1998. Bang. We needed to stop right effing there!

First — allow me to say how impressed I am by your keen thinking in all of your responses. I feel like my own engagement with the Fediverse, and Lemmy, is really casual compared with yours. I’ll be honest: I’m a tourist.

And like a tourist, I have always tried to focus on what’s good and ignore what’s bad, keeping myself safe from what’s dangerous. I don’t know anything about hexbear despite that I may have seen the word before.

The assignment has been a real eye opener.

I simply presumed my students would be curious. Then interested. Then engaged.

I predicted wrong. They felt irritated in the main and never inspired. More will be revealed still but I fear that this round might end in a wash.

They do not find the primitive charming as I do. And they do not relish the brief freedom from being surveilled by corporations. And they do not thrill to the idea of participating in genuine acts of resistance against the totalitarian dictatorship of corporate hegemony.

I’m left but nowhere near “red.”

I like the capitalism of the renaissance for example — yes… things were awful, but there was motivation to be innovative and to work hard.

So… my disdain for universal surveillance is so thorough that I have an air gapped old Mac that I use to manage about a terabyte of data on my terabyte iPod classic. A Chinese refurb that was literally out of the box like new! In fact I think it is new — just a great copy— and I know for a fact that click wheel is not original. So I have worried there is some stealth blue tooth there or something but I doubt it.

Just saying that by way of articulating why I really want the Fediverse to become a thorn in the foot of the lion. Then I want it to be a land mine.

That’s probably the toxic stuff at hexbear? But seriously, I’d like to see the world taken back to tech level 1998. Keep Wikipedia and pretty much toss the rest. I’d like to see the Lemmyverse as is though — but with millions of users mindful of resources — like that video streaming article you sent — they were moving to spread the burden.

But honestly what I see corporate social media doing is using humans like the battery people in the Matrix — exploiting them in vats while giving them unreal hallucinations and zero truth.

Update on the class project. I asked students to report for week 7 about their adventures in the Fediverse.

Out of 23 students, not one genuinely grocks, as it were, the why.

Oh, they can give lip-service to the tropes we’ve been exploring in the SF class— privacy, autonomy, freedom, ethical uses of technology etc but none of them have become inspired, or even curious by these alternative platforms.

I believe it was you who wanted me about this attempt. Perhaps you were right. Not because they’d encounter vile things, which they do but do not blame me for, but because … I have dragged them out of the cave too fast? It’s too jarring for them? Too cumbersome. Requires too much.

The simplest features you and I take for granted in dealing with the mechanics of a Federated platform are simply too challenging and disheartening for these college students.

It’s like the corporations won in a single generation — as they anticipated.

Had I been truly bold, I would have included in the assignment guidelines that they use the platforms themselves to execute their “creative projects” with the Fediverse — this way you’d be able to see what was done “live.” As it is, I used a digital format for their work they are all familiar with… they’ll be presenting live presentations with google slides…

My guidelines are general enough that the hideous things some folks have run into cannot come back to bite me, but as you predicted, some have run into genuinely nauseating material. I’ve just smiled and said, “I hope you clicked away.”

I believe the best response I’ve received after some adventuring in the Fediverse one student came back hooting about how much she has dreamed of “Internet one point oh.” This is what she calls the Fediverse — and she’s not wrong. Zero corporate Shenanigans.

Sorry for the two month delay in reply to your exceptional wisdom. I kept this message “unread” believing that I might own another such thorough reply. Then the term started and it’s all a blur.

I will share that I DID create an assignment on the FEDIVERSE. Very very general with major caveats about their free will and content they will encounter if they are not careful.

Best best response when I dropped the guidelines was a student who clapped her hands in glee and said, “OMG! We can go back to Internet 1.0!” — this is a 19 year old and she was being sincere. I asked her to clarify he thinking for the class and she said, “There was a time before corporations owned the internet when it was just people.” Oh… it was lovely!!

I won’t hear about this experiment for a few more weeks.

But I am hopeful.

I popped off of mobile to reply to this but I do not believe that even on a keyboard I will be able to express my gratitude for your thoroughness, reason, and wisdom here.

Yes – turns out I have a pretty sweet gig and I want to keep it.

Your points reminded me that before Reddit imploded, I had an assignment that I agonized over for many of your excellent points here. The previous president of our school applauded me for teaching A Clockwork Orange. Academic Freedom and all that. But we have a new president and I just don’t want to risk it. In fact, my reddit assignment was tied specifically to: r/TIL. That was it. I had huge warnings about traveling beyond that sub.

As I read your contribution here, I was stunned that I had just “gone native.” I personally just avoid the ugly on Lemmy and do not even notice it or react to it.

The short version here is this: thanks for your kind and erudite wake up call. WTF was I thinking? I did one term use Lemmy in an assignment where I created kind of a private group called: our class or something like that. Ostensibly this was just where we could reach out to one another to discuss class topics… but the shadow agenda was moving people off corporations and onto the Fediverse. It’s so frustrating that they do not care about privacy or anonymity. Oh – when I had them all try to create accounts in class, we ran into an IP blocker likely created to stop briganding or something.

Anyway – I’ll keep thinking about this – maybe find a more gradual way to introduce elements of the fediverse… like TIL videos or something to begin.