Probably

We also serve, who write and boost.

A blurred roulette wheel in motion. Image by Angelo_Giordano, CC0 https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode
Image by Angelo_Giordano, CC0

There was a time when I would read the whole internet, every day.

Oh, not all of it. But when Usenet — the internet’s first widescale social media — was bridged into Fidonet (a network of dial-up BBSes), my local free bulletin board system began to import several hundred Usenet newsgroups, updating several times per day. I would dial up to this BBS and read my way through all of the new posts on these groups.

Early on, this was easy. Then, as traffic picked up, and as more newsgroups entered the feed, it got harder. Then it got impossible.

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Pluralistic: 27 May 2021


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Pluralistic: 26 May 2021


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Pluralistic: 25 May 2021


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Pluralistic: 24 May 2021


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Pluralistic: 23 May 2021


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Pluralistic: 22 May 2021


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Pluralistic: 21 May 2021


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Consent theater

Some of privacy’s thorniest questions

The torso and hands of a zoot-suited con-artist playing a shell game; behind his body is a Matrix-style waterfall of green characters on a black background. The pea in the shell-game is the eye of HAL9000 from 2001. Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

Just say that we “fix” Facebook, making it possible for you to take your data and go to a rival service, one that respects your privacy, pays its taxes, and isn’t bent on enclosing all digital spaces into its pervasive surveillance walled garden.

It’s an idyllic vision, but our problems are just getting started.

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