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  • It's not a solution, but as a mitigation, I'm trying to push the idea of an internet right of way into the public consciousness. Here's the thesis statement from my write-up:

    I propose that if a company wants to grow by allowing open access to its services to the public, then that access should create a legal right of way. Any features that were open to users cannot then be closed off so long as the company remains operational. We need an Internet Rights of Way Act, which enforces digital footpaths. Companies shouldn't be allowed to create little paths into their sites, only to delete them, forcing guests to pay if they wish to maintain access to the networks that they built, the posts that they wrote, or whatever else it is that they were doing there.

    As I explain in the link, rights of way already exist for the physical world, so it's easily explained to even the less technically inclined, and give us a useful legal framework for how they should work.

    • I agree but I think it needs to be slightly more practical. Sometimes a line of business just dries up and it would damage the company to try and keep that service going. It wouldn't make sense to force a company into bankruptcy to keep one line going that few people use anymore.

      Earlier today, though, I was thinking about sunsetting guarantees. Companies can and should decommission things when it makes business sense, but the user generated content it has gathered shouldn't just disappear, and they shouldn't be allowed to destroy the user experience of things people have bought.

      So I would propose rules like:

      • If a service is being decomissioned or an entry point to that service being shut down, the content available on that service must be made available as a bulk export. Personal data, such as account data, messages, etc should be made available to users individually, while publicly accessible content should be made available publicly.
      • If a public service is being taken down completely, source code should be made available publicly.
      • If the service for a device which was physically purchased by consumers is being taken down, an update must be provided to allow users to use a local or alternative backend service. The source code for the service must be released publicly.
      • If features are being removed from a service which backed a physically purchased device, an update must be offered which allows users to point to a local or alternative service for either all functionality or, at minimum, the removed functionality. Looking at you, Google, keep removing features...

      • Yeah, as always, the devil is in the details. For now I think that we need a simple and clear articulation of the main idea. In the exceedingly unlikely event that it ever gets traction, I look forward to hammering out the many nuances.

  • It’s mostly people who refuse to stop using these services who ruin it for those who don’t. I think the solution is to make slick, idiot-proof and easy alternatives with sexy UIs so even the most insta, TikTok, YouTube addicted person wants to switch over. There’s no solution to monetization or ads which doesn’t fuck the experience of the alternative solution. Creating, instilling and appealing to an ideology will also help conversions.

    That said, if you like someone’s content, then there’s nothing inherently wrong with you hoping for that person to be paid for it. Forcing ads is such a disgusting move, but any reasonable person wouldn’t mind paying to not to watch ads—there’s a cost to infrastructure maintenance that needs to be met, so it’s understandable. But I’d rather pay to a non-profit or utility.

    In general, everyone should oppose big tech monopolies, and ask their politicians to legislate against them. Monopolies are the biggest threats to democracy.

  • Every time I feel this way, I take one more step to getting rid of one of the offending parties.

    I’m like 50% off gmail (proton mail rules), 100% off gdrive/google maps, all in on libre office, proton VPN, little snitch, and about to boot linux onto one of my old MBPro‘s so I can start transitioning over to using Linux as a daily driver. I’m new to it but I’m decently tech savvy so I think I can find a distro that is a decent balance of privacy, control, but still user-friendly.

    The list goes on, and a lot needs to be done, but my experience at my computer and online in general has been slowly improving over the last year or two since I’ve gotten more aggressive about it. Also leaving Reddit helped lol

    • Yeah.

      And we can still block entire sites on the web.

      The sites the friends with adblockers promote.
      The friends who don't notice what they promote.
      What unholy bastards the people who own the sites they promote are.

  • Personally i'm using Librewolf browser and not experiencing any of that. I do belive that even vanilla Firefox would do.

  • Capitalism does this to itself due to the profit motive. Where once is innovation and brand new disruption becomes petty iteration as this new frontier slowly but surely becomes a well-oiled profit machine. The upside is that FOSS makes replacing this profit-generating soul-sucking bloatware with better alternatives very easy.

    Replacing the existing infrastructure of Capitalism by building up parallel structures is a valid means of weakening Capital itself.

301 comments