Kill the algorithm manton.org
@manton Agreed! Of course there are broader needs outside of the web -- voting, etc -- but there are easier choices we can make right here via the internet. I think it's a good place to start.
@simonwoods Definitely. All I know how to do is help fix the web, so that's what I'm focusing on. 🙂 I trust that good people are working on the other stuff.
@manton Same here! Even deciding to take this approach took some work; I feel like it's too easy to feel like you're not doing enough because you're not doing everything. Funnily enough, I'm pretty sure the algorithms help to compound this feeling.
@manton How does one completely leave a platform when that is where one’s community is? I find out about all sorts of interesting shows/concerts/exhibits/etc thru Facebook. And as much as I love the Indie Web and Micro.blog, there’s still too much friction to get a community of extremely busy people to move en masse from a platform that is so useful both personally and professionally. I’m only here because I’m significantly more interested in computers, Apple, and tech than most theater, music, etc folk. I’ve talked up m.b and even the people who find the idea interesting haven’t expressed any interest in joining themselves. 😕 //@simonwoods
@Bruce @simonwoods I don't have an easy answer. Everyone's community is different. When I first left Twitter in 2012, it was kind of like dropping out of the iOS/macOS developer community, but I was still connected through conferences, podcasts, and blogs. A community should ideally span multiple platforms. (Also, thanks for telling people about M.b!)
@manton Definitely agree on communities spanning multiple platforms. But in the case of my non-tech focused communities, the smaller “platforms” are numerous & analog and the big platforms are where one finds out about them. Someone posts: “Folks need to go see this show running just this weekend” and I see people there. It seems like moving to the indie web would require a lot of people moving at once. And that feels like a hard collective action problem when most folks aren’t particularly focused on the web as an ecosystem.
I guess my question might be how do we get people outside of tech communities to care about the web in that way? Can I convince people to make a show like jazz singer about Facebook?
@Bruce I've been wondering about the same thing. Don't have a good answer yet. For things like gigs, I've been hacking together a few different info sources: following labels on Bandcamp, getting emails for gigs from Songkick and Bandsintown. But none of that replaces people with good taste saying "Hey, go see this band". It's a pickle.
@Bruce @manton The likely answer is that a lot of people will sort-of be lost in this. It's got to the point where it will be a generational change of sorts, in which younger people will be so much more careful about their online life that they will be less hesitant about using smaller options. It'll take time before that changes the culture as a whole, though, since the usual driving force (middle-aged generations) has pretty much only just started.
Honestly, I would sell smaller networks like Micro.blog as havens from the silos, and urge people to change how they think about the web. It's not just "all the same" or whatever and even if some people are late to learn this I think it's worth it. Good changes tend to come with pain, especially when we're talking about human culture.