Post AoY4VnOeLFssYP4OSe by ekongkaar@mastodon.world
(DIR) More posts by ekongkaar@mastodon.world
(DIR) Post #AoXXr43yH4pbq0vpNg by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-11-29T16:12:35Z
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Introducing a new phrase via my brother "digital feudalism" -- this is the use of technological power to control platforms and flows of information. For example, if everyone is using your social media app to get news (and most people now get their news on social media) you could throttle news that is harmful to you and promote news that helps your political goals. This could, in theory, be done in ways that would be hard to prove that is happening, although currently it's out in the open.
(DIR) Post #AoXYWKjDDbjtOftsno by ehproque@paquita.masto.host
2024-11-29T16:20:01Z
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@futurebird I think that's already been used by… Yannis Varoufakis?
(DIR) Post #AoXYadA0d7E7ioU2V6 by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-11-29T16:20:47Z
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During real feudalism technology such as armor and steel weapons along with training could make a knight or solider dangerous enough that a dozen angry peasants could do little to stop him. Knights had petty power, due to their proximity to the real power of kings and nobility. Sometimes a king might know how to use a sword, but the most powerful kings did not. They knew how to secure the loyalty of knights.Does this translate to the digital realm?
(DIR) Post #AoXYqnfBLfX6vem5Ca by plantarum@ottawa.place
2024-11-29T16:23:42Z
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@futurebird I think this also applies to monopolists like Amazon, Google and Apple effectively enclosing markets and imposing rents on their tenants. App stores, advertising, Amazon marketplace. All started as relatively open marketplaces. As they crowded out competing venues, they are able to extort increasing fees from vendors and customers, without providing any additional value themselves.There's a book on this, "Technofeudalism". I haven't read it yet, but it's on my list.
(DIR) Post #AoXYuQ4mzD74vwThDM by whknott@mastodon.social
2024-11-29T16:24:21Z
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@futurebird The real power of the feudal world was not so much that they controlled a powerful military - all leaders through time have done that. The thing that always strikes me about the feudal era (and to some extent to England today) is how much of the natural world the state directly owned and controlled. The kings owned ALL the land. ALL the animals. ALL the minerals. ANYTHING that needed doing, including producing enough food to survive, had to be done through the approval of monarchs.
(DIR) Post #AoXZ1Z3hzITIosNaXA by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-11-29T16:25:41Z
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@whknott If you aren't walking around and using land, how exactly do you own it? In other words how did the kings "own" the land exactly?
(DIR) Post #AoXZ66ajFwqlyezQW0 by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-11-29T16:26:30Z
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@ehproque I'm not familiar with Yannis Varoufakis? Did they use it in a similar way?
(DIR) Post #AoXZGBip2HgimkaDOy by whknott@mastodon.social
2024-11-29T16:28:17Z
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@futurebird By fiat. I get that you are implying that it was use of force that enabled that ownership, but I would suggest that there are additional restraints that come with controlling JUSTICE. They wrote the laws, they administered the courts, they collected taxes. Was there violence in all this, sure, but it's the idea of state control that the Magna Carta was written to counter, with the reduction of harm by the state as a secondary benefit..
(DIR) Post #AoXZbpIJ6Ns5b8UzOC by plantarum@ottawa.place
2024-11-29T16:32:13Z
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@futurebird @ehproque https://www.wired.com/story/yanis-varoufakis-technofeudalism-interview/(not linking to the Amazon page for the book because that's more irony than I can handle before my first cup of tea)
(DIR) Post #AoXZn1r2kA1Hjq5Wsr by unohoo@geekdom.social
2024-11-29T16:34:14Z
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@futurebird You might find this book from a few years ago interesting if you haven’t already read it: http://johnbraithwaite.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Information-Feudalism-Who-Own.pdf
(DIR) Post #AoXb8PVW68ix8DmL6e by ehproque@paquita.masto.host
2024-11-29T16:49:18Z
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@futurebird Taught in the London School of Economics and was minister of Economy in Greece back when it was "rescued".The concept does sound similar.https://www.waterstones.com/book/technofeudalism/yanis-varoufakis/9781529926095I think Cory Doctorow has something similar in Chokepoint capitalism, but there's just so much doom and gloom one can read in a given year.!
(DIR) Post #AoXba7hdt7EG1KfHWa by mansr@society.oftrolls.com
2024-11-29T16:54:18Z
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@futurebird I still can't get my head around the idea of using social media for news. If you want news, there are hundreds of newspapers, TV stations, and magazines you can read directly. Why involve the more or less random selection involved in a social media feed?
(DIR) Post #AoXh8qruy7uXiSqmMC by btanderson@infosec.exchange
2024-11-29T17:56:38Z
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@futurebird recent claims by certain platforms that they actually own the user accounts associated with a certain bankrupt slanderer certainly feel feudalistic in nature…
(DIR) Post #AoXlNfXnkr1WkplIoa by LGS@friendsofdesoto.social
2024-11-29T18:44:06Z
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@futurebird Yup. Just read an article about the ephemeral nature of the internet and how much information is lost daily. So if someone suppresses a bit of wisdom, it is easily lost unless it happen to enter a different echo chamber.
(DIR) Post #AoXmryrAcG1VIBq53Y by randomstroll@mastodon.social
2024-11-29T19:00:38Z
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@futurebird Some people are calling it “techno feudalism”
(DIR) Post #AoXn0si2qAiEpjoaTA by Noor@ni.hil.ist
2024-11-29T19:02:22Z
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@futurebird Thank you.Now that we have a word for it, maybe we can do something about it.
(DIR) Post #AoXt4O7t5bXyrfxSSm by emory@soc.kvet.ch
2024-11-29T20:10:09Z
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@futurebird see also 'technocracy' in the hardline rightwingnut americans circles is a term they've been throwing around for years as in technocrats determine what you see and hear and we're all living in their world.
(DIR) Post #AoXtYKtve2mJY8i21Q by culture_ovrlord@games.ngo
2024-11-29T20:15:40Z
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@futurebird Algorithms can be weaponized. Corporate-kings secure the loyalty of knight-engineers who craft, monitor, and improve those algorithms. Some ways to overcome these digital technologies: #criticalthinking#medialiteracy #digitalliteracy
(DIR) Post #AoXzwd5qG3N6e9FTlI by drahardja@sfba.social
2024-11-29T21:27:17Z
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@futurebird I think the parallels between technological gatekeepers and feudal lords has been drawn many times in recent years (Cory Doctorow wrote about it, as did Yanis Varoufakis). The danger is drawing too strong of a parallel between the two concepts, because the analogy breaks down pretty quickly IMO.I think one good way to frame this space is the “gatekeeper” concept that the EU has defined with its DMA. Information isn’t technically “owned” by the lords like land was way back then, because unlike land, information can be cheaply duplicated and distributed. Gatekeepers prevent this free flow and duplication of information by controlling who gets to choose what people get to see. Powerful platforms act less as lessors of property as much as they are censors and curators of experience.
(DIR) Post #AoY2TtqPCNti401Kym by jamesbritt@mastodon.social
2024-11-29T21:55:43Z
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@futurebird Forbes talked about digital feudalism back in 2016 but few people heeded it.https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2016/07/26/is-this-the-scary-world-our-tech-revolution-will-create/
(DIR) Post #AoY4VnOeLFssYP4OSe by ekongkaar@mastodon.world
2024-11-29T22:18:29Z
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@futurebird Love this term.
(DIR) Post #AoY7NY5Zfg6wcjuHKK by sabik@rants.au
2024-11-29T22:50:34Z
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@futurebird Some claim this has already happened, describing "potential algorithmic bias on platform X during the 2024 US election"https://eprints.qut.edu.au/253211/
(DIR) Post #AoYwx1wXlE0F0sMJPs by abuseofnotation@mathstodon.xyz
2024-11-30T08:28:26Z
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@futurebird @ehproque Yes, he has a whole book about it.
(DIR) Post #AoZ5ztmHTXtc9108GG by samueljohnson@mstdn.social
2024-11-30T10:09:50Z
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@futurebird You want another example? (The world isn't short of them I know).I bought my late mother a vastly expensive radio as it was the only one I could find with a remote control with buttons for a handful of stations. After her death I used it mainly via an app. This, and the remote, stopped working after a couple years... Until I agreed to a new privacy policy & new terms and conditions. I had no choice. They were coercive, exploitative and should be illegal. What are the chances? 0?
(DIR) Post #AoZI110nGPxCJu5X8K by mrundkvist@archaeo.social
2024-11-30T12:24:29Z
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@futurebird Knights = the nobility.
(DIR) Post #AoZP96vXr0IWf6RNPk by mmby@mastodon.social
2024-11-30T13:44:23Z
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@futurebird which is possible because the system converges to monopolypersonal loyalty of feudalism is replaced by brand loyaltylands are the markets and fortresses the walled gardens. the subsidiaries trying to claim monopoly in their respective domainsare the accelerationists the clergy?
(DIR) Post #AoZQfbzhyxwYEgRvpw by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-11-30T14:01:29Z
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@mmby When the universe of blogs was killed off by centralized social media that was basically the enclosure of the commons. I never realized how threatened some people must have felt by that impossible to control ecosystem of information. I underestimated how they would work to kill it and to keep it dead. I let myself believe the idea that “information wants to be free” Sure, Jan. But, there are people who want it controlled.
(DIR) Post #AoZRMS96TTbi8xGwE4 by llewelly@sauropods.win
2024-11-30T14:09:11Z
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@futurebird @mmbyblogs aren't totally dead; I still read several. (this is why I keep hoping, against all reason, that activityPub modules for blogging software will become normal and develop good user interfaces). But, yeah, the near-collapse of the blogging era was painful and a great loss. And watching so many science communicators flee to bluesky leaves with the "sadly, nothing has been learned" feeling, even though I'm actually sure how that will work out in the long run.
(DIR) Post #AoZS0uGbLBoYwU4L6u by jens@social.finkhaeuser.de
2024-11-30T14:16:30Z
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@futurebird I think it's a valid term, but it kind of skips a step.Capitalism is literally the landed gentry allowing the emergence of a new class: they gave some folk money to spend on making more money for them. This gave the impression that anyone could make anything out of themselves with enough hard work, and redirected the frustration of the peasants towards this new class.It's true that "the rich class" has expanded in size in this way, but it's still funded by those who ...
(DIR) Post #AoZVQxFn9pstb7npbs by fskornia@glammr.us
2024-11-30T14:54:51Z
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@futurebird @mmby Don't forget about Facebook's infamous push on "Pivot to Video" based on made up and faulty data that emphasized a content type that was harder to produce and host - relying on the tools and services provided by the big platforms.
(DIR) Post #AoZWJLEeD8YJc3CWye by mcmullin@musicians.today
2024-11-30T15:04:39Z
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@futurebird Many of us first tried the internet via AOL, Compuserve etc, which offered a kind of walled-garden experience, before those faded away and we explored the “world wide web.” Then I remember first hearing all the hype around “web 2.0” social media, Facebook et al., and thinking, wait, how is this different from going back to Compuserve? What’s so great and new about another walled garden?
(DIR) Post #AoZWjE4BUEqUuNeKzw by StefanEJones@dice.camp
2024-11-30T15:09:20Z
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@futurebird @mmby I miss web rings. That was a totally cool way to browse the web. It felt like teleporting between little salons or art exhibitions.
(DIR) Post #AoZWudJtw2VMPrRN9U by paninid@mastodon.world
2024-11-30T15:11:25Z
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@futurebird The techbroligarchs are neofeudalists who think of themselves as Ubermensch that own and control the #NetworkState.My lesson learned a couple years ago: “Don’t build your castle in other people’s kingdoms.”https://www.superversive.co/essays/rewilding-digital-castles-amp-kingdoms
(DIR) Post #AoZeeIYMB3Sf0bvKzY by billseitz@toolsforthought.social
2024-11-30T16:38:07Z
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@futurebird @mmby I don't think social media "killed" blogs, except by* being easier to post to* having a revenue model (which blog hosts and RSS services were finding a challenge.
(DIR) Post #AoZlknTMpcBkJwdUQq by andrewf@glasgow.social
2024-11-30T17:57:41Z
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@futurebird @mmby I honestly think that Social Media didn’t/doesn’t give a damn about there being uncontrolled information— Only that money people smelled an opportunity. If they could make money off the free and democratic sharing of information, they totally would!
(DIR) Post #AoaBisjYtgPWroxTMG by cass@dice.camp
2024-11-30T22:48:41Z
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@futurebird @mmby Are newsletters not blogs by a different name and aren't they extremely popular? Blogspot and WordPress are/were just as consolidated as Substack and the newsletter alternatives. RSS works fine with newsletters.
(DIR) Post #AoaFZ8JQWOlk6ULBUO by agreeable_landfall@mastodon.social
2024-11-30T23:31:45Z
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@futurebird There was an interview, decades ago, with Walter Cronkite ("The Most Trusted Man in America"), where he admitted using is position as "Editor-in-Chief" of the CBS Evening News to shift public opinion against the war in Vietnam. He did this primarily by selecting stories that were negative, but at least once aired a story that was false. By implication, sure, but false nonetheless.
(DIR) Post #AocNp4BIpuHFsGZLsm by mori_au@mastodon.social
2024-12-02T00:13:42Z
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@futurebird people who get their all their news on social media are digital hobos.
(DIR) Post #AoehxfiVYBwU0MOwCG by bakuninboys@aus.social
2024-12-03T03:08:46Z
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@futurebird apparently X and Threads both ratio "Bluesky".