Anti-social-networks

You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain… (the dark knight)

Every single company that starts making money is dropping concepts of good and evil. The profit becomes only moral compass.

Let's be honest. We have seen this multiple times in IT with Big Techs.

Few examples:

Google has dropped "don't be evil" to become spying, ads pushing company. But even further - on a wave of ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) responsibility and sustainability they had a zero emission plan till 2030. Where is this plan today when AI kicked in?

"Open AI" - a parody of its own name. Betrayed its own mission to become 852 billions (milliards for those who think like me ;) ) worth company.

But it's not only American companies of course. Europe doesn't have a lot of Big Techs, but Spotify is definitely one of them. Are they helping artists? They paid some companies to create cheap shitty music a long time ago, to avoid paying real artists. Now they are using AI for exactly the same purpose. They became a money-making platform.

I hope you can see the pattern. It's not that those companies are evil - no. They simply don't have a moral framework at all. They used to have it, but now they become "too big to fail" - and to not fall, you have to become pragmatic.

But the social networks I want to talk about are a special type of Big Tech - they are also creators of public opinion. And that's a powerful tool.

If you can go to somebody and you say, 'Give me $10 million, and I will change the world one percent in the direction you want it to change...' It's the world! That can be incredible, and that's worth a lot of money." (The Social Dilemma, 2020)

Well, I wonder if I need to give you some examples here. I think it's pretty obvious.

Russia has proven to be fully aware of this (other countries are aware as well). They are using this fact actively - farms of trolls, bots, or recently an AI training data poisoning project.

But I'm not mentioning Russia just because of that - other countries are also doing that. Russia went a few steps further - they effectively blocked most of the traffic to the main social networks — the ones from the USA. And honestly? Looking at the impact those platforms can have, it's justified. It's not only about freedom of speech if a foreign country can steer that portal with algorithms. A 1% shift is fucking a lot!

Russia is not doing that for freedom of speech, of course - THEY want to control social media. To do so they had to ban recently their own product as well — Telegram.

[Small digression — Dario Amodei seems to walk this same path, trying to keep control on "post social media" technology — AI]

Speaking about Telegram - this is a bit different kind of social network. It's more closed - the groups have thousands of users, but the concept is different. Is it a forum? A chat? It's definitely different. It's abused for criminal activities - it's also used to exchange army and frontline information. I don't know if THIS was Pavel Durov's (creator of Telegram) dream.

Telegram is also unique in another aspect - it shows a drift of social networks more toward closed groups of friends, semi-closed groups of interest. Facebook is for old people now - chat is for the young. And I tell you, they have a point.

The thesis of this post is: "Big Techs are becoming amoral when they grow." The second one is: "Social networks are a weapon in hybrid war," which leads us to loss of trust and its consequences.

"To make the world more open and connected." - Zuckerberg

Chat is a kind of safer place: less centralized, more private. With actual people that I may know, not bots or trolls. If social media is full of trolls and bots, and moreover ads - what is the point of looking at such a wall? Monetization and the "influencer culture" that comes with it is not making the situation any better.

Moreover, getting back to point one - "Big Techs are amoral" — what is the algorithm of social media optimized for? To help you connect with people? To make new friends? To give you interesting content?

The answer is kind of obvious - to keep you engaged, to keep you in the platform. How to do it? Often by controversy, low instincts, and polarization. In my opinion it's not intentional to have polarization or controversy - it just works. And as we said, companies are not good or evil - they are pragmatic.

Today, big social media are not connecting people. This is no longer a place to discuss, exchange opinions, catch up with friends.

You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain… (the dark knight)

They have effectively become anti-social-networks - something that polarizes society, something that has a bad influence and stops genuine connections.

That's where AT Protocol and Bluesky come in.

In my view this is an attempt to do something good. Something that brings back social media spirit in a sense. You can choose your "algorithm", or chose to not have one at all.
Your posts stay yours, and you can switch if the platform enshittifies.

Maybe that's the point. Not a perfect system - just one that doesn't trap you.

Will it work at scale? I don't know. At least for now I think I have found a good place in internet. I don't have a broad reach here, but I don't mind - I have fewer interactions, but I'm less bombarded with this whole shit.

(As a matter of fact I'm not even sure if ANYONE will read this small post :) )

For sure some actors will find a way to monetize it or abuse it. It seems to not be the case at the moment and I think I found something i was looking in internet... peace.

I don't know how internet will and should evolve - I think that freedom is important. Telegram with its privacy is one way, but it opens easy way for malicious activities because of that. Bluesky seems to emphasize decentralization- so also kind of loosen control.

Where is the border?

Closed groups are one way to fight with propaganda and influences, but completely closing yourself puts you in your own information bubble. Is that OK?

So many questions - so few answers.

One thing I know for sure. I opt out from being part of Tiktok, Facebook or X .

Maybe we should fight anti-social networks. Maybe because of that internet will be less centralized again. But that's completely different story...

Thanks for reading