"It’s the same. It’s always been the same. Stop benefitting from the internet, it’s not for you to enjoy, it’s for us to use to extract money from you. Stop finding beauty and connection in the world, loneliness is more profitable and easier to control.
Stop being human. A mindless bot who makes regular purchases is all that’s really needed."
#CatherynneMValente, 2022
https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start
"[Dairyland.com founder Andrew ]Smales requires new users to pay a one-time $2 activation fee to prove they're not a spammer."
#MichelleSterling, 2014
Clever.
Imagine if every responsible email host in the world did this. It could have a similar effect to those 'digital stamp' proposals - tiny charges for sending email aimed at reducing spam - but without the unavoidable friction of avoidable micropayments;
As a bonus, if there's a charge to create an account - however small - everyone who creates one is a customer. Giving them legal protections that aren't always available to people using services without paying.
It would also provide some income towards the costs of hosting, of course. Although since revenue would only be coming in as long as new accounts are getting created, it would encourage server hosts to optimise for growth. Which isn't ideal.
"'People are being more nostalgic about the early web', [Andrew Smales] said, 'and part of me feels like maybe in five or 10 years that might be a thing. I think it's probably too early now, but if somebody revived LiveJournal, I could see old web making a comeback.'.
Maybe Smales will be right."
#MichelleSterling, 2014
10 years on, it's pretty hard to deny that Smales was bang on. Even then, the #IndieWeb and early fediverse had already been around for a few years.
"And I also understand that we are the generation who has to go through this part of it. We’re the ones born in time to be forced to make the rules and defend them. To say hey maybe one guy shouldn’t be able to own the village square. Because it was never remotely possible before. It’s all new and we have to figure it out. To agitate and legislate and be constantly vigilant."
#CatherynneMValente, 2022
https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start
#CatherynneMValente
> To say hey maybe one guy shouldn’t be able to own the village square. Because it was never remotely possible before
There is a precedent that predates the net; the mall.
In his book Life Inc. Douglas @Rushkoff talks about how the mall was originally conceived as a utopian vision. But in the hands of US capitalists, it became a tool for corporations to own and control pedestrian shopping streets, which were once public spaces.
"If you think that’s not true, that it’s only capitalism that curdles the milk, ask yourself whether you think, even with all the money in the world, you ever could pay Amy Coney Barrett or Marjorie Taylor Green or Lindsey Graham or Josh Hawley or Andrew Tate or Brett Kavanaugh or Jim Jordan enough to become a progressive feminist eco-warrior activist."
#CatherynneMValente, 2022
https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start
Of course you could. These people are mercenary sociopaths.
(1/2)
With enough money, could could convince them to kill and eat their own young, and claim it was for the greater good. No amount of money would make them *believe* in being a "progressive feminist eco-warrior activist", but if you offered them enough money, you could *definitely* convince them to claim they did and go through the motions.
(2/2)
"... this strange compulsion of conservatism to force other humans to be just like you... A kind of viral solipsism that cannot bear the presence of anything other than its own undifferentiated self, propagating not by convincing or seduction or debate, but by the eradication of any other option."
#CatherynneMValente, 2022
https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start
This conservatism can also be found among people who call themselves "liberals", or identify with "the left";
https://strypey.dreamwidth.org/2071.html
(1/2)
The xenophobia we associate with conservatism is not a property of certain political-economic ideologies. It's a property of a certain stage of cultural development that we have to go through, regardless of our political-economic views - and one that only some of us ever move beyond;
https://meaningness.com/misunderstanding-stage-theory
(2/2)
"One awful man should not be able to destroy something the world created together, for good or ill. No, we didn’t create the code or rent the offices, but without the words we put together in those little boxes, Twitter is and was nothing. Humanity made that place, and it is all our best and our worst. One unimaginably rich man should not be able to take away the livelihoods of millions of people ..."
#CatherynneMValente, 2022
https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start
Sounds like capitalism to me 🤷
To finish on a positive note, I'm engaging with this rant, both to agree and pick holes in it, because I love it.
I love the passion and the raw emotion with which it expresses something deeply important about what the internet *is*. When we stop reducing it to a set of kitset parts (protocols, software, servers, etc) and see it as grand, new experiment in social life. I love the way it ends with the one good thing about The Last Jedi; it *is* about love and compassion overcoming hatred.
@lunch
> people thought of this in the 90s during the spampocalypse
I remember reading various proposals for digital stamps per email back then, but I don't remember anyone talking about charging at the point of account creation. Probably because at the time, most people got email as a free extra with their net connection, or were setting up addresses with gratis hosts precisely because they couldn't or didn't want to pay.
@paulhellyer
> Metafilter requires a one-time USD5 joining fee
Imagine if this had been standard practice among fediverse servers when Eternal November began. All those new accounts people set up would have brought in a huge wave of funding for server admins, some of which could have been passed on to fund software dev. It would also have massively reduced the number of accounts that were created and then never used.
@strypey @paulhellyer There's nothing stopping people who can afford it, and who value not being advertised at, and not having their personal data sold, from contributing either once or on an ongoing basis.
This service is really worth it to me.
PLEASE DONATE TO MASTODON.NZ IF YOU CAN.
@davemosk
> There's nothing stopping people ... from contributing either once or on an ongoing basis
True. But there's also nothing obliging them to. So most don't. Especially if they're only setting up an account as an escape hatch if things get bad on the DataFarm they're still intending to use for now.
@strypey @paulhellyer But *any* payment at all can be a barrier for people - do we really want to obligate people to pay?
This was graphically illustrated to me when I recently said that InternetNZ's $21/year membership fee shouldn't be a barrier. The person sitting next to me reminded me that if I were on the benefit, it would mean having to give up several blocks of cheese or bus fares.
I felt correctly chastised.
@davemosk
> I recently said that InternetNZ's $21/year membership fee shouldn't be a barrier
There's a huge difference between an ongoing subscription and a one-time contribution.
> The person sitting next to me reminded me that if I were on the benefit, it would mean having to give up several blocks of cheese or bus fares
I am on a benefit and have been for most of my adult life, due to various forms of neurodivergence that make me completely unsuitable for most paid roles.
@davemosk
> It would be great if we could develop a menu of nonfinancial ways in which people could contribute and be engaged
100% agree. This is precisely what I've spent my career doing, due to being chronically broke. But I can afford a $2-5 one-off contribution to join a service, and I stand by the arguments I made in favour of this.
Strypey
lunchy
Paul H 
Dave Moskovitz (((❤️)))