On almost any topic, it is accurate with citations. And it really does not take that many people to create accurate sources of information. Truth basically is singular, you can detail it backwards and forwards. We have public libraries full of accurate information.

What I do understand is that oil companies spend a massive amount of money on branding, marketing, sports, etc. The information people believe isn’t just random theories against how fire burning produces CO2 and warms up the Earth. They very specifically believe things the marketing and advertising tells them to. It’s a basic business formula to spend x percentage of all your income on marketing. It works across every field, for every $100 income you put $3 right back into keeping your customer “educated” from a voice outside the product material (such as product placement in a film, or a sponsorship message between news stories).

I find people will sell their souls for free songs, free websites, free TV channels. They just don’t see how artificial changes in group behavior can become popular through marketing/advertising. They can’t face that marketing companies measure increases in sales, and sped precise amounts of money marketing a hamburger shop that everyone knows is there, but still the signal directs customers to change their choice of meals.

Even religions that are not their own. It’s taught. They can’t face up to the fact that a person who is raised with no religion does not believe the book they believe. And if you take them to a country with a different religion or human language, they can’t make the connection that it is all learned.

I can understand not having a skill from experience. Spending 8 years to learn how to do surgery correctly. But there really isn’t a reason for humanity to poison itself with marketing and advertising that climate change isn’t real - just to keep a specific set of billionaires in power.

We could pay for our TV shows, songs, films, website. Not poison our minds with falsehoods in advertising. That chain hamburger shop doesn’t need to remind us it is there, if it’s good, we will go get a burger. It’s the motivation systems of misinformation that seems the hardest thing to understand and change. People can be incredibly attracted to things they find “funny” or “odd”. humanity can be sold all kinds of products that are not good quality or even cheaper… just by branding/marketing/logo things. I can’t understand why people haven’t had ENOUGH of it. Like even the Reddit API change was about adding more marketing and cutting out apps that didn’t do Reddit advertising.

It’s like religion people who believe the Earth is only 6000 years old or something. They know about Darwin’s Theory of Evolution… but I’m like, dude, that’s done by walking around and measuring plants, animals, insects. We have microscopes and DNA now. We know the DNA difference between two kinds of birds. We know how a single cell from female and male come together and follow DNA patterns to create the whole animal, even humans! They just won’t accept that DNA was after Darwin’s time and proved he was right!

Cut down all the trees and put roads and buildings everywhere since year 1800. Start burning whale oil and then petrol oil as fast as you can. Make everything powered by oil. it’s burning, like burning wood at a campfire. Do you see the smoke and gas? Do you think a car is not burning petrol? A power plant isn’t burning petrol? Fire! It burns carbon products, wood, uses oxygen. It makes carbon dioxide. “A typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of CO2 per year.”

Here, can’t we take something like a fish tank and put a burning candle in it, and show you the smoke and gas it creates.

Oh, they are dumping pollution into the river and you think the town downstream isn’t getting poisoned? Who is the town upstream from where you live.

But the advertising and marketing of the oil companies ‘inform them’. You can’t convince them how fire works, making smoke and gas. And start counting up how many fires you see driving around on the roads of the world, and how many power plants are burning petrol, etc.

Advertising and marketing can convince them of anything, the stuff they believe just because snazzy presentation.

I do not think more than 0.5% of humanity demonstrates self-awareness or an ability to openly discuss media-consumption bias.

I think people fall in love with dead persons so easily that they will sell out all of living/alive humanity for a storybook.

“Finnegans Wake is the greatest guidebook to media study ever fashioned by man.” - Marshall McLuhan, Newsweek Magazine, page 56, February 28, 1966.

I have never done LSD or any other illegal drugs, but I have read FInnegans Wake: www.LazyWake.com

Fake news never makes demands on its target audience.

consumerism, purchasing the sponsor products, donating to the clergy…

I turn the question around… people who are clearly liars, deceivers… politicians and businessmen that people line up to vote for with their money or public votes. You really wonder what people think an “asshole” is when you see the kind of politicians that get massive support in a population - to a point people have their photograph on the wall of their workplace or home, put stickers on their cars, etc. to support people that are clearly monstrous. A lot of people do not seem to like to study the crowds of Europe 1930’s terrible leaders and just how many lined up to cheer on such persons.

The scientists a person believes also is a huge indicator of who they consider to be an ‘asshole’. Just passively listening to people who support denial of climate change, denial of microscopic germs and virus, etc. The enthusiasm that followers to non-factual science seem to be very high, and they draw crowds in ways that fact-based science does not seem to do.

There is also not a “cookie accept” when you first visit the site that is now standard convention.

And I would like to see a federation-wide policy that all bots must be clearly identified as bots (an attribute on their account). And features in the site code to block all bots as a user preference.

I don’t think people know (how end-users will cope with the distributed choices of Lemmy). Reddit 2023 is nothing at all like Lemmy. One could be considered a household name for regular users of the Internet, the other a return to something more like FidoNet.

I come from the BBS days of the early 1980’s and even social media radio before that. I come from IRL user group meetings, held at public library and after-hours company meeting rooms. It has always bothered me that current-day subreddits have mostly no identity to the moderators and that moderation is often behind the scenes.

I guess it’s like “corporate experience” that people expect this day in society… that you can walk into a generic franchise chain bar and grill and not really care who the owner/operator and bouncers are of your hangout. Anyone can start a topic/ conversation and there is just some anonymous janitorial crew who is supposed to clean up the overflowing mess if (non-venue) spam or hate messages enter into the space.

The mechanisms of who pays for the venue and the moderators also was a topic most people never bothered to think about. Like it was some taxpayer-funded city park and perhaps the admin police might spot check if anyone was causing a tragedy in that there commons. But reality is that it was a profit-seeking venue charging a cover charge in the form of selling copies of your contribution and changing the tone of your meeting space by controlling the jukebox that visitors hear in terms of advertising messages inserted into the conversation space.

Lemmy seems small, owner/operator focused, and you get a sense that each instance is like some small bar and grill where you can come and meet some strangers or friends to discuss some topics under house rules. Your tips help pay for the hosting and the jukebox isn’t piped in memes from advertisers.

I remember when Reddit had known owners with known ideals, but that was very long ago. I’ve found making it big (with the associated wealth) changes people. One owner even committed suicide over his society ideals about sharing information. Ultimately I feel like a lack of topic participation by the moderators and owners alike made people thoughtless as to their own role in building a human community and people often felt like they were fighting machines and code.

sorry if this meandered off topic, but lately I’ve had some long-time friends ask me 'what is Reddit" since it is in the news lately, and I find it hard to explain what Reddit used to be (before new Reddit and the addition of images/video) vs. the corporate-like entity we know today that our contributions and participation helped empower over the past 17 years. I’ve used it mostly daily for all that time, and I have been unhappy with society’s dehumanizing direction for too many years.

/ramble from a disturbed mind.