Been thinking about this and want to know if it bugs anyone else.

It’s crazy to me that Twitter, Reddit and Facebook all cut off API access and people just went quiet on it. There was noise and complaints but no solutions. Usually when stuff like this gets locked down a counterculture shows up around it. Workarounds, open alternatives, people who make it their thing to keep it open. Like file sharing or ad blockers.

That didn’t really happen this time and I can’t figure out why. With all the propaganda and fake stuff out there right now, wouldn’t being able to see what’s spreading be important to understand? And isn’t them shutting it down a pretty large signal that it is important?

Maybe there’s a boring explanation I’m missing. But the part that gets me is the other possibility, that there’s some kind of suppression force we might not even be aware of.

Is that terrifying to anyone else or am I overthinking it? Just curious what people who were around for it think.

  • snek_boi@lemmy.ml
    2·
    3 hours ago

    As to you saying Lemmy may be worse than Reddit and asking for mod changes, you can totally search for instances of Lemmy that you like or open one. If you can’t or don’t want to, you could check out Aether, the social network. Maybe Lemmy isn’t your thing and that’s alright.

    As to learning about the world including about why Reddit got enshitified and how to fix enshitification, you’re not alone. I am very interested in this. I don’t think the solution is necessarily to extract data from enshitified organizations.

    I think there are other ways to understand. For starters, I try to understand the science. I know about surveillance capitalism. I know about classical economics. I know about behavior design and how extractive corporations want to frighten us into engagement. And you will find that people here read the science too. That is why I am here. That is why I love this place. That is why I appreciate the people here so much.