In a recent article, WIRED magazine proposed that technology companies are moving society towards a fuedalistic reality where we are all beholden to them.
It’s a frightening thought, and it led me to think more deeply about the current state of affairs. Over the past quarter century, I have observed a shift in what we expect from technology companies. It’s not only that we now rent much of the entertainment and media that we previously could own - not just industries that have been revolutionized by the shift to online streaming (entertainment, for example). There has been a change in whom we place the public trust, and what we demand of them.
I continue to be astonished by the general willingness to accept horrible behaviour from these companies, because they provide a convenient service. For example, Substack recently recommended a Nazi newsletter by push notification and it appears that most people simply accept it, or are uninterested.
I cannot wrap my head around this, and I struggle to express how frustrating I find it. For me, it’s as horrifying as the idea of a stranger knocking on the door of my home, to try to sell cigarettes to my kids.
These technology companies are not just the “means of distribution” who are hosting the hateful content - they are promoting it. They are creating the algorithms that encourage us to be hateful, divided, and ignorant. We have ceded control of the social dialog to organizations run by greedy trolls who sold us all out piece-by-piece for a little bump of the stock price.
Citizens of the web need to demand better than this. A lot of The Web has been bought up by money-hungry fools who have turned it into the biggest nazi bar ever seen, and I’ve left most of those places behind.
And we need regulation to ensure that we continue to have a choice.