It’s Time to Rebel from Mass Market Social Media

Hugh Howey released the first part of Wool in 2011. In the post-apocalyptic world he created, the whole of humanity lives in a 144-story underground silo. The Great Staircase connects the silo’s levels, and there is no elevator. People are slow to travel throughout the silo and few venture from the Down Deep to the Up Top.

Communication in the silo is handled through Porters, who ferry messages and goods throughout the Great Staircase in their packs and on their lips. The information travels as quickly (or as slowly) as a Porter can climb the stairs.

Email, while available, is one chit (currency) per character. People accept this way of life, understanding that servers and electricity cost money to keep running. But is that actually true?

In the Silo, email communication is cost-prohibitive to keep information, well, siloed. Ideas left in people’s heads aren’t a threat. Ideas shared throughout the silo, however, lead to rebellion.

In a Q&A at the end of Wool, Hugh Howey explains why this is the case:

Question: Why no elevators? Answer: The same reason communication is expensive -- those in power fear our ability to come together and share ideas, thoughts, and dreams.

IT is the villain of the Silo universe. They control the flow of information and, as a result, the balance of power. When those in the Down Deep realize they’re being intentionally kept ignorant, rebellions rise.

The world of Silo is far from fiction. Right-wing ideology has waged war on public information for years. Controlling the flow of information controls society. Billionaires have purchased newspapers and TV stations to control the public narrative. Now, they’re doing the same with social networks.

Elon Musk purchased Twitter to supposedly eliminate bots, protect free speech, and reduce spam. In the years since, the opposite has proven true. The platform has devolved into a fraction of its former self, riddled with bots, conspiracy theories, and right-wing ideology. Those with divergent views have either left the platform or have been silenced. So much for free speech.

Whether this was always the intention or simply a byproduct, Musk’s Twitter acquisition has had a chilling effect on public information. And now he’s set his sights on Wikipedia. As Molly White reports in Citation Needed:

When Elon Musk launched his latest crusade against Wikipedia this Christmas Eve, it wasn’t just another of the billionaire’s frequent Twitter tantrums. His gripes about the community-written encyclopedia expose something far more significant: the growing efforts by America’s most powerful right-wing figures to rewrite and control the flow of information. While Musk’s involvement began with grievances about his own coverage on the website, his recent attacks reveal his growing role in this broader campaign to delegitimize Wikipedia, and the right’s frustration with platforms that remain resilient against such control.

Those who control the flow of information want finding quality or vetted information to be difficult. They also have free reign to promote their preferred ideology. At the scale of social media, this level of control impacts entire populations.

Perhaps in taking a page from Musk’s playbook or in an attempt to curry favor with the incoming Trump administration, Mark Zuckerburg has outlined what his control of Meta will look like moving forward. Spoiler alert: it’s pretty bleak.

Hate speech is now perfectly acceptable on Meta platforms. Zuckerburg also announced the elimination of fact-checking and content moderation teams. As if that didn’t emphasize the point enough, the next day, Meta killed all diversity, equity, and inclusion teams.

As Ryan Broderick puts it in Garbage Day:

Under Zuckerberg’s new “censorship”-free plan, Meta’s social networks will immediately fill up with hatred and harassment. Which will make a fertile ground for terrorism and extremism. Scams and spam will clog comments and direct messages. And illicit content, like non-consensual sexual material, will proliferate in private corners of networks like group messages and private Groups. Algorithms will mindlessly spread this slop, boosted by the loudest, dumbest, most reactionary users on the platform, helping it evolve and metastasize into darker, stickier social movements. And the network will effectively break down. But Meta is betting that the average user won’t care or notice.

Twitter, Substack, and now Meta are all attempting to legitimize hate by mixing it with pictures of your lunch and messages from your grandmother. They don’t want us to care or notice until we start believing their nonsense is normal, when it is anything but.

As Hugh Howey said, those in power fear our ability to share thoughts and ideas. They don’t want a free exchange of information. They don’t want a public square. It’s time to follow the Down Deep’s lead -- it’s time to rebel.

We have to break free from corporate-controlled networks and rebuild the free and open internet.

Humanity is a vast tapestry of ideas and perspectives; our internet should reflect that. We shouldn’t be limited to the singular viewpoint of a few wealthy white men.

Thankfully, the easiest way to rebel is to share our ideas, thoughts, and dreams. As Jay Hoffmann states in The History of the Web:

Here’s the thing about you. You know something nobody else does. You have a perspective that nobody else does. Information doesn’t have to just be information, it can be whatever you want it to be. Start a blog. Post an art project. Write a poem. Create a fan page. Contribute to a Wikipedia article you know something about. These little actions, these little contributions, are the best way we have to claw back to a truly free web.

We take back the web by sharing ideas. And not on a hate-fueled platform, but on something we own.

The Fediverse and the open web are the future of social platforms.

At a time when tech moguls are consolidating power and paying homage to their next leader, Mastodon is changing its corporate structure to be governed by a public nonprofit.

Mastodon was founded on the principles that people should be able to control their social circle online, curate their own timeline, and convene freely with any community of their choosing. We believe social media should help users build bridges, not walls. And we believe this is best achieved through federation.

Mastodon isn’t perfect, but it is far superior to Meta’s Threads and Twitter. Bluesky, while technically a decentralized platform, is owned by a venture capital firm focused on profits. Mastodon, on the other hand, is focused on the community.

Meta, Twitter, Substack, and their ilk want to lock us into their networks. They do this by eating more and more of our social graph so it becomes extremely difficult to leave. I joined Facebook in 2004 -- that is a significant portion of my life documented on their servers. Can you just walk away from all of that?

We each have to decide how we rebel for ourselves. You may wholly delete your accounts and walk away. Someone else may only be willing to reduce usage or delete the app in case things change down the road.

However you choose to rebel, I encourage you to choose independent options wherever possible. The less we engage in a billionaire’s playground, the less control they have over us all.