КуApr 12, 2017
Centralizing communication really has more issues than just the "single company controlling everything" stuff.
Obviously having your whole communication depend on one single entity is horrible.
Comparably horrible is the notion that you have only one online identity, traceable, interconnected with itself and exposed to all your contacts.
In a world that forbids dropping your current identity you are forever bound by all your previous mistakes. You are easily undermined by your past opinions.
Show threadКуApr 12, 2017
This goes well with the faulty concept that's being aggressively put forward about having to be consistent with yourself over time.
Best option (most fair one?) would be to both have people have traceable opinions over time and have society accept people's right to learn form their mistakes and change their opinions. That however is a pretty unrealistic utopic world.
People hold other people accountable for what they "once said" cause we love to hold a grudge and be superior to others.
Show threadКуApr 12, 2017
You could have people overlook your past ideas and affiliations if they have first had enough conversations with you to assess that at this point in time you align with them ideologically.
That is however quite unlikely in a world where your first impression of someone is a complete timeline of all the stuff they've said/done/shared over most of their conscious life (soon there will be people over 18 who have spent their whole sentient life online).
Show threadКуApr 12, 2017
And even if that is solved, people will still have the natural need to have fully unprecedented conversations, to explore changing their identity, ideology and ideas. To play with interesting alter egos. This is most prominent with artist type people, but normal people need this as well.
That's actually pretty much what people look for when they go to a random bar. A clean sleight to get to know people from scratch, to choose how to build your own image.
Show threadКуApr 12, 2017
Centralizing communication and requiring single profile per person, implies higher security, yes. And the highest security possible is what you get if you ask everyone for ID, medical history and records of all past affiliations before deciding if you should ask them for directions on the street.
So both extremities need to be weighted carefully to find where in the middle to stand.
How much of security through lack of anonymity can be changed for good old critical thinking in communication?
Show threadКуApr 12, 2017
Decentralization of communications, not just federating a platform, but using different completely unrelated platforms in parallel, allows you to easily drop old personas, explore new ones, literally do soul searching. And you can do it in parallel, you can just as easily drop experiments if you decide that furry stuff is really not your cup of tea 😀
/^[A-Z].*?\s+[A-Z].*?$/Apr 12, 2017
Show threadКу
Not to mention solving the huge issue of information and opinion bubbles that centralized communication has become synonymous with. Once a platform knows enough about you, the only way for it to make money off of you is to make sure you feel comfortable using it. No one feels comfortable when confronted with new unsettling information or ideas. Also no one grows and learns when only being exposed to the same ideological setting over and over.
Apr 12, 2017 at 6:08pmWeb
Show threadКуApr 12, 2017
Of course being exposed to many other opinions doesn't necessarily mean you'll end up changing your own, you might be right, there might not be a universally right opinion. However knowing where others' positions stem from, you can stress test your own, strengthen it, be better at explaining why you believe your viewpoint is more correct, or why you disagree with others.
Show threadКуApr 12, 2017

Also admitting you were wrong isn't the easiest thing to do. You might want to explore a change of opinion through a proxy persona.
And when I say "proxy persona" I'm not even talking about anonymity or anything like that. Simply having a separate forum to express ideas from than the one you've used so far.

And with this I conclude my senseless rant and thank you for :bear:ing with me over this 😀