When I was growing up the internet was a place to be liberated from the world say what you want to say, be whoever you want and form genuine communities with shared interests. Now the internet feels like a tool to enslave the mind with identity echo chambers and any deviation leads you to being banned and blocked shunned and silenced within a void that is inescapable. Novel unique websites coded manually by hobbyists running servers for free in the commons allowing people access to the free flow of information under the banner of “information should be free” has largely gone away with corpratisation. I miss the days when the internet was populated largely by nerds aiming to make a better world not this controlled censored hell hole of profiteering.

  • HSL
    9•2 years ago

    This conversation has gotten out of hand. There are too many comments that are making it personal rather than focusing on the discussion. Locking it now.

  • @[email protected]
    1•2 years ago

    Now the internet feels like a tool to enslave the mind with identity echo chambers and any deviation leads you to being banned and blocked shunned and silenced within a void that is inescapable

    This so much. Go against the narrative and you’re banned even for breaking no rules. Reddit is in the endgame of this at the moment. The admins and their power mods decide on the narrative and if you don’t play along and circle jerk you get banned, often from subs you have never even been to.

    Unfortunately in my short time here I’m seeing much the same, though at least the bannings aren’t at the same extent yet. Give it time though.

    • @[email protected]OP
      1•2 years ago

      Yup exactly the word removed is censored, I could really do with a pack of fags and smoking a removed

  • Neato
    36•2 years ago

    I agree with your premise, but no, I don’t feel like the internet is just " echo chambers and any deviation leads you to being banned and blocked shunned and silenced". And anytime I see someone complain about being systematically censored or banned, you’ve gotta look at what they’re posting.

    https://lemmy.ml/comment/1697612

    Banned because I made a meme that reddit was once a platform for free speech now a social engineering tool, found any excuse on my profile to give me a label of hate speech, and also because I disagreed with abortion.

    https://lemmy.ml/comment/1692669

    What is it with you lot with your obsession and fixation on rights? Why do you want the government to dictate your thoughts and actions so much?

    https://lemmy.ml/comment/1693235

    Enforcing policy is dictating lives though, how about just use a different name for marriage and do a different ritual? Unless that’s only if you actually only care for inheritance laws.

    https://lemmy.ml/comment/1696649

    How about people just treat each better than forcing it on people by the state.

    https://lemmy.ml/comment/1693539

    Marxism-leninism isn’t fascist though

    https://lemmy.ml/comment/1677203

    Like when your get older you appreciate the professionalism and authoritarian rules. No being more conservative doesn’t mean you hate gays and want death upon them, you libs sure do like to assume and generalise.

    https://lemmy.ml/comment/1676143

    Well the western left does have issues like being sex obsessed.

    https://lemmy.ml/comment/1696276

    So bad because he wrong thinked? Tate bad because he said a word? Please if he helps young men go to the gym and improve mental health then what’s the problem but it also highlights a gaping hole in society that hasn’t been addressed and neglected by this Western woke ideology, largely the needs of males have been neglected, shunned and ignored.

    Just a quick 5 minutes of scrolling. So maybe people dislike what you’re saying because what you’re saying is anti-LGBT, anti-rights, pro-forced birth, conservative, tankie apologia? Also a fan of Andrew Tate so pro-rape, pro-human trafficking. I mean your record is speaking for itself.

    • @[email protected]OP
      3•2 years ago

      No it’s not, why should positions be bannable? What if you got banned for simply having an opinion?

      • Neato
        8•2 years ago

        I’d need to know what communities/subreddits it was. But many subreddits restrict types of posting that may be seen as hate speech or against the community’s limited scope. Posting pro-tankie stuff to socialist communities, anti-abortion stuff to women’s communities, anti-lgbt stuff in general, etc, could get you banned. Most of that is probably fine in more general subs but I can’t imagine the pro-Andrew Tate stuff would fly in XX, for instance.

        • @[email protected]OP
          3•2 years ago

          I said in r/atheist that I disagreed with abortion and that got me a permanent ban. Just for that opinion alone, I triedexplainning to the mod but they went on a tirade that I hated women against women’s rights etc etc which is completely untrue, I just disagree with abortion.

          • HotDogFingies
            14•2 years ago

            If you’re anti-abortion, you’re anti-woman. You can’t say you care about women if you deny our right to healthcare. Sorry, but you suck.

            • @[email protected]OP
              3•2 years ago

              That is flawed logic, I want to develop the economy so people can afford to have a family and women don’t feel the need to abort their child because they can’t afford to have or raise a child. It would be preferable if people took personal responsibility and not have sex if they can’t afford children and not delve into hendonism having sex to have fun. I think it’s wrong for men to be pro-abortion just to exploit women into having sex without consequences for yourself.

              • @[email protected]
                17•2 years ago

                The fact that you think that’s the only reason (or even just the main reason) people get abortions shows how you, like most anti-abortionists, haven’t bothered to look at the facts and have your head so far stuck in the sand that its not even worth talking to you.

                • @[email protected]OP
                  2•2 years ago

                  There are other reasons but it’s largely to do with being in a capitalist system with the cost of living causing hardship straining the ability to afford a home let alone raise a family.

          • Sterile_Technique
            5•2 years ago

            So, bigoted opinions? Yeah those should be banned.

            If we’re talking about whether or not you like pineapples on pizza, no one gives a damn which way you lean.

            If we’re talking about human rights, there’s a very clear wrong answer. If your ‘opinion’ falls on the Nazi side of that aisle, this might be your cue to ask yourself “are we the baddies?”

            • @[email protected]OP
              2•2 years ago

              Instead of playing whack-a-mole how about seeing what inflames that ideology in their environment and fix that, at least if they’re vocal you can identify them and see where it comes from and fix that instead of forcing them underground and hiding it. No, no opinion should be banned, at least with bigoted opinions there an identifier that there is something wrong in the urban planning in which they live that needs to be fix, your solution is to ban and ignore the problems.

            • @[email protected]OP
              2•2 years ago

              The larger point with pineapple was that where do you draw the line, in the future pineapple might be considered bigoted, just like the saying “stick a n##### on a rape charge” in considered bigoted despite it being normal before my time. In my day disagreeing with someone wasn’t considered trolling or hate speech. What is considered hate speech etc is largely down to perspective, being a nerd was considered a bad thing until we appropriated it and turned it into a compliment, would it not be better to turn offense to a compliment and just stop being so damn butthurt?

              • Sterile_Technique
                5•2 years ago

                You’re conflating disagreeing with behaving like a Nazi. I don’t give a fuck what was acceptable back in your day. Today we draw the line at human rights If you get butthurt at being ridiculed for lamenting at the opposition you face when you try to marginalize other groups, then keep that shit to yourself. Or better yet, make an effort to actually get to know some people from the groups you’re directing hatred at - might find you actually start caring about them, and suddenly their rights will mean more to you than the pushback you get for posting slurs online

                • @[email protected]OP
                  1•2 years ago

                  All I’m saying is why can’t you just be a better person and be respectful without being told to or by an authority or the big other, if you need to be told or ordered to be a better person, then your not really a good person are you?

                • @[email protected]OP
                  1•2 years ago

                  Typing removed should not be an offence, buying a bag of faggots from a van should not be a crime and smoking a removed should not be punishable by law. I would like the UK not to be an Orwellian woke hell hole.

    • @[email protected]OP
      4•2 years ago

      How does highlighting the positive aspect of someone’s message equate to being pro-rape? I don’t think anyone can possibly be pro-rape…

  • slaytswiftfan
    3•2 years ago

    “enslave”

    ??

    are you serious with thos wording? and if everyone agrees with your opinions would you have still made this topic?

    • CethinEnglish
      22•2 years ago

      “Choosing” something doesn’t always prevent slavery. Wage slavery, for example, is a perfectly reasonable use of the word, though still not as bad as chattel slavery or other forms of slavery. It basically implies the non-existence of meaningful choice. However, you’re perfectly correct to say the OP is not enslaved in this case.

    • livus
      2•2 years ago

      Wanted to say something like this, I’m sympathetic to OP’s sentiments but I don’t like words like “slavery” being used as metaphors.

  • @[email protected]English
    4•2 years ago

    I feel enslaved pretty much all the time. Whether you’re watching TV, listening to the radio, surfing the web, or simply existing somewhere that other people exist, like going to work, there’s so much hidden oppression that goes unnoticed.

    Sure, the internet is a haven of free speech, but free speech isn’t free, and I don’t mean in the way that people have fought and died for it, though they absolutely have. Freedom of speech isn’t freedom from consequences. So if you go on the internet, and talk about doing the illegal, and the police come and arrest you for plotting to do the illegal (eg, murder, or any number of traitorous acts), you had the freedom to say those things, but not the freedom from being held accountable for saying them.

    On top of that, you’re constantly bombarded with information, especially on the internet about what products to buy to “improve” your life. Buy buy buy. Be a good consumer of goods and services. Don’t learn to do things yourself, you’ll get hurt or die, just… Pay someone else to do it, so they can do it “right”. Anything from plumbing to automotive repair, to cleaning your own house, just pay someone. The electronification of everything adds DRM to most everything so now you need to spend thousands of dollars on training and tools just to fix your own damn tractor, and companies like John Deere want us to believe it’s for the best to do it this way, so only certified experts do the work so it’s done correctly. But who said it needs to be done how they want it done, or that their way is better?

    At work, if you start speaking your mind, you’ll find yourself in front of HR very quickly. You have to restrict your impulses, movements and speech to only what your co-workers will allow for, and what management wants you to be able to do, you’ll get paid what they want to pay you, and be happy about it, or you’ll find yourself destitute.

    Yeah, we’re “free” to select from a hundred horrible options of how we want to be oppressed, and slave away until we die, bombarded with “experts” who charge a small fortune just to see if that pain you have is indigestion, or pancreatitis, which will kill you in a matter of hours, or not.

    We’re free to live how others are willing to accept that we can. Buying our way to a mediocre existence, filled with existential dread, suffering, and little more than robbery, but because we have the illusion of choice we think that’s freedom.

    Everything is a system of control. Whether you buy a house, get a job, or simply look at the TV, or the world around you, you’re bombarded with information on what you should do, what you should say, how you should dress, what to think, where to go, and exactly how to enslave yourself to a system you didn’t create, that wasn’t made for you to succeed in, that will never stop holding you down, and takes everything from you. That includes, and is not limited to, drivers licensing, billboards, advertisements, employment, bank accounts, religion, consumerism, malls, shops, the news/media, the music you listen to, and yes, especially the internet.

    If you can’t see that this is the case, you’re probably too blind to realize it. You’re being dazzled by the flowery language and rhetoric of the situation, thinking you know things, when all you know is what they want you to know. Companies are the root of the problem, deeply engrained in the capitalist dream and consumerist culture.

    But hey, the weather is kinda nice today, so let’s enjoy that while we can and not think about the hell that is a life in today’s society.

  • @[email protected]
    33•2 years ago

    Its a bit strange because, before, a few of us were here and getting to know the internet and everything it had to offer.

    Nowadays, everyone is on the internet but most of them are confined to the apps they use and what those apps show them.

    So it seems people are being silently manipulated without ever knowing there are many more things out there, but even then, the will to explore new things might not suit them, and they prefer to “live in the matrix”.

    Internet mass manipulation is getting ever more developed and used as a tool to achieve an agenda.

    • @[email protected]
      3•2 years ago

      I like the idea, but Gemini lacks the accessibility & performance HTTP brings & the spec has issue too. I’d rather see like a new compliance suite for the non-shitty web because the last year’s tech is/was good, but some of the reigns should be pulled in—especially the web appification of web pages that have no business being anything other than just a static page.

  • @[email protected]
    9•2 years ago

    A lot of the brightest minds of our generation were employed to make us endlessly click things. Even though things like Lemmy and Mastodon didn’t come up with those techniques and are not beneficiaries of them, these services also uphold the addictive qualities.

  • @[email protected]
    6•2 years ago

    Nobody really indexes those types of sites anymore. I suppose a lot of those site operators are more than happy to remain separate from the big tech net.

  • 👁️👄👁️English
    49•2 years ago

    The complaining of censorship makes me think this is written by some guy just posting some bigoted shit lol. Also it’s true a lot of stuff has moved under centralized services, but this is very exaggerated.

    Now the internet feels like a tool to enslave the mind with identity echo chambers and any deviation leads you to being banned and blocked shunned and silenced within a void that is inescapable.

    Also this is just sounds ridiculous lol.

      • Aatube
        7•2 years ago

        As bad as it is, harvesting user data for an election campaign is not censorship.

          • Aatube
            6•2 years ago

            Then why are you replying this to a comment about your complaints on censorship?

            • @[email protected]OP
              3•2 years ago

              Collecting information isn’t censorship, banning and blocking someone for a different opinion is censorship.

              • livus
                1•2 years ago

                I’m sympathetic to the argument that the internet is captured by corporate capitalism.

                I don’t really understand why you think the fediverse censors you though? The source is open, you can literally make your own instance.

                • @[email protected]OP
                  2•2 years ago

                  Well I type removed and it gets censored, in my country removed refers to a type of food, removed also refers to a cigarette and removed also refers to someone who is annoying. So yes the fediverse censors it’s no different than other platforms.

    • magnetosphere English
      2•2 years ago

      Your first sentence made me wonder, so I looked at their post history. I can’t say for sure what their stance is. Maybe communist?

    • darq
      17•2 years ago

      Yup. That bit got me suspicious as hell. Looking at their activity, you are correct.

    • @[email protected]
      28•2 years ago

      I thought this was gonna be a post about feeling the burden of wage slavery and debt necessity, which is a real thing. But you’re right, it sounds like they’re upset because they can’t say the n-word on Facebook lol

  • @[email protected]English
    6•2 years ago

    This guy is why I think karma was a useful metric. I looked at his profile on voyager, saw a negative number and had a pretty good grasp on what he was all about.