Social Media = Sharecropping? — Regina Anaejionu

What’s more, nothing on social media belongs to us. Our art, our ideas and our relationships are reduced to data to be mined and exploited by tech corporations, sometimes even used to train A.I. models. We have no backups, either: Few people still keep address books or mailing lists, much less diaries or photo albums. When we lose access to social ... See more

Artisanal software

In a speech delivered years ago, Ev Williams used agriculture as a metaphor to understand what’s possible on the Internet.

Agriculture was a tremendous invention – it got people fed and freed them to do many things. But agriculture – taken to the extreme in the pursuit of profit leads to a sick and obese population and industrial... See more

One of the most insidious effects of algorithmic curation is its redefinition of success. In the pre-digital age, greatness was measured by critical acclaim, cultural impact, or historical longevity. Today, it is measured by metrics: views, likes, shares, and subscriptions.

This shift has profound implications for creators. To succeed in an algorith... See more

From 2007 to 2018, social media was centralizing in platforms like Facebook, YouTube or Medium. Now, people are going back to owning their own social media, and de- centralizing it through self-hosted blogs, podcasts, forums, etc.