"A world with a “public square” designed by a small group of white dudes of a certain age is not going to serve everyone equally or well."
I feel like the author shoots themself in the foot with this quote. Not only does it feel anti-inclusive - it also implies that demographics determine how well people are "served" by a social network's designers and operators.
If the implication is that 'non white dudes' would be better served by their own demographic, isn't that an implicit argument against a one-size-fits-all digital public space?
I think to mend a broken internet we actually need a waste disposal strategy before a park strategy. Think about how many throwaway articles get shared here (many of them, like this, hosted on wired, medium, substack, etc), articles that posit a problem or an ill-defined solution, intending less to lift hearts and change minds than to encourage ad-revenue generating clicks, wasting the time of people who are looking for inspiration or something bigger than themselves they could be a part of. We need a place to relegate the blatantly pollutional content to, a way to dispose of internet trash.
Imagine it: you come across an article arguing in favor of the flat earth hypothesis. As a responsible internet citizen, you place it in the trash so it doesn't bother any other internet citizens.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 14.1 ms ] threadI feel like the author shoots themself in the foot with this quote. Not only does it feel anti-inclusive - it also implies that demographics determine how well people are "served" by a social network's designers and operators.
If the implication is that 'non white dudes' would be better served by their own demographic, isn't that an implicit argument against a one-size-fits-all digital public space?
Imagine it: you come across an article arguing in favor of the flat earth hypothesis. As a responsible internet citizen, you place it in the trash so it doesn't bother any other internet citizens.