Thoughts from Outside the Social Media Bubble

Social Media

Let's start with the elephant in the room. I recognize cyberspace.online is technically a social media platform, but it's different — I'll get to that near the end.

I think social media is a net negative for society. Facebook has been caught running psychological experiments on its users, and it's well documented how organized institutions (think governments and large corporations) have used their influence and algorithms to manipulate and change people's beliefs at scale.

There's been this crazy growth of the alt right, and I'm convinced it has a lot to do with those same manipulation techniques. That's not to say the left doesn't have its own manipulation machine, theirs just kind of sucks in comparison. On that note, I'd recommend everyone read Of Boys and Men by Richard Reeves. He's also got a short talk on the book that's worth watching if you can't commit to the read.

I have a friend who consumes a lot of social media. His flavors are Twitter/X, YouTube, Facebook. I've watched him drift from “left and mostly reasonable” to “essentially believes in lizard men.” Some of that is life circumstances; he's been through a lot in a short time. But a lot of it is the algorithm.

Because I'm a bit of a dick when it comes to being a good friend, I'll share an interaction. He was telling me about some weird alt-right conspiracy about teachers. I told him I didn't think it was true. His evidence? He'd watched “thousands of videos” of teachers doing X on social media. I asked him to confirm, “You’ve watched thousands of videos of teachers doing this online.” So I told him, plainly, that he shouldn't be spending that much time on social media because it's rotting his brain, and the algorithm is just feeding him rage bait so he stays glued to his phone.

To be honest, the brainwashing of people in general, has gotten so bad that I've mostly checked out of political conversations in general. Why? Because people are stubborn, and most of what they “know” is whatever surface level bullshit the internet handed them. It's easy to point at conservatives, but I know liberals do it too.

Back when I was more willing to engage, I'd take the time to debunk the garbage people would spew. I gave up after a while because no matter what evidence I brought, the goalposts moved, the gaslighting started, or some shiny new logical fallacy showed up. It became a game. I kept a logical fallacy poster handy and checked off the ones the person used in real time. Of course, I’d show it to them and explain it. I’m not a complete asshole… right?

All to say: people don't change their minds because they don't want to. And the constant, low-grade stream of entertainment we all live inside keeps everyone comfortably brainwashed and entrenched in whatever garbage idea they've adopted. Think Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (highly recommend it. Lots of parallels to modern society and social media).

It's become a running joke with my friends that I no longer hold any strong political opinions. I simply don't have the energy anymore to dig the truth out from under all the bullshit.

Government Surveillance

Social media has been quietly training people to not value privacy for years, and now the government is moving in to take its cut out in the open.

I find it darkly funny that government officials here in the United States get their names redacted from the Epstein files, but at the same time the government “needs” full access to everyone's online fingerprint, just in case the regular population does something illegal. Or that cars need to be spying on you, just to make sure you're not driving drunk. The general population has to be surveilled, but the politicians and ultra-wealthy — including the ones caught with kids and trafficked people. Well, those fine folks get to keep their privacy and anonymity intact. Weird, don't you think?

These laws are a massive and unnecessary violation of our privacy and civil liberties. Beyond the surveillance angle, they directly harm open source projects and the broader developer community. A lot of open source platforms simply can't comply with the costly, legally ambiguous mandates being written, which effectively strips developers of the right to build and share freely and chills innovation across the internet.

They also strip ordinary people of their First Amendment rights (This if for my fellow Americans: America! Fuck yeah!). Putting mandatory checkpoints on legal content is censorship, full stop. Many privacy organizations have shown that every age verification scheme currently on the table collects sensitive personal information and creates new data stores that are ripe for breach and misuse.

If legislators actually wanted to protect kids online, the answer is a strong, comprehensive federal privacy law, not surveillance infrastructure dressed up as child safety policy.

All of this has made me a lot more conscious of my own privacy. I now run a VPN on every device, and I route all my services through it. Because I'm extra paranoid, I use strict SSL rules for Usenet and still route that traffic through a trusted VPN. I pay for an e2ee email service and have been slowly migrating my accounts onto a handful of addresses hosted there.

In general, I try to avoid free things. You've probably heard it by now: if you're not paying for the product, you are the product. And in my experience, most free things are garbage anyway — free-to-play games are stuffed with cheaters and hackers at much higher rates than paid ones.

Anyway, I'm digressing.

cyberspace.online

I've been looking for something like cyberspace.online for a while. Something niche but not dead, where I could actually explore and learn without being shoved through a targeted algorithm. I originally stumbled onto Neocities, and I love poking through personal pages about the stuff I'm into — homelab, mesh communication, Linux, FreeBSD, all of it. From there, I found this place.

Why I feel cyberspace.online is different

I think cyberspace.online is different because it's small. The development team isn't huge, and they aren't engineering an algorithm to maximize engagement or squeeze more money out of you. It looks and feels like a passion project with a Neuromancer-style aesthetic, designed to attract people who appreciate the cyberpunk vibe. The developer drops into chat regularly, says hello to new members, and probably answers the same questions a hundred times a week. The whole thing feels like someone's passion project that the rest of us get to be a part of.

My concerns

I'm not without concerns. My biggest one is the ability to post photos. I'm worried that eventually it becomes a problem; child exploitation or other sexual and violent content, which will force regulation onto the developers.

There's also no real expectation of privacy here. I did some minimal digging, and as far as I can tell there's no such thing as a private message or any kind of end-to-end encryption on the platform. So administrators (or governments with/without a warrant) can see anything you say or do. Which, honestly, is fine for the most part. I don't really understand the idea of having a PUBLIC PODIUM WHERE YOU GET TO SHOUT THINGS AND THEN ASLO EXPECT PRIVACY WHILE SHOUTING*.* Get what I mean?

I also worry about the bot takeover. The platform is small right now. I wish there was a counter showing active users in the last 30 days. As it grows, I'm worried it'll get hammered with bots and fake accounts and dragged down.

I'm a dumb dumb, so I want this little corner of the internet to succeed wildly — but I also don't want success to force it into becoming something it's not. Think of Telegram: privacy-focused right up until they threatened to throw the owner in jail unless he opened it up. That's an oversimplification, but hopefully it gets the idea across.

A possible solution?

I'm already planning to send the developer $25 to support the project. Beyond that, I'd actually be happy with a small sign-up fee to keep the place somewhat exclusive and bot-free. In my head, it could look something like a $1/month option, a $10/year option, and a $30 lifetime option.

I know the problem — a fee keeps a lot of good people out, and it wouldn't fully stop the bots either. But it's a rambling thought, so take it for what it is.

Conclusion

I hope you found this read entertaining. It took me much longer than I anticipated, and I’m concerned that I may not have fully answered the question. If you have any further questions or thoughts, please feel free to share them with me. I’d be more than happy to elaborate on any specific point.