tadpole256Dec 23, 2022
Clinical Rawlsian
Read every word of this banger from @pluralistic. It captures perfectly what I've been thinking about Mastodon, Twitter, the Fediverse, social networks, and the web generally. https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/23/semipermeable-membranes/#free-as-in-puppies
Pluralistic: What the fediverse (does/n’t) solve (23 Dec 2022) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Dec 23, 2022 at 9:22pmWeb
Show threadClinical RawlsianDec 23, 2022

@pluralistic This is why Post and Hive are not the solution.

"No matter how benevolent a dictatorship is, it's still a dictatorship, and subject to the dictator's whims. We must demand that the owners and leaders of tech platforms be fair and good – but we must also be prepared for them to fail at this, sometimes catastrophically."

Show threadClinical RawlsianDec 23, 2022

@pluralistic And this is just so everything...

"The corporate person is a selfish narcissist, a paperclip-maximizing artificial lifeform forever questing after its own advantage. It is an abuser. Like all abusers, it is keenly attuned to any social dynamic that it can use to manipulate its victims, and so social media is highly prized by these immortal colony-organisms."

Show threadClinical RawlsianDec 23, 2022
@pluralistic I know that by "corporate person", Doctorow means the entity of the corporation, granted the status of personhood by the law. But it made me think about the actual people who work within corporate "leadership" roles.
Show threadClinical RawlsianDec 23, 2022
@pluralistic Corporations are super-organisms that see human beings the way we see gut bacteria, but corporate executives are like Remora fish that attach themselves to super-predators like great whites, entering a symbiosis with a thing that would otherwise devour them in order to avoid the fate of other fish their size.
Show threadClinical RawlsianDec 23, 2022
@pluralistic This paragraph really hit because in my field (nursing / healthcare), I regularly see hospital systems and their corporate executives exploit a particular social dynamic: the desire of doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers to help and heal their fellow human beings. The suits know you can't stand to see people suffer or be neglected, and they weaponize your own compassion against you so that they can exploit and abuse you over and over and over again.
Show threadLadyLDec 23, 2022
@MadMadMadMadRN @pluralistic I'm a registered nurse with an active license who left direct care nursing. It hurt because I was good at it, and I loved my patients but I didn't want to be abused anymore. Working healthcare was killing me. Corporate executives abuse healthcare workers' intrinsic motivation and empathy for others.
Show threadUV kravitz (She/they)Dec 23, 2022
@ladylecondoliak @MadMadMadMadRN @pluralistic Private Equity is literally killing us, they take over healthcare system, exploit labor to the max, add cost for insurance companies so more money is taken out of our pockets, and good people can't stay in the system as it is too exploitative.
Show threadTammy GentzelDec 23, 2022
@pluralistic @ladylecondoliak @MadMadMadMadRN 🥺
Show threadanubis2814Dec 23, 2022
@MadMadMadMadRN @pluralistic If student debt was forgiven for all health care workers because we fucking NEED THEM TO LIVE, many of them could easily start their own practices and such giving them a lot more negotiating power, but hospitals know they don't have to do this so they get free indentured servants till the student loans are paid off. By that time many of the doctors are burnt out and cynical, often forgetting the reason they got in the field to begin with
Show threadD. CreemerDec 23, 2022

@MadMadMadMadRN this is a great companion to Valente’s essay - thanks for linking to it.

It’s so ironic that we in the West have been taught for generations about the advantages of democratic systems over (sometimes) benevolent dictatorships, but then fail to see the need to apply it to other avenues of life

Show threadyunchtimeDec 27, 2022

@MadMadMadMadRN @pluralistic

"Twitter's enshittification" is symptomatic of the encroaching fascist state. Which makes it all the more imperative to stand up meaningful networks of resistance across the fediverse. Today is the day. Reach out. Build. Organize for action and mutual aid.