Let's unshackle ourselves from tech companies

In the years after Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, we've seen him turn the once-beloved connection platform into an even more right-wing cesspit than it already has been before. A rebranding to X, the ability to simply buy account verification and an immense reduction of moderation under the cover of "free speech" drove people wave after wave away from the platform.

But they liked the Twitter concept. Merely giving up on it wouldn't do. They wanted to keep the experience. They needed a replacement. Online magazines jumped on it, depicting multiple alternatives. Ending up at a crossroad, people were picking their next Twitter. And they picked wrong.

While they could have learned from everything that went wrong with Twitter - from its recommendation algorithm over the data collection to its ads - and join the community-hosted Mastodon, they went for Bluesky.

Now, to be fair, Bluesky isn't the worst pick. It's open source and federates with Mastodon. The account migration from Bluesky to Mastodon even seems possible. But when we look at other fields in our lives, the underlying issue becomes a lot clearer. Be it WhatsApp/Signal, GoogleMaps/OpenStreetMap or Instagram/Pixelfed.

We need a collective move towards community-driven applications that are not in the hands of companies and do not need to make a profit.

It's bad for your privacy

None of these for-profit platforms cost money for its private users, yet they are for-profit. The means for their gain are mainly to collect as much data as possible (not stopping at children) to assess a user's behavior as perfectly as possible in order to then display ads and/or sell the data on other marketplaces.

Looking back at Bluesky, they claim to look for other sources of income than ads, but still allow themselves to share your personal data, explicitly mentioning mergers where "your personal information may be sold or transferred". In fact, we've seen companies in the past making bold claims and then doing the exact opposite - first and foremost Meta.

I'll come to one of the most extreme examples later on, but it's not (only) about the data you explicitly put into these services, but the metadata (How often do you have contact with this person? How quickly do you reply?) as well as what companies can deduce from this data. And with these insights, they sort you into categories. Are you sick? Mourning? Freshly divorced? Are you currently going through a phase of deep depression? Or did you recently lose your job? Microsoft's data marketplace Xandr has 650.000 different categories in which it segments people, containing most sensitive information like '“heavy purchasers” of pregnancy test kits'.

And this problem gets worse the more versatile data a company owns. Bluesky may know what you write about and what general topics you're interested in, but looking at giants like Meta or Google, they own multiple services in different parts of your life. GoogleMaps knows where you are, where you work, where you live (once again: they can deduce that just through your movement profile. The same goes for city-scooter companies). The Chrome browser knows what kind of websites you're visiting. Google Calendar knows your private appointments. GoogleMail knows your private emails. GoogleDrive knows your private files. YouTube knows what you like to watch. Regardless of whether Google actually combines all that data, they know so much about so many individuals that it should scare the shit out of us. Yet here we are.

It seems this is too abstract of a threat to actually get the majority of people in motion. It's like we still haven't fully grasped that knowledge is power. We grant companies this power by merely using their platforms and what do we get in return? The loss of control over our own data and, of course, ads. They may "only" sell your data for ads at the moment, but none of us knows what the future will bring. What nefarious things they will do for their own gain. Or which government suddenly demands access to this data, in order to prosecute or persecute individuals. And it's not like this is unprecedented. Period tracking apps in the US warned their users after Roe v Wade was overturned that the data these apps are selling may indicate that users have had an abortion.

It's bad for society

As we've now seen how bad the "tracking people" market is, do you remember the name Cambridge Analytica? That ring a bell? Yeah? This company worked together with Donald Trump in 2016 to (among other things) micro-target audiences and display certain ads to them. The MIT's finding that microtargeting doesn't work that well shouldn't distract us from the fact that it's possible to do this at all.

What we've seen here is the attempt to show the right set of people the right ads is order to sway their voting decision - or make them not vote at all. A grave intervention in our democratic foundations by telling certain people exactly what they are likely to believe, exploiting their weaknesses reveled by analysis. Only enabled by Facebook's endless hunger for data.

But it's not just ads. Be it Facebook, Twitter or any other big social media platform, they all have their own recommendation algorithms in place, presenting you content that you "may like". What at first sounds quite cool (who doesn't want to see more of what they like?) turns into a huge problem when it's combined with the core goal of the company: keep you scrolling (or swiping, or whatever you do there). Because the more time you spend on the platform, the more ads they can show you & the more they learn about you and, thus, the more money they make.

So, how's that bad now? Sounds like a win-win. The problem with the recommendation algorithms is that they tend to show things that get a lot of interaction as that looks like a lot of people find this interesting (strongly simplified). But what it ultimately lead to was the promotion of content that in one way or another provokes emotions - be it hate, fear or sadness. A sober, well researched statement weighing the pros and cons of a topic typically does not fulfill these criteria.

Regardless of whether companies intended this effect or not, it drove our society to sensationalism with news outlets jumping on the bandwagon to make their stories more social-media-shareable. It's just not attractive enough to explain the intricacies and pitfalls to a complex problem when you can also present a simple, populist solution that's not going to solve the issue, but gives you attention. Yet, the majority of our problems today are too complex to solve them with "Just do XYZ".

I don't think we even have to discuss that TikTok has mastered these recommendation algorithms. Romania's presidential elections had to be repeated this year after heavy foreign influence was detected over e.g. TikTok.

And then there is the influence of the platform in general. Facebook knew exactly that Instagram has negative effects on the mental health of (especially) teenage girls as they are comparing their own bodies to unrealistic ideals of beauty that are presented to them there. Facebook tried to keep the report under lock and key (didn't work). Social media companies don't care about their impact on society, they care about the board and how much money they make. If some teenagers get thrown under the bus in the process? 🤷‍♂️

Even if companies claim to support certain positive developments (maybe even do so), they can sway in an instant when a new president is elected, piggy-backing all of their users in the new direction. Fact checks? Nope. Hate speech protection? Gone.

This is where we are now. Sensationalism combined with targeted (political) ads. You could say it's not only bad for our society, but dangerous for our democracy.

It's bad for your experience

What you see upon login is what most big (traditional) social media companies call "timeline". Which is funny because that's what it's exactly not anymore: a chronological list of posts from entities you are connected to/are friends with/follow. What you see there is an algorithmically composed stream of content that the system judges "relevant" to you. If you're lucky the platform allows you to switch back to the "old-school", chronological timeline, but it's for certain not the default setting.

This is an algorithm-controlled experience, which (as mentioned before) is not intended to give you a great time, but optimized to keep you on the platform. Combined with infinite scroll, it's a sinister concoction that traps people and steals their time, exploiting psychological weaknesses that the next interesting post could just be around the corner. And when you think back to the last instance where you spent more time scrolling through social media than you intended to, you'll see that these algorithms are not here to give you quality time.

Plus, outside these companies, no one knows how these algorithms work and why they are recommending the content they are recommending. AlgorithmWatch is one of the non-profit organizations that fight against this condition and promote transparency.

WhatsApp users are now also facing the first signs of platform-enshittification as Meta is about to roll out ads in an effort to monetize the messenger. Yes, it's not inside the chats directly, but looking at the promise that there would be "no ads interrupting your communication" (a such a vague sentence that could mean anything) after Facebook's takeover of WhatsApp, who can be sure that in-chat ads are no option at all?

Fixing this is going to hurt

The first step to mending is recognition. We, as a society, need to recognize that the current situation cannot remain as it is and need to act. But this is (of course) easier said than done as we're dealing with a (largely) abstract issue. Apart from maybe the bad experience, the impact on themself is hard to grasp for an individual. Recognition here means to challenge one's own behavior and comfort.

Alas, this is exactly what's required. We need an openness for exiting our comfort zone and leaving things behind. "Knowledge is power" goes the other way round, too. If we can change our education about how these platforms work and why that is, we get a society that is smart enough to identify and analyze what these companies are doing and how to combat that. We'll end up with more control over our own lives.

But I don't want to paint an unrealistically positive picture here. Moving away from an established platform to a non-profit alternative is not going to be easy. The platform concept might be different, you might be missing some functionality that you loved, some people you know might not want to move with you. You'll probably have to leave all your chats and posts behind, but don't let the past keep your future hostage.

The question that we have to ask ourselves is whether we want to remain in our fluffy shackles of algorithm-lead, but UX-optimized platforms or break free and deal with all the hardships that a community-driven approach brings.

The internet conditioned us to expect that online services are for free (as in "money"), but this holds only if you're the product. A privacy-focused, non-profit system is not run from thin air. If you have the means to spare a bit of money every month, support your operators. Hosting Signal costs money, hosting your local Mastodon server costs money. Without this money, there is no service. And without this service, there is no privacy-friendly alternative to big companies.

Let's move together

In a more and more right-leaning society where simple answers are preferred over the nuanced, complex ones, we need to build a technologically democratic mindset and choose the less comfortable, less shiny solution over for-profit platforms. But, as always, it's easier to do it together and in the end it's the people you interact with and not the capabilities of the platform that make you enjoy your time there.

But where do you start? Begin slow and move one platform. You don't have to flip a switch and not be reachable on it anymore from one day to the other, but ensure the transition nonetheless. Text your friends, explain them why you don't want to keep using the platform and ask them to come with you (they can bring their friends as well!). If they're not willing to install a different app, how much do they value the contact with you anyway?

Someone has to eventually start, so let's be the spearhead that creates the tipping point where not WhatsApp, Bluesky and Instagram are the go-to standards anymore, but open, non-profit systems.