sergeeo's personal capsule

A Slave with a Whip

In a website where I used to write music reviews many years ago, there was a forum in which a mantra was repeated (half jokingly, half seriously): “remember that this is a dictatorship, not a democracy”. The phrase referred to the fact that the rules of the web were defined by a very small group of administrators and content creators: a circle of friends for whom that web was nothing more than a private club, to which they let you peek through a small window ajar.

I've been thinking about that mantra a lot these days, especially because of what I said in the previous post of this log, and also because of the news related to the changes in Meta's content policies in the last week. Platform owners want subjugation and passivity on the part of their users, who are overwhelmed between endless and unreadable notifications of policy changes. Such is the “dependence” of users on these services (not only in the practical sense, but also in the sense of “addiction”), that they are willing to twist their arm a little more as long as they are allowed to use the platforms with a progressive and not too overwhelming enshittification. There is no safe place for dissidence and nonconformism.

I myself admit to having behaved in a dictatorial manner at some of the events I have run in the past: more as a way of hiding limitations than as a show of force (what force?). My intention when organizing game jams was always to have fun and create community, always with few resources, so I had to limit a lot what could be done and what could not... (this is an explanation, not a justification). This comment comes from the fact that I can understand that, to some extent, we all try to keep control over our own projects.

The problem is when those projects touch millions of other people's lives. I believe that managers have no education or awareness in this regard, nor are corporate responsibility mechanisms mobilized, nor is there sufficient control by governments, or simply... anything goes at the cost of profit growth. If it yields record profits for a big-tech company, it won't be too bad for society, will it?

Companies are too big, capitalism is too omnipresent and, to top it off, the humanity needed to make decisions seems to be gradually being delegated to AIs. It makes me very depressed to think about all this.

This week, in the fediverse, it seems that finally many people are deciding to close their facebook and instagram accounts because of these policy changes. I closed my account when I realized that many of my contacts were fans of the far right. I don't know which is worse.

I feel bad to observe these abuses of power on such a large scale, but I can't help thinking that it is something that happens in all human places. And I don't think of it as consolation, but quite the opposite. In Spain we have a saying: “there is no worse master than a slave with a whip”.

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