Bonum Certa Men Certa

Quitting Social Control Media or Becoming Inactive/Passive in All of It

Video download link



Summary: The temptation is growing to just quit centralised services altogether; but it is a very difficult task, both technically and from a "social dynamics" point-of-view

WHEN this site started in 2006 I was not participating in any "Social Control Media" or "Social Control Network" site, except perhaps Digg.com (which sort of pioneered the concept). I had joined that site a year earlier. MySpace did not have some of the same interactions among users and various other sites of that kind were more about communication between former classmates (or colleagues, akin to dating sites).



"Maybe Social Control Media was all along about the allure of centralisation, which lets platform owners police people and determine what's permissible speech and what's impermissible speech (based on some unspecified private objectives)."Nowadays there's this assumption that one does not exist if one does not have an account in some Social Control Media sites; even if one has an actual site one owns and controls. It's as if without joining some private network controlled and owned by somebody else one is doomed to fail. In the context of videos, due to file size (for the most part) many are compelled to outsource to Google (YouTube), citing the network effect (discoverability) in such Social Control Media, no matter how oppressive and censorious it can become.

Social Control Media as a concept is problematic; personal sites with RSS feeds worked a lot better and they predate Social Control Media as a phenomenon.

Not social, not mediaLately I've pondered what would happen if I -- like Techrights -- was never in Social Control Media (at all). Techrights never participated, but I myself did. And it has caused a lot of trouble, causing loss of time, concentration, and freedom of expression.

Maybe Social Control Media was all along about the allure of centralisation, which lets platform owners police people and determine what's permissible speech and what's impermissible speech (based on some unspecified private objectives). It's about controlling people and minds at scale.

Quitting this mess and returning to where I was a decade and a half ago is possible. The consequences would not be severe, but there's little to lose by still passively posting to some existing accounts until they or the site they're in perish. All sites perish eventually.

Social Control Media "sites" (or "platforms") as a concept would break down the moment everyone treats them as a "write-only" thing and insists on using RSS feeds (perhaps exclusively) for any "reads" (finding news, opinions and so on). Let's try to contribute to the collapse of Social Control Media by either not participating in it or by not 'digesting' anything from it. No "likes", no "shares", no "favourites", no "replies"... this sort of "engagement" (as they call it) is the only thing that keeps them going, manipulating people and studying (spying on) people.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Live as You Preach
technology is fast becoming dysphoric
Computers Got Smaller, So GNU/Linux Got Bigger
Many people here recognise the lack of urgency (or need) to get expensive new laptops
GNU/Linux Grows at Windows' Expense and Microsoft Trolls Infest and Maliciously Target Articles About It
Microsoft is - and has long been - organised crime
They Say I'm Mr. Bombastic
They didn't take good lawyers
 
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VII: Washing Their Hands After Corruption and Abuse
"Tragedy or comedy?"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 09, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, June 09, 2025
Gemini Protocol Turns Six in 10 Days From Now
If you haven't tried it yet, then give it a go today
Culling Bad RSS Feeds of Bad Sites
Not throwing out the baby with the bathwater
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Addition Addiction and Nitride
Links for the day
Links 09/06/2025: Science, Hardware Projects, and Democracy Receding
Links for the day
BetaNews is a Plagiarism and LLM Slop Hub, the Chief Editor Isn't Addressing This Problem Anymore
SS Fagioli is basically a parasite leeching off or exploiting other people's work
Links 09/06/2025: Chaos in Los Angeles and Hurricane Season
Links for the day
Links 09/06/2025: Windows TCO and Many Data Breaches
Links for the day
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VI: Political Stunts by Former President Edyta Demby-Siwek and the Connection to Profound Corruption at EUIPO
it's like a money-laundering operation where one politician rewards another at taxpayers' expense
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Pipelines and Splitgate
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 08, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, June 08, 2025
Links 08/06/2025: Tiananmen Carnage Censorship Persists, North Korean Goes Offline
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/06/2025: Love as an Ethnographic Method and Monitorix Gemini-Frontend v0.1
Links for the day
Links 08/06/2025: Exposure of More GAFAM Surveillance and Social Security Records Compromised
Links for the day
Linux Foundation is a Mediator for Microsoft et al, Not for Small Companies That Support Rather Than Attack the GPL
Many people still wrongly assume that because it is called "Linux Foundation", then it is pro-Linux and represents the same mindset
This Past Friday, Confirming What We Said All Along About Brett Wilson LLP: It's Shrinking, Has Considerable Debt, Loss of Net Assets Despite the Microsoft SLAPP Money
The documents only became publicly available less than 2 days ago
Some of the Many Reasons We Sued Microsofters for Harassment
perpetrators of harassment
For 20 Years Many People Were Sharecropping for Canonical's Oligarch, Now He's Deleting All Their Contributions
"Ubuntu has erased instead of archiving the trove of material at Ubuntu Forums"
There Was Always Too Much 'Crazy Stuff' Going on Around Freenode
What many IRC users lost sight of
Exposing Crime is Not a Crime (It Never Was)
In the eyes of rich and powerful people, those who speak about their crimes are the "criminals"
GNU/Linux Distros Abandoning Microsoft GitHub
Will curl be next to leave Microsoft GitHub?
Expect More XBox Mass Layoffs Soon If the Rumours Are True
From a Microsoft media operative
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 07, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, June 07, 2025
Europe Needs to Move Away From GAFAM; The Sooner, the Better
Europe - not just the EU - must abandon GAFAM as soon as possible
The Issue Isn't GNOME's Promotion of Diversity But GNOME Corruption, Abuse, Censorship, and Worse
So-called "Conservative" (republican, pro-Trump, bigoted) people want you to think the problem with GNOME is politics
When the News Sources Become Scarce and Increasingly Full of Polluted/Contaminated 'Content' (With LLM Slop and Slop Images)
Integrity matters
"Linux" Sites That Spew Out LLM Slop
We're lacking enough material for another "Slopwatch"
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part V: Breaking the Law, Just Like EPO
We'll hopefully cover some of the pertinent details later this year