Because of this, Windows, MacOS, Linux, are all insecure by design.

Because of that, you can't really host your own servers on the internet, unless you're a die-hard IT guy.

Because of that, the only game in town is walled gardens.

Because of that, everything has to be paid for, thus the algorithm, thus the rot of society.

All because we thought Unix's security model was good enough.

The algos optimize for engagement, which can roughly translate into the people drive the algos, as they would stop watching or visiting or commenting, if it was not something they wanted to engage in.

So in some ways, is this not democracy to the max?

I wonder if articles like these don’t like the outcomes, or the reflection of society that the algos create. And thus attack them, because they would rather curate and limit conversation and expressions on the internet they don’t like or agree with.

(1) directly fund studies and reproductions of studies (promising ahead of time to publish the results, even if negative) targeting the exact issues they're concerned about

(2) writing and publishing extensively to show people the results and help them arrive at a correct interpretation of the data

(3) make a public commitment ahead of time to change opinion based on what the data says, and not to overstate underdetermined theses

... instead of spending money trying to control the political narrative?

That would simply be science doing science -- which has always threatened the establishment because it's accountable to reality, not authority.

Science rightly done never claims authority, just reports on what the data says. Truth is powerful enough on its own.

1. There was no algorithm tweaking your feed. Promoting something and suppressing something else.

2. Creators were not paid.

3. Advertisements were randomly allocated irrespective of the content.

4. There were no such thing as likes.

5. Users had the option to pay for an ad-free experience.

Modern smartphones could easily be meshnet nodes, but they don't really support P2P networking.

See: FireChat, Bitchat (removed from the Chinese app store), Airdrop (Apple limited its functionality in China)

“Nature was, and is, a commercial enterprise, owned by the privately held company Macmillian publishers. . .”

Get off the Internet, go read a book. “Plastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Science Shook the Scientific World” - Eugene Samuel Reich.

The bullshit artists are at it again.

1) Hand-wringing about information disintermediation: previously, institutional gatekeepers filtered information and interpreted it for the public. Now, the public sees raw information and forms its own judgements.

2) Social media has cut revenue streams for the sorts of organizations that bleat non-stop about how social media is a thread.

3) Weakening of ability of the institutional class to censor defectors and promulgators of inconvenient facts, which disaffected former censors call "disinformation".

Far from being a threat to "democracy", the internet is the best thing that's ever happened to it. Social media and the internet more broadly have enabled an unprecedented increase in breadth and depth of public participation in the marketplace of ideas. Those who don't like the result never liked democracy.

It's exhausting, this ceaseless cacophony of high-minded bullshit. I'm sick and tired of hearing people exclaim that the internet is a danger to "democracy" when, really, the problem is that the internet produces democratic outcomes they don't like.

Just call your opponents anti-democratic, extremist or polarising and here you go. Democracy!