Day 255, 642 aboard the Axiom; We shat in our bed

«We’re all living through the enshittocene, a great enshittening, in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit.»

—Cory Doctorow—

We’ve grown fat and lazy, accustomed to being served the algorithm’s slop. No longer able to stand on our own feet and do things for ourselves, losing our agency as we doomscroll for hours upon hours and never go beyond page #1 of a Google search. We’re congregating on the big corporate sites, because everybody’s there, moved to the big cities rather than flourish in the rural and wilder areas of the internet. Because it was easier, because it was convenient.

But that is not surprising. When the internet first began to boom, became a naturalized part of society, the people who (with ideals and with ethics, at first) ran the systems that we employed (like Google with their «Don’t be evil»-motto) began to think of how they could make more money, and then even more money, and soon they were not happy unless there was perpetual growth and unlimited money. Instead of being content with what they had. It is the Curse of Mammon's capitalism; The myth of perpetual growth and all the money in the world.

It has come to the point that we cannot trust our search engines, because they've gone as far as they (think) they can with the quality of their products and now just want to keep us hooked in while giving us the enshittified version.

I recommend reading Cory Doctorow’s Enshittification. He goes into this in-depth, showing the evolution of the big tech companies, the platforms, and how they’re consistently making their products and services worse.

The rural internet

That magical place still exists today, just as it did back there. Kept alive by people who enjoy having their own slice of digital land and being able to do what they want on it. It's just that people nowadays are primarily on the fancy, new freeway, driving past at such speeds that they do not see the landscape. Heading for the centralized big platforms, where you are at the mercy of the arbitrary rules of Big Tech. Where anything that they see as getting in the way of making more money and deciding more of your digital experience is considered a big enough threat that you risk losing your account without explanation. And without the infrastructure in place to make oneself independent of the platforms, you risk losing your whole digital life. There are people who have had a facebook account alone as their digital identity since they entered the world wide web, who for all intents and porpoises grew up there.

These places exist, they’ve just fallen off the maps. And they prove a challenge. Trying to live outside the conveniences of the Big Platforms means a life without the conveniences they provide. It means having to find your feet again. It means curating your own list of RSS feeds to follow. And it means fewer eyes upon what you post. But it also means not being dependent on the algorithms telling you what you want, and telling others what they want.

Be less dependent

Get your own domain. Create the nexus of your digital presence through it. Have fun. Be creative. Or not. It’s a simple first step to build upon. That means you’ll have your own e-mail, and won’t have to entrust everything to either Google or Microsoft. (Or get a Proton.me account, they have a free tier and are privacy first)

Get an RSS reader and start following people directly (I use [Newsblur](https://newsblur.com/)). RSS feeds were everywhere, and they still are. We’ve just ignored them and they’ve grown invisible. Not only will you be able to follow things without depending on an algorithms deciding to show it to you, but it’ll also be a catalogue of the things you find interesting. Give it some time, and you’ll soon have your personal feed that is not run by an algorithm.

It’s not that you have to give up the big platforms. They’re still entertaining and an easy way to connect with people (though not at all a private way to communicate). We just need to be aware the drawbacks and the negatives. If we use them, we ought to use them intentionally. Originally, they were not a central pillar, they were a frivolous distraction, and that’s how we ought to treat them still. And remember to regularly export your data from the big platforms. You’re on rented land, with a landlord that makes Scrooge seem downright generous and pleasant, and you never know when you’ll come home to find the locks changed.