Social media divides us, makes us more extreme and less empathetic, it riles us up or sucks us into doom scrolling, making us stressed and depressed. It feels like we need to touch grass and escape to the real world.
New research shows that we might have largely misinterpreted why this is the case. It turns out that the social media internet may uniquely undermine the way our brains work but not in the way you think.
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Why are people weaving social media and the internet into a single thread? The internet is so vast, social media makes up a tiny sliver of it.
The real problem with the internet isn’t Facebook or Twitter or Reddit, it’s the fact the entire experience is pretty much controlled by Microsoft and Google. As they shape your content, lock you out of areas and generally dictate what’s “legal” or even what gets found during your searches.
It’s no longer an information superhighway but rather turning into a giant storefront. And that’s the problem. I search for anything and the first 3 pages are Amazon link backs. Or fake websites with AI generated content used only for ad impressions.
Facebook and the like definitely erode some parts, but as a whole, there is way more fuckery going on by big tech.
And this isn’t even mentioning the tracking and fingerprinting and violations to privacy and security we are all promised.
Why are people weaving social media and the internet into a single thread? The internet is so vast, social media makes up a tiny sliver of it.
Because to most people outside Lemmy the “internet” (by which they mean the world wide web but that’s me being a pedant) IS social media. There might as well not be anything outside the walled gardens of social media to them because they’ve been conditioned to only stay on one, maybe two platforms for years at this point. The old “what’s a browser?” question these days gets answered with “I don’t need a browser I have Facebook”. Completely nonsensical to us but to them it’s totally natural. Not being derogatory about them or anything but the 60k lemmy users and however many million on Reddit are not the majority. Facebook with it’s 3 billion (with a b) users, IS the majority of the internet.
I recently (yay Black Friday Week!) got asked by someone in their 70s, who never worked with a computer, to help them pick a laptop:
- Me: OK, so what do you want to do with it?
- Them: I just want to login to the internet.
- Me: […] You can do that on your phone.
- Them: But how do I go onto the internet.
- Me: Use the browser to go to the webpage you want, or search for it in Google.
- Them: So I have Internet on the phone?
- Me: Yes, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to watch YouTube, read your mail, or access Facebook.
- Them: [unconvinced] And should I upgrade to a smartphone?
- Me: [facepalm] You already have a smartphone.
- Them: Oh, and I don’t want TikTok.
- Me: You don’t have TikTok.
- Them: [pointing at the YouTube icon] This isn’t TikTok?
- Me: No, that is YouTube [damned be the Shorts]
They still want a laptop, which is fine, even if they don’t know what for (“not for gaming, not for fancy rocket stuff like you do”) after having showed them some basic office stuff on mine. Still not sure whether to recommend them a Chromebook, a tablet, or what.
If they don’t know what they’re going to use it for, I’d focus on practical things most non-technical people use laptop for:
- Fair battery life to carry it around.
- Operating system that does auto-updates, needs little to no administration.
- SSD so the thing feels fast, and starts quickly. May not need a large storage capacity.
- Built-in webcam for video calls with relatives, etc.
The rest can be done on the software side:
- To browse safely, install security tools (antivirus, browser extensions like privacy badger) and verify auto-udate is on.
- Install an office suite (et Libre Office). Even if they don’t write documents, they’ll probably need to read them.
- If using Windows, tweaks settings to disable abnoxious things like ads, telemetry.
- Backup software. Ideally with automatic remote backups. Window’s built-in backup sucks.
The real problem with the internet isn’t Facebook or Twitter or Reddit, it’s the fact the entire experience is pretty much controlled by Microsoft and Google. As they shape your content, lock you out of areas and generally dictate what’s “legal” or even what gets found during your searches.
I agree the Google and MS are a problem, but Facebook, Twitter, Reddit are also a problem, albeit a different one.
Yeah not saying they aren’t shit. Just that the internet isn’t just social media. I surf with mullvad blocking all nuisances (social media included) and I don’t even really feel its effects unless I actually try to visit facebook.com or equivalent.
I think this is where you’re wrong. Facebook, together with google, ms, apple and amazon, are building all the tech nowadays and thus shaping the internet according to their priorities, and this is the biggest problem.
Why are people weaving social media and the internet into a single thread?
Because when people say the internet sucks, they’re not talking about TCP/IP or HTTPS or SSH or FTP. They’re talking about their experience interacting with websites and other people online, i.e. the social aspects, essentially the World Wide Web portion (but also hardware as a service). Everything you mentioned is in that tiny sliver, and is what people take issue with.
the entire experience is pretty much controlled by Microsoft and Google
and cloudflare
The real problem with the internet isn’t Facebook or Twitter or Reddit, it’s the fact the entire experience is pretty much controlled by Microsoft and Google
I think the real problem is that the entire Internet is basically just a dozen multi-billion Big Tech companies and the entire “Internet economy” is so tightly weaved into advertising money.
Yeah what a future! Literally everywhere you look or turn, there’s someone yelling in your ear for cash. Can’t wait 🙃
It’s honestly wild that our species has gotten here. When are we setting up on Mars again??
What’s really wild is that you don’t have to go that far into the past (just ca. 20 years) when the Internet was all about Information wanting to be Free. It was hopeful time of people coming together around new technology. There were a lot new businesses with wild innovations.
And then, just in a decade it was all gone. Replaced by unregulated behemoths that merged until there’s a dirty dozen left, controlling most of global money and information.
Enshittification of the Internet.
