The technological innovations of the last fifteen years, from advertising enshittifcation to AI cheating, have largely been a disaster. We are sadly at the point where, as Ted Gioia says, “mo…
The users already have a lot of control; many just don’t use it.
Can any of you live without Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for one calendar month? 25 years ago, millions of Americans did, and their lives were hardly the poorer for it. 25 years before that it was over 150 million Americans, including the 12 who walked the Moon.
I’ve been living without the first two for years now. I could live without youtube if I really needed to, though I do watch a lot of stuff about farming that is really helpful. Most of my youtube watching is educational with a slight smattering of games and entertainment and a tiny bit of news.
The kind of control we are talking about are different. You look at the law, in which I have only little trust, while I look at the ability to manipulate the hardware.
So no, they do not have control over the hardware, they just don’t care that much. They do care if they are inconvenienced in any way, say by a service that disallows some parts that were previously offered. They don’t understand and don’t care, but they do win from some more control over their stuff.
I already live without any of the services you mentioned, I suspect most of Lemmy do. Well, not without YouTube (for me), I guess, but that gets more and more replaced by stuff like peertube.
Millions of Americans would still only occasionally visit those things if they had more options to plan their recreational time. Those options are mostly limited by less free time available while also having less money available. In that regard, and mostly limited to that regard, was then better than now.
The users already have a lot of control; many just don’t use it.
Can any of you live without Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for one calendar month? 25 years ago, millions of Americans did, and their lives were hardly the poorer for it. 25 years before that it was over 150 million Americans, including the 12 who walked the Moon.
I’ve been living without the first two for years now. I could live without youtube if I really needed to, though I do watch a lot of stuff about farming that is really helpful. Most of my youtube watching is educational with a slight smattering of games and entertainment and a tiny bit of news.
FWIW,
wc:Category:Videos of agriculture
The kind of control we are talking about are different. You look at the law, in which I have only little trust, while I look at the ability to manipulate the hardware.
So no, they do not have control over the hardware, they just don’t care that much. They do care if they are inconvenienced in any way, say by a service that disallows some parts that were previously offered. They don’t understand and don’t care, but they do win from some more control over their stuff.
I already live without any of the services you mentioned, I suspect most of Lemmy do. Well, not without YouTube (for me), I guess, but that gets more and more replaced by stuff like peertube.
Millions of Americans would still only occasionally visit those things if they had more options to plan their recreational time. Those options are mostly limited by less free time available while also having less money available. In that regard, and mostly limited to that regard, was then better than now.