So much this. When my son turned 12, I told him how some of the various social media sites and smart technologies work, and he’s avoided social media altogether ever since (he’s now an adult). He always uses ad blockers and content filters, and he generally made good decisions around phone use, and other tech use from a privacy respecting perspective.
Prior to this discussion, he was eager to be on social media apps because other kids his age were on them. People respond to knowledge about these topics, but there isn’t a mainstream popular individual talking about it. Everyone is so silo’d, it would be quite difficult to reach people, and depending upon the political leanings of such a person, half the population would reactively go the opposite direction… on what really shouldn’t be partisan.
No, this is not the way to go. Consumers cannot possibly understand all potential ways in which they can be screwed over, and even if they could, it is entirely likely that there are no good choices because consumers will have to choose between e.g privacy violation or environmental destruction, or privacy violation of some degree vs another degree.
> Consumers cannot possibly understand all potential ways in which they can be screwed over
In a democracy, consumers and the government are the exact same thing. Since they ostensibly do not understand all of the potential ways in which they can be screwed over, how is calling themselves government going to magically change that? Maybe you are imagining a dictatorship instead, where the government is only a subset of all consumers, but even then the dictators are still just feeble consumers themselves remaining within the subset of all consumers. Being a dictator doesn't make you omniscient; still only human like all the others.
Government exists to clean up the outliers who are not behaving in line with the wishes of the consumers, but that cleanup can only occur when their undesirable behaviour is out there for all to plainly see. You cannot enforce what you don't recognize.
> consumers will have to choose between e.g privacy violation or environmental destruction, or privacy violation of some degree vs another degree.
Temporarily, perhaps, but in a functioning market one of those consumers feeling underserved will rise up to offer what's missing, eventually satisfying consumers again. However, ironically, consumers often consider that undesirable behaviour and use government to block that rising from occurring. For some reason consumers prefer to protect the market incumbents even when they claim to not like what the incumbents are doing.
> In a democracy, consumers and the government are the exact same thing.
This is a straw man. Consumers are represented by representatives who should have their interests in mind, e.g the consumer votes for someone who in turn votes for outcomes. This means that there can absolutely be a difference in knowledge between the government and its citizens, and so no, they are not the exact same thing. One group is trying to do their job of being a citizen, while the other group should be doing their job of representing the interests of the citizens that voted on them in whatever is relevant. One job clearly should not involve making sure your privacy isn't constantly and covertly violated by foreign nationals, and one job clearly should. Which is which is an exercise for the reader.
> Consumers are represented by representatives who should have their interests in mind
Exactly. Representatives are merely messengers, so they can only represent the consumers when sharing the message of the consumers to the extent that the consumers have already recognized. Furthermore, representatives are only consumers themselves, so even if you imagine them not as representatives but dictators who step up and act for the people based on how they believe the people want to be overseen rather than from working with citizens they still have all the same blind spots.
> Great! Where can I find me one of those?
Where consumers don't like protecting the market incumbents. But, make no mistake, consumers love nothing more than protecting market incumbents. It gives them something to complain about when idly chatting with each other. Great? Something tells me you wouldn't find it great at all.
No, that is not how representation works. The representative represents, i.e they act in the absence of the citizen. They are not the human equivalent of an email broker.
> representatives are only consumers themselves
No, they are informed experts, or have informed experts at their disposal, to deeply understand the subject matter at hand so they can weigh it against the broad wishes of whom they represent. Furthermore, they have the time and responsibility to use their knowledge wisely.
> but dictators who step up and act for the people
I'm not sure why you keep bringing up dictators. Dictators don't step up and act for the people, that's what representatives do in a democracy. Are you from the US by chance? In that case I can understand why this concept is new.
> consumers love nothing more than protecting market incumbents
This is like saying: consumers sure did love dying from polio before the vaccine was invented.
Now with super sized data centers (touted as primarily for 'AI'), you don't even need to choose between privacy violation and environmental destruction!!! So efficient!
And one wonders why there is a large amount of rhetoric toward anti-government is being thrown around nowadays. Cannot have the money train being controlled.
The problem is that modern sets are made up of much higher numbers of parts (especially small ones). Building them would take forever if you had to pause and think every other step, or had to play where's Wally with a dozen new small pieces all the time.
Lego would first have to backtrack to simpler sets again before fixing their instruction manuals.
You can't even do it ironically anymore because the average user doesn't pick up on it and whatever insane joke you pull will become internet norm in the future
That's almost a job in itself because you have to constantly make sure not to get shadowbanned. This is probably only an option for people who already use "social media" sites in the first place.
Putting a link to your site in forum signatures was the way to go. Unfortunately, forums are 99% dead.
I made an account on twitter/x specifically to promote my site at some point. I was shadowbanned by default and had to follow other people, like and share their posts and comment on other's post just to get my own posts to show up on people's feeds. When I checked again at some later point I was shadowbanned again.
When I tried reddit I also noticed that I was shadowbanned by default and didn't even bother to do anything about because I assumed it would turn out the same way. Like I said you can use those sides to get the word out, but only if you're actively using them as a user to begin with.
The point of POSSE isn't just to blast every piece of crap you do everywhere with an automated system - those should be (shadow)banned
Think of it more like oldschool blog replies. Instead of replying with a 1000 word twitter message, post your answer on your blog and reply with a summary + link to your site instead.
But ALL social media sites downrank posts with links, that's why the "link in comments" shit is so common... They do not want you leaving their algorithmic feed to read stuff elsewhere.
I built mal for videogames too over 10 years ago. A friend also did individually. And I know at least 5 other sites that are "mal, but videogames" or have similar features.
Imo the concept is a waste of time until there are APIs for each console/store to fetch user data and automate libraries. Most users don't bother and the few that do already have accounts spread on like 10 different sites for this kind of thing.
Personally these days I just keep csv files of my collection and play history and turn them to HTML via a ssg.Turns out that I don't need anything more than this.
Thanks!
I understand where you're coming from, when we launched the first open beta we honestly didn't have any feature that we could use to argue "hey, you should use this instead!".
I personally think there's a overlap between people willing to manage their anime library, and people willing to manage their gaming library. Both have tons of options, and most will choose none.
But take MyAnimeList, for example: A mainly English-speaking audience, so we could assume most users are either using Crunchyroll/Netflix/Hulu, or the hundred possible options for piracy. But they still come back to update their profile in MAL every once in a while, despite all the options they have - and we have users which do exactly that too. We're trying our best to offer a solid management experience (e.g. mobile users may press and hold in any cover to manage a game, and desktop users have that directly at hover, and other QoL), and offer features on top of that. Our PSN and Steam integration are very recent, we only launched them ~8m in, and so is our mobile version. All of our users are basically early adopters, but they still log-in once or twice a week, and our only way of changing that is offering more reasons to stay online. That's why we're also building social-related stuff, like the Posts system, the reviews, and etc. We think users are way more likely to stay with us if they can interact with other people. This is kinda what Anilist is doing too.
The new layout, putting attached images and videos on the index, ruined Reddit forever. I recently went there to see what thoughts people on there had on a specific subject, only to find nothing but a stream of meme and social media posts. You really can't call it a forum anymore.
