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→ Bluesky and enshittification (by @pluralistic)
pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/uly…

“I would like to use Bluesky. They've done a bunch of seriously interesting technical work on #moderation and ranking that I truly admire, and I've got lots of friends there who really enjoy it.”

“My rule – I don't join a service that I can't leave without switching costs – is my Ulysses Pact, and it's keeping me #safe from danger I've sailed into too many times before.”

#enshittification #Bluesky #Ulysses

in reply to h o ʍ l e t t

To my mind, what the near-complete enshittification of social media has done for me is push me back to the [gutted remains of the] previous generation of news-gathering: international broadcasters on both television and radio, along with local news -- which is completely fine for me. I grew up during the Cold War, so it's much easier for me to navigate that ecosystem, compared to folks maybe younger than 35, who have known nothing but the internet. It's not uncomfortable for me to be without access to social media specifically, or the internet in general.
The biggest issue there is that, since the Cold War, many of the international broadcasters on shortwave have been shuttered, and what remains is a shell of what it once was, from a hard journalism standpoint. Today, one would be hard-pressed to be able to follow the Gaza conflict in as much depth as we were able to follow the Yugoslav conflict in the 1990's on shortwave. Similarly, the Central American and Falklands conflicts of the 1980's.