> There's a tragic dimension that a system which connected so much of humanity to itself
How would you say Facebook connected humanity differently from what MySpace was doing before Facebook ate their lunch with a more consistent UI?
I also am increasingly of the opinion that humanity is not wired to connect globally. Our local social networks give us a buffer against centralized bad actors. When everyone was connected directly to everyone else, what we used to call "chain letters" before social media took off won the information war because they could bypass fact checkers that would refuse to pass them to their network back when social networks were more separated.
I recall a 4chan post where the author pointed out how before the internet, if you were a person that wanted to have sex with toasters you'd never bring it up and live a better life for it, whereas now you go to Google and find a community with 1000+ members of people who have sex with toasters and inevitably ruin your life.
Hmm no I think that's not quite it. I think it's more likely that you would be a fan of toasters and then, via exposure to the toaster community and various group identity salience maneuvers, find yourself aligning with the sexual subniche; and then failing to recognize that you were just falling into a new social role and instead concluding you joined this group due to an independently and organically formed attraction to toasters.
I'm relatively certain this is how the porny subculture of the brony community occurred. I'd wager that it's largely responsible for the furry community as well.
The thing is, people are extremely malleable and subconsciously willing to change if they see an opportunity to join a warm and welcoming group. I don't think there is any malice or even intentional manipulation in it from any party. But it'd be nice if people could do the attribution analysis a bit better than the post truth "I have always been this way" kind of thing.
You probably got removed from the list because it cost someone a stamp to mail you the letter. These days if you respond to anything, that just puts you on the 'real person' list that gets distributed to all the spammers. Email and robocalls are essentially free so there is no incentive to take dead ends off the lists anymore.
> When everyone was connected directly to everyone else, what we used to call "chain letters" before social media took off won the information war because they could bypass fact checkers that would refuse to pass them to their network
But chain letters didn't spread any information and therefore couldn't participate in information wars.
A chain letter is just a letter that tells you to send it out to two or more new recipients.
> I also am increasingly of the opinion that humanity is not wired to connect globally
I view it as similar to the health hazards of widespread cheap calories – it’s not a new problem but we’ve cranked it up to 11 and put a large fraction people on the planet at risk, and approaches which tell people to exercise willpower are basically pointless.
I think the fixes have to be regulatory but seriously question the political will. Facebook was able to avoid any real consequences for their role supporting the Rohingya genocide and if that’s not enough, what will be?
How would you say Facebook connected humanity differently from what MySpace was doing before Facebook ate their lunch with a more consistent UI?
I also am increasingly of the opinion that humanity is not wired to connect globally. Our local social networks give us a buffer against centralized bad actors. When everyone was connected directly to everyone else, what we used to call "chain letters" before social media took off won the information war because they could bypass fact checkers that would refuse to pass them to their network back when social networks were more separated.