Gwen Snyder is uncivilDec 17, 2022

I grew up wearing Whole Earth Catalog pages thin, listened to transhumanist podcasts, read breathless histories of WELL, loved The Palace chat and almost wrote my thesis on Second Life.

Adored Snowcrash.

There's liberatory potential in this stuff, it's just getting squandered.

Show threadGwen Snyder is uncivilDec 17, 2022

It's absolutely true that a lot of the Whole Earth Catolog/WELL types were libertarian, sexist, and problematic.

We live under white patriarchy, it replicates itself in subcultural spaces unless there's extreme intentionality around preventing that.

Show threadGwen Snyder is uncivilDec 17, 2022

The internet has unlimited community-building potential.

Tech has enormous community-building potential.

The problem isn't tech, it's tech bros who want to own and control our communities.

They want us there & paying, but they don't actually want us to build or leverage power.

Show threadGwen Snyder is uncivilDec 17, 2022

I'm coming out of this Twitter dark night of the soul with clarity that we've been on their turf for too long.

Telegram, Twitter, Facebook: they're all playgrounds owned by billionaires.

Show threadBassballPlayer
@gwensnyder
I’ve been yelling at people to get off Facebook for years now, ever since its algorithm dug deeply into my private life.
Dec 17, 2022 at 4:38pmWeb
Show threadRora BorealisDec 17, 2022
@davewordnerd @gwensnyder A long while back, I set up a profile with a fresh email address and not my real identity. I only intended to use it for things requiring a FB login, basically. The suggestions it was making were freaking me out and I still don't know how they made some of those connections. That was the last straw.
Show threadBassballPlayerDec 17, 2022
@rora_borealis @gwensnyder Similar to what happened to me. FB somehow identified me as a teacher in a local school district, identified the classes I was teaching, identified a student in one of my classes, and suggested the parent of that student (with whom I had never had any contact) as a Facebook friend. That’s what did it for me. I dumped it forever.