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.

Lately 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. ⬆