Social Control Media Relies on Advertisers, So It'll Always Be Hostile Towards Free Software
Days ago: Yes, Your Mastodon Instance Will Also Shut Down (it's likely funded by volunteers, out of their own pockets; it's not just hosting bills but also endless hours spent on moderation, mediation etc.)
When we speak of Social Control Media or Social Control Networks we don't just refer to sites like Facebook or Twitter (NaziX). We also speak of sites like YouTube, Reddit, and Hacker Noise ("News"). Their category is a little different (e.g. "video-sharing" a la TikTok or "forums").
Yesterday I was searching for some simple commands online. It can be faster than manpages. With SEO, however, the Web got optimised towards garbage.
I was again shocked to find that even Google had become so utterly useless that I had to open about 10 pages before I finally found the answer I was looking for. Remember that Google in its earliest days had a "Linux" portal for searches pertaining to Linux information and the Google logo was GIMPed. The founders of Google found that useful for their own purposes.
After surveying "what the heck happened" I came to the conclusion that Google, instead of linking to good, authoritative sites just let itself be gamed. It should have prioritised "pedigree"; instead it got gamed by SEO spammers, slopfarms, and most of all Social Control Media. No, I didn't wish to run some command from some random person with a Reddit account. Nor did I want to try something that StackExchange passed off as "solved" with neither an audit nor quality control. Running "random stuff" you find in "random sites" (or well known sites with "random users") is never a good idea.
Along the way I found out that the Web had become so toxic and noisy that a lot of pages or 'articles' are worse than pure noise, some of it made by LLMs or constructed to manipulate search engines, and the overall "messages" were trying to sell you something.
Sales, sales, sales.
Obviously that does not favour things that are made freely available, i.e. things you need not buy.
It would be Utopian to assert the Web should have curation or moderation processes by which sites or pages get "approved". We know how, if put in the wrong hands, such mechanisms would get misused/abused. This month Russia talks about criminalisation of the mere pursuit of particular thoughts expressed online (even if one does not oneself express such thoughts/views... or even agrees with these).
The vortex of misinformation or low-quality information is contrary to the collective interest of human civilisation.
So what we can do about it?
Well, in my personal experience it's good to avoid Google Search and to steer away from Social Control Media or Social Control Networks. All of them. Avoid them. Any time you can avoid them, you probably should. Even Google News has progressively become a sad farce, to the point of showing mindless "tweets" as search results (we gave an example of it earlier this year).
Social Control Media or Social Control Networks gravitate towards sales in pursuit of a business model. They will not or cannot be friendly towards narratives which attract users that don't "buy stuff".
We still thinking of making lists of good sites about BSD/UNIX and GNU/Linux. Or a list of slopfarms to be avoided.
I've lost track of how many times I saw people showing me a page that turned out to be a slopfarm. They basically shared LLM slop with me, not caring to notice they were reading fake 'articles' (Slashdot keeps linking to slopfarms regarding "Linux"). Social Control Media or Social Control Networks also perpetuate falsehoods and people still link to these falsehoods, sometimes in spite of knowing it is all BS. A lot of FUD about GNU/Linux turns out to originate from such sites, whereas good, informative articles get buried/suppressed there (they limit their exposure in those centralised censorship hubs).
The narrative is being controlled by those who stand to gain from distortion of public opinion.
Changing reading habits online can help towards making Social Control Media or Social Control Networks fail. If they have no users or "engagement" left, then they will simply go offline, eventually. No valuable information will be lost. Many falsehoods will get lost. █