Yes, why can't we all be flexible and mature, just like these disjointed social app threads that prioritize eyeballs, retweets and rash emotional responses over actual content are always promoting!
You definitely have captured the conventional social media boogeyman feel well.
I dont think it applies nearly as much to this grass-roots, open-source, distributed, protocols & standards based form. People want a way to talk, converse, connect. Sure there's ways to do it badly, for bad cause, with bad incentive, but this is & most activity on ActivityPub reads as dielectic. As an exploration & search for truth, a desire to understand ourselves, each otger, and the worlds about us better.
For sure, we can use communication & connectivity poorly. Are unwilling to imagine though that connection can be a force for good? ActivityPub here is a very very early attempt to create standards where we can explore & innovate, and hopefully some of those fronts indeed show promise of good, for raising up & improving... not just amplifying the rash, the base, the overly emotional, the manipulators.
At some point we have to be willing to get beyond the long long long scapegoating & demonizing we've done. We have had very convenient targets to hang the blame on. Maybe less is the only answer, the only possibly, & hope of ever being better is foolish & mistaken, but I hope we can at least entertain that as a question, a possibility, & not act with- ahem- rash emotional fear-based certainty. This seems like a new path where we can be involved enough, have the decisions available, to start pioneering im the addition of responsibility & moderation to our social systems. That possibility excites me, and I hope we can agree is worth trying.
Are there other avenues for hope you see? What else might possibly be worthy?
