Post B17CU1hH3YiynVeAgS by dhry@mastodon.social
 (DIR) More posts by dhry@mastodon.social
 (DIR) Post #B17CU0ekvR7FZPSe7U by argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org
       2025-12-10T18:32:47Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       I was bullied heavily in school. From an age of about 12, the Internet was my only source of social exposure. Without it, I would have had no friends and no one to talk to except schoolchildren who hated me. Pretty good chance I'd have ended up dead or worse.Folks these days are yelling about how chat harms kids, but I couldn't disagree more. When I was a kid, chat saved my life.
       
 (DIR) Post #B17CU1hH3YiynVeAgS by dhry@mastodon.social
       2025-12-10T18:59:23Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @argv_minus_one Wish I had the internet at that age. I learned how to fight instead.
       
 (DIR) Post #B17CU2kr7jBS4uKXuC by argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org
       2025-12-10T19:07:02Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @dhry Well, I suppose that might've worked too.One of the times I was physically attacked at school, I gave the attacker a bloody nose. Wasn't particularly trying to hurt him, just defend myself, but that's where my hand ended up.The day after, I got gestures of respect from a bunch of other kids. Only time anybody ever respected me. It was surreal.But it wouldn't work today. From what I hear, you now get instantly expelled if you hit anybody or if anybody hits you.
       
 (DIR) Post #B17eFfUvap4qbuoWwa by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
       2025-12-11T00:39:05Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @argv_minus_one It's a complex problem, but I fear that, for many of the people involved in this debate (if that's the word), the "harm" they're worried about is making it harder for them to control the young people they see as, effectively, their property.
       
 (DIR) Post #B18JxbDOyP9MBrgOjQ by Qybat@batchats.net
       2025-12-11T08:16:25Z
       
       1 likes, 1 repeats
       
       @argv_minus_one I had much the same experience, but the internet now is not as it was then. There's a reason for the popular nostalgia for the old days online. You did not have to contend so much with algorithms engineered to manipulate users into profitable rage, guiding them to ever more extreme fringes to keep them in the app.
       
 (DIR) Post #B18L1vY9PZ1eMz11xg by m0xEE@nosh0b10.m0xee.net
       2025-12-11T08:38:01Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @Qybat@batchats.net @argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.orgThat's the thing, unlike the past days there's very little genuine communication on the Internet — everything got reduced to primitive things to keep people "engaged" at all cost, the effect of this even on people who were teenagers before the Web existed is terrifying to be honest.Of course the real issue isn't social media and Internet themselves, but corporations that built their business on this, I don't even want to call them "big tech" — I find the term wrong, they don't sell technology to you, they sell something else. But of course, for obvious reasons, few want to address the issue under this light. These corporations have been given free reign for too long on the premise that they keep innovating, I have questions about what exactly they innovate in, but that is beside the point. Apparently some even take pride in creating these monsters: look what US has — no one else has such a "tech sector", and the proposed solution is to build local monstrosities of the same nature 🤦