From Manipulation to Authenticity: A Manifesto For A Better World
Unless there is a significant change in how people communicate and what they value this species will not survive. Probably. A lot of problems that get conflated with social media actually have to do with the neoliberal capitalistic structure. Hence, why it shouldn't surprise us why the yesterweb community was filled with unrealistic Marxist ideologies. The problems with this current capital structure is that it rewards fake manipulative consuming degenerate needy behavior and does not reward social behavior in terms of healthy relationships and discussions. Think about it, do you want to have a discussion or build a relationship with someone who is fake, manipulative, and overall degenerate? No. We want better relationships. We want better discussions. I am not advocating for a more socialist society, I am advocating for a less fake degenerate one. Republicans and Democrats both agree that the wealth distribution is insanely unfair despite supporting bills that keep the system as corrupt as it is. This all has to do this redistributing and restructuring the entire American society which is extremely controversial as you have many cultures and ideas for how to do it despite the fact that they all have the general goal of minimizing social issues. As AI gets more powerful, more essays and more discussions need to be had on this. If we don't want a complete dystopia we need powerful people to make the right decisions for the whole of human society. In the turn of the past century, we just narrowly avoided everyone being burned alive because the people in power made the right decisions. Will they make the right decisions this time around? Or will their self-interests and ego's destroy us completely?
Before social media, our social structures did not suffer as badly. People mostly formed connections through real life social circles. And from those healthy social circles you could assess whether someone was a high quality individual based on your time and conversations with them. Even back in the early 2000s, you could just go up to students in school and just talk to them. Or at least, it was much more socially acceptable to do that.
However, as the turn of the century our entire social structure has changed. It has gone from in person discussions to online discussions. From in person relationships to online relationships. And the entire corporate structure has gone online too. No more can we easily separate these personas, masks, and personalities. They all somehow feel glued together. And so the fake needy insecure behavior that makes business thrive and relationships fail are not so easily separated anymore. Social Groups are no longer formed in real life but rather online on social networks where discussions are had through short vague posts or text group chats which limit discourse, readability, and interpretation creating a culture of not only more socially unwell relationships but politically as well. We need to have better discussions in our political system. We need to have better discussions in our social relationships.
Many people complain that social media creates fake needy people. When we talk about the issue of forming strong relationships it comes from strong social circles. It comes from talking to people to a non-needy genuine vulnerable authentic way. But that kind of behavior doesn't make businesses more money. It's one of those things that doesn't seem sexy, it feels uncomfortable, but long term wise it's one of the most fundamental attractive things that hold relationships together.
I say this to you - does our culture have to be this way? Do we have to have a society this toxic and fake? This manipulative and soulless? What about real genuine connections? Why are we encouraged to form them on manipulative applications? Why are our institutions encouraging us to do this to ourselves?
Corporate narratives are of course spun to make the established order look good, regardless of what they have done or whomever it may be. In a manipulative culture with manipulative people fake lying cheaters are rewarded, and honest genuine failures are humiliated. All institutions are corrupt whether that be the government, science, or even educated universities headed on the back of corporatism. Every day corporations refuse to admit there is any issue with these newly created social structures in order to make more profit is a day when society gets worse and democracy slowly dies. If it in fact, ever existed at all.
Before I get too cynical lets remind people that the main function of corporations is to manipulate you as much as possible to make as much money off you as possible. Well that's a little crude way of putting it, but hey if that manipulation makes society better its works but if it doesn't, it doesn't. You're basically treated as paying consumers in a monolithic oligarchy. Anything that doesn't benefit the elites is thrown under the bus even if it benefits the natural social order. If it hurts the natural social order, but makes them money then its sold as manipulative propaganda. Questioning the propaganda, is of course, looked down upon - socially and politically. When you're dealing with power structures you better know who has the power before you even dare question what they impose upon you.
But just as the obesity rates have skyrocketed in this country, as millions of Americans started getting more physically disgusting and repulsive to look at, the fast food chains for the first time were questioned. More awareness to physical health was taken to account. The long-established idea of eating at a fast food place every day was now shunned. The culture had changed. The ideology was slowly dying. The same was true with cigarettes and various other forms of negative consumption.
This seems to go in cycles.
What about social media? Right now the anxiety, suicide, self harm, and depression rates are increasing among my generation at an alarming rate. I even know teenagers in my age group who have killed themselves because they didn't have the same support system I had and when the system failed them they couldn't take it anymore. Was this due to social media? Maybe. Will the same culture change happen with social media as with fast food and cigarettes? Maybe.
Some People went from building an online social identity to questioning the ethics of the consequences of giving all your data and thoughts to a social network. Will we instead be looking at how fake, manipulative, degenerate and needy we are all? Maybe slowly the established idea of having an online social presence on social networks will be shunned instead of celebrated. Slowly through the culture as bots take over, as the machines learn our data, as our politics increasingly divide us, as e-celebs scam the system, as corporations use our identities against us - we may soon be start establishing a moral ethic code to socializing correctly. Maybe. Maybe it still needs more time. Maybe we need more pain and more consequences of we finally realize.
Of course things didn't start out this way. When Facebook was first created it was celebrated as millions of university students created cool online personas. When Google came along it was celebrated and used as the primary search engine to browse the internet. Instagram was celebrated for being a cool place to share photos and express yourself with friends. TikTok was celebrated for being a cool place to share short videos. Corporations didn't come out and say Facebook, Google, and Instagram and spyware and manipulative and are terrible for forming genuine social relationships. Corporations didn't come out and tell us that TikTok was Chinese spyware, and it sends all your data to the CCP. Not one of them did that, because it made them tons of money to lie, downplay and manipulate our entire generation.
Well actually that's just unchecked capitalism. It happens in many other industries too. But people can only be lied and bullshitted to for so long. The consequences of building an entire generation of a centralized platform and forcing them to use that for everything were starting to be felt.
Slowly and surely the technology behind decentralization started gaining popularity. There was already a movement of people fed up with our online social structures who went on to make personal websites and personal blogs. But most people are not going to do that because its impracticable and too hard. Reason being,
- It's hard to get status
- It's hard to get money
- It's hard to get friends
Ah yes, the three normie killers. But maybe soon some of that will change. Maybe it won't. There's a lot more money to push people into Social Media Feeds instead of RSS Feeds, just like there is a lot more money to push people into eating disgusting food instead of working out. But if you were intelligent, if you actually knew the harms and benefits - would you change?
When Elon bought twitter he split the internet. The old web was the wild west. Barley anyone understood it, and it was slow and clunky as crap, but it had originality. It felt more real. But the corporate incentives came. They turned it into a social status, addicting, over-sexualizing, egocentric, spyware, censoring, copycat, corporate speak, humiliating, fake, updoots, superficial, insecure, needy, petty, passive-aggressive, narcissistic, gaslighting high school group, cult, mob, monetizing, lobbying, hellfuckery. Ok maybe some of that is just humans being humans, but humans can be a lot better than this. One of the essentials apps to this centralized corporate place was twitter. Destroying it meant destroying one of the essential places to the normies. Coupled this with narrow AI tools that are able to generate any image, text, video, audio, within the click of a second and well, decentralization might just be the next course of action.
Maybe the cognitive dissonance has already started. Organizations will not of course self internalize this. Just like the fast food places or the cigarette companies. Big Tech will just hire lobbyists to fight whatever problem they caused. Hiring lobbying firms screaming whatever bullshit they want screamed. They won't look upon themselves and think how they are harming the natural social order. This is merely how they function.
Of course centralization isn't harmful just like how junk food isn't harmful. But if you eat that junk food every day. If you use it as a source of protein a source of being healthy, if you don't work out, and if you don't take care of yourself then it's going to be very hard to start working out again. Just like if you don't have good in real life social circles, and you practice crappy forms of criticism being a non-vulnerable fake needy manipulative person well then it's going to be very hard to start being vulnerable and genuine.
So I ask you what do we want? Apps for manipulation that are adopted on wide scale that serve corporate incentives? Do we really want to use those same apps for relationships, discussions, and even talking about ourselves? But what about apps for discussion incentives? What about apps for relationship incentives? What about places to talk about ourselves without the constant need for external validation or manipulation?
All these places can technically exist. They are just not widely adopted by the normies. One could argue that the more popular a place becomes, the more it loses its originality. An ideology takes over, whether that be political, sexual, or financial.
If we want a more educated society then we need places that are built for discussions used at a wide scale. If we want better relationships then we need places built for relationships at a wide scale. If we want a better educated society then we need to talk about ourselves in a non-needy authentic genuine and honest way.
Alternatively we could just form them in real life, but it seems like most people are on the web. Even in you're in school or university the culture acts like its pretty much essential to have a social network persona. Kids don't even want to talk to you or be associated with you because you don't have Instagram or Snapchat or whatever. You will be excluded from an entire social groups and organizations. I guess you don't fit with whatever the hell their culture is.
And even if you don't use those apps businesses and organizations will force a Linkedin account down your throat. You'll be told that you can use it for networking or for putting your experience on there when instead you could just create a simple professional website. Some Companies will not even look your resume without a LinkedIn account. They act like its some essential requirement to have social media account.
For those of you who think the personal web will somehow fix our social issues - it won't. Most People are not going to build a personal website. Most people are not going to write long blog essays on whatever issue they want solved. Most people are not going to have deep nuanced discussions on online forums. Although, it would be nice, it's not going to happen.
The only way you're going to change the social media landscape is by building better apps for the phone. Over 90% of social media users browse it on their phone. Reason being, the app is simple, it's easy to consume, and it's easy to contribute. Notice how I said change not fix - even if we have mobile apps for public discourse, and for writing personal blog essays - why on earth would people want to do that on their phone?
I mean if you ask people, the majority of people on this earth want to meaningfully contribute to at least something before they die. Whether that be a social issue, a project, or just something of value. I think just nudging people a little to have a public discussion or an online blog essay on something they are passionate about, instead of the typical drama crap you see on social media would go a long way.
The Fediverse, for all intents and purposes, could still have all the social problems that social media contains, just without all that corporate spyware manipulative crap. Even if you manage to create a mobile landscape for the Fediverse, unless there is something new here you're not going to stop humans from acting like, well humans.
Like, I really do like having the old web and the new web separated. The old web does not need to be on mobile apps. Diverse smaller communities are good. If they somehow grow due to the Fediverse, even better. But having one centralized app with a million rules on how to think and how to act doesn't work. Humans vary from culture to culture - we can't be too strict on rules.
The only way you're going to solve deep social issues is by restructuring our entire capitalist society to reward social incentives. Given we're not doing that at the moment (well you know, money) - what are we doing as a temporary band-aid to do to solve these issues?
Solutions
1. Classify Apps
Number one is to classify apps just like how we classify food. We classify food by their nutrition, by sugar, by fat. Classify an app by their intended purpose, type, and properties and then use it by its intended purpose. Granted these things aren't so black and white, but it would go a long way if corporations and organizations would just classify an app for what it's actually designed for.
Purpose: So what is its main purpose, or what is it designed for? What is designed to be manipulative and make money or was it designed to foster deep discussions?
Types: What type is it? Is it an anonymous image board? An online forum? A Mobile App? What type of Mobile App? Messaging? Media Sharing? Both?
Properties: What are the application's properties? Is it spyware for the CCP or NSA? Is it open source? What are they doing with the data you give them? What kind of community does it contain?
Now everything works differently for everyone. If you can make deep genuine non-manipulative friendships on these apps then good for you. You will probably classify it differently then me. But for me, from what I've seen and personally experience - this is how I classify them.
2. Educate People
Use RSS Feeds On Your Desktop/Laptop Instead Of Social Media Feeds On Your Phone
Consume RSS Feeds NOT Social Media Feeds and make sure to only consume media on your desktop/laptop NOT on your phone. And when you do use your laptop/desktop - only use it on a desk or a specified study/work area. This makes it, so you're not over reliant on them.
Use your phone only for calling, texting, taking photos, or listening to music. Use your tablet only for drawing/note-taking. Again, I would NOT use ANY mobile device for consuming social media feeds. Also don't be reliant on your phone for your entire personality or relationships. If you take away your phone could you still maintain relationships? It's kind of shit-test to see if you have a fake low quality personality.
The benefits of doing this are quite substantial and have very promising research results in behaviorism. I don't think people have all these mental illnesses - I just think they just have an unhealthy addiction to mobile devices that can cause deep psychological harm when it's used in ways it's not designed for.
Use Apps in Ways They Are Designed For
This goes with the previous one, we can educate people to use apps for what they are actually designed for.
WE MUST USE TOOLS IN THE WAYS THEY ARE DESIGNED FOR. When we don't, we are very much likely harming society and harming ourselves. You wouldn't have an important discussion at a drunk party. In real life, we all have different mentalities for each: business (fun), discussions, relationships, and ourselves. You would not go with the same mentality for each of them.
If an application was geared towards creating fake, manipulative, needy people because it made them more money - well fake manipulative needy people are terrible for relationships. They are even more terrible for discussions. But they are great for Business. And I am not trying to take away the subjective value that application may offer just like a drunk party a theme park or a football game. I can have fun on it and see the subjective value it offers me and other people without carrying that same mentality or behavior in other areas of my life.
Being a little manipulative can add subjective value to people's lives and relationships. Frankly, honestly it really all comes down to the intentions. But you've got to always be careful with this.
Yes, business geared applications are manipulative, but it's just in the way you use it. Use apps in the way they are designed for. If an application is designed for discussions then use it for discussions. If an application is designed for relationships then use it for relationships. If we use applications in ways they are not designed to be used then we suffer.
Educate People On How And Where To Actually Have Public Discourse
People have been trained by this culture to get subjective value and meaning through being young and stupid instead of solving real problems. And so because they were never told or trained on how to actually solve problems they start finding coping mechanisms. One of these coping mechanisms is to vent and bully others. The problem is nothing gets solved by just venting and bullying. People try to throw the "activism" word around to try to take away from what they're really doing - complaining. The idea that you "win" not by solving any problems, but by having more likes and humiliating the other person is rather disgusting. We should instead educate people how and where to have proper arguments and discussions online.
Encourage Blogs
We can encourage people to write blog essays instead of just screaming short manipulative propaganda phrases on a social network designed to manipulate you. The great thing about blogging, is it forces you to think about things in a little more nuanced matter. It forces you to consider more perspectives that you never thought of before. And you may discover that what you thought you were mad at wasn't actually what you were actually mad at. It's honestly excellent therapy and saved me from the trap of thinking I had to solve every problem in the world.
So the next time you ever start entering the little dark place where you need to vent about everything - before emotionally vomiting all over the place - take a deep breath and just start writing. And then write some more - and some more. And I promise you that by doing this consistently you will look at the world a little differently than what you first imagined it to be.
Encourage Participation On Online Healthy Forums
We can encourage people to take their blog essays, and post it on LessWrong, Effective Altruism, TheMotte, Lemmy, Agora Road, or various other forums. If it is a healthy forum there will be people with a healthy diverse set of opinions and beliefs. This will force you to constantly assess your own beliefs and value system. A good quality community will allow good quality discussions to happen where everyone can learn from everyone else.
Encourage Participation On Podcasts
We can encourage to people to have back and forth healthy arguments on podcasts. If two powerful people have beef or differ in views we can just have a long podcast between them. This will allow us to see how their views differ and if they truly understand each other's views. It also gets the audience to see both sides of the argument. If you want to talk to someone who might differ on your views, or you just want to explain an idea to someone never thought of before - you can go on podcast and just explain it. And millions of people can watch the podcast and give their take on forums where they will go back and forth. This overall will raise the intelligence and understanding of human beings.
Discourage Virtue Signaling
“In the age of social media, it’s easy to confuse signaling for action. Don’t just share; show up.” - Adam Grant
Virtue signaling is hypocritical.
All virtue signaling is performative activism. They're doing it purely to make themselves look good, and not for the purpose of doing something good or making things better. They do not care about you or the problem or anything besides themselves. It's whatever makes them look good. It is not authentic, genuine, or honest. They're pretending to care about social issues because all they're really after is attention and validation on social media. That's what actually really matters. That's the actual "important part." If they don't get their attention or validation, then no, it actually doesn't matter.
If you have a friend that does that crap encourage them to talk about it through public discourse places instead. There are more effective ways to handle social issues than posting garbage on social media. I think, much better is to write essays, participate with healthy diverse conversations and discussions, work on projects/events. We should encourage that behavior instead.
Discourage Propaganda
"That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means because it doesn't mean anything." - Noam Chomsky
Propaganda is basically a message that everyone is for and nobody knows what is really means. The problem is we can't solve problems if we don't really know what it means. Because we don't really know what it means we can also pinpoint groups and entire people and cultures against each other. Creating an entire mess of misunderstanding and confusion. Plus it's easier to control and manipulate people this way, hence the term Propaganda.
There can be good propaganda and bad propaganda depending on your perspective. If propaganda makes society and people better, then well ok - but I feel like instead we should drop the whole propaganda message entirely.
Instead of sharing some crappy image or crappy text post practicing destructive criticism on Social Media which basically says "Fuck You" or "I am right you are wrong" or (Insert Some Propaganda slogan), instead of catchy propaganda messages we should instead aim for Direct Objective Goals that are reachable.
Then we simply encourage people and groups to reach the objective goals that make society and people better. And again we can make problems even easier to deal with if we write essays, talk and converse, and continue to push for objective reachable goals instead of propaganda slogans.
Discourage Discourage Echo Chambers
“Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.” - Walter Lippmann
ECHO CHAMBERS ... DISCOURAGE ... CRITICAL THINKING
Whether that be echo chambers with a left ideology, right ideology, sexual ideology, corporate ideology, whatever. I don't care what your ideology, identity, or beliefs are - the fact of the matter is there is behavior the breaks public discourse and behavior that encourages public discourse.
There is benefit to having groups, yes, but when groups only think for themselves and wall themselves off they miss important truths that need to be discussed. We should discourage groups from walling themselves off and thinking only for themselves. Instead, we should encourage a more open internet where groups can discuss various things by and between each other. Whether this is in the corporate world or political world we should all identify our biases and have all groups and individuals within those groups speak to each other in a mature honest way.
Educate People How To And Where To Actually Form Relationships
“Technology has solved old economic problems by giving us new psychological problems. The internet has not just open-sourced information, it has also open-sourced insecurity, self-doubt, and shame.” - Mark Manson
My generation is probably the most socially isolated in history. Lots of people don't know how to form healthy relationships online or in real life. Relationship advice given to people in the modern day age is pretty awful and dating apps suck. What this all leads to is Incels, Femcels, Shooting, Rape, Suicide, Cheating, Ghosting, Drugs, Assaults, Abuse, and Overall Degeneracy.
We should instead educate people how and where to form, build, and resolve relationships not just online, but also in real life. We should create more ways to do that.
Encourage Meetups, Friendship, Calling, Secure And Talking Apps (Revolt) (Matrix) (Signal) (Meetup)
Using a manipulative application for relationships causes a lot of social problems. It makes the sexes trust each other less - each trying to figure out how each other is trying to manipulate them for sex or attention or status or whatever bullshit. Instead, encourage forming relationships through other apps which are not so manipulative. Places like Revolt Channels, IRC, or general Meet Ups where you are actually doing an activity you love and sharing ideas you love would go a long way.
Having entire relationships built on the need of an online social identity where you are judged by likes and follower counts creates a lot of unnecessary suffering.
Having relationships built on similar values, hobbies, and life situation makes them a lot more healthy; Where you both are ok with being genuine and vulnerable around each other. Relationships like that are much more emotionally fulfilling.
Non-secure, propriety, manipulative messaging apps cause a lot of social problems. Instead, encourage people to message each other on secure messages like Signal. Also discourage having conversations through text messages as text to text conversations limit understanding, interpretation, or readability. Discourage people trying to screenshot your texts or take things you said out of context through text messages. That behavior also leads to a lot of unnecessary suffering.
Encourage Real Life Healthy Friend Groups And Clubs
Have clubs and groups where you actually do things that you love. This works because when you love the hobby you're doing with someone you are generally less judgmental towards them and vice versa. This makes it easier to share your vulnerabilities and values and build healthy friend groups. Combine this with projects, and you get a much more fulfilling dynamic on both sides. This also avoids people falling into the trap of just relating over consumerism.
Encourage Honesty, Genuineness, Vulnerability, And Intelligence
These are fundamentally attractive and are what strengthen relationships overall.
Understanding what is harming and helping society is being Intelligent. Being Intelligent is being Honest. Being Honest is being Vulnerable. And being Vulnerable is being Genuine. All such things eventually lead to true confidence and non-neediness, which lead to an overall better life experience.
So share your beliefs, desires, feelings, projects, and experiences. Continue making an effort to be vulnerable and go for what you actually believe in.
Discourage Cyberbullying, Fakeness, Manipulation, And Egocentrism
These are fundamentally unattractive and destroy relationships overall.
Not knowing what is harming and helping society is being Fake. Being Fake leads to Egocentrism. Egocentrism leads to Manipulation. And Manipulation leads to Cyberbullying. All such things eventually lead to narcissism and neediness, which make for a terrible life experience.
Behavior like this should be discouraged. This is what destroys friendships, ruins communities, and ruins relationships. It's sad we don't encourage people to assess their value system more.
So know what is harming and helping society. Know what your values are. Don't be afraid to change your values. I think these behaviors happen because people do not know what their values are, or they don't work on their values, so they naturally fall into behavior that destroys relationships and themselves.
Discourage Toxic Online Group Chats & Communities
Toxic Group Chats make it harder to connect with people. It forces people to conform to an ideology rather than have nuanced discussions about a topic. They feel fake, forced, and controlling. Things like name-calling, cyberbullying, doxing, harassment, gaslighting, and other various psychological traps in order to frame people should be discouraged. If you don't like someone then just tell them to politely leave or break off the relationship.
Educate People On How And Where To Talk About their self
*The Dolly Parton Meme shows how you can manipulate people's perception of you on various social networks...
The Problem with talking about yourself on a social network is that it's all fake and well, of course it is. Of course people are going to hide everything that is bad or unattractive about themselves. We will all lie indirectly. We're all our going to show a fake version of ourselves to get people to like us, or not think badly of us. However, this is all bullshit. And we know it. Social networks are designed to encourage a fake version of yourself heavily reliant of external validation. The ultimate irony is trying to appear as attractive as possible is needy and neediness is unattractive. It makes you super dependent on people and raises the anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicide rates. Not fun.
Encourage Personal Websites
We should instead educate people on how and where to build and talk about themselves in an honest authentic, vulnerable genuine way without the need of external validation. We should encourage strong, independent, non-needy people. Personal Websites allow for this kind of nuance. Building websites forces you to be heavily internally validated rather than heavily externally validated. If we want everyone to have an online persona, then we should encourage people to write websites and blogs. Website allows people to truly express themselves without the need of a corporate overlord seeing or limiting what they do. There is true freedom in this.
Encourage Individual Projects
If people could do what they truly enjoy what would they do? For me, it would be working on personal projects that make society and people better. Instead of encouraging a consumer society we should encourage a producer society. But not just producing a consumer experience. Producing things that will make society better. We should encourage people that have projects, ideas, and inventions to pursue them. We should encourage people to work on what they truly want in their heart.
Being "cool" isn't making money, having tons of friends, doing drugs, having sex, or producing fake garbage on social media. Being cool or rather being valuable is working on projects that you believe will make society and people better. It's making a contribution to humanity and society. It's making people's lives better. It's being vulnerable, honest, and staying true to what you believe in. Well at least that is what I believe is most attractive.
Encourage Publicly Funded Projects
Always encourage public funded projects away from corporate entities. Corporate entities, time and time again have shown us that they will monopolize services and use those services as a way to manipulate us through money by actively making the service worse. Twitter, Reddit, Unity, Blizzard, Chrome, Discord, YouTube, Microsoft, Zoom, Epic, The Entire Movie Industry, The Entire Streaming Industry. The list goes on and on and on. For more information, read Choke Point Capitalism.
The world wide web was an open source project. Tim Berners-Lee did not sell it - he gave it away for free. It was not owned by a corporation and because of that anyone could use it. This allowed for more experimentation, creation, and advancement the world has ever seen.
Publicly funded projects like the Fediverse hope to expand the freedom that websites allow by creating free and open social media. They're Rewriting our own social networks seeing if we can make them better. This can allow for more people to benefit in ways they wouldn't benefit from a corporate controlled social network.
And publicly funded projects can be done really well. Just look at PBS Frontline, Wikipedia, or RSS Feeds for example. We should encourage more publicly funded projects away from corporate interests, for the benefit of humankind.
Discourage Personal Toxic Microblogs
Short vague text posts that do nothing but hurt the overall social order should be discouraged and ignored. I feel like microblogs in general do not really add anything to the social sphere expect emotional vomit and verbal diarrhea. Maybe except memes, but then again we should not be using them as places for public discourse.
If you see your friend microblogging crap try to steer them in a different direction, by encouraging them to write a blog essay or participating in a healthy forum instead.
Discourage Celebrity Worship, "Influencers", Trolls, Attention Seekers, and Narcissism
There is a problem with worshiping people who don't make society or people better. We should not really worship anyone. I support the idea of admiring people, but worshiping is going a little to far. It's the reason why you have multi-millionaire YouTubers/Streamers just playing video games all day or e-celebrity "influencers" posting garbage on social media while everyone else fights for scraps. I think some of this comes from neediness and wanting to feel valuable or wanted by someone.
A creator/audience relationship can actually be really beneficial if its maintained well and isn't all manipulation where both the viewer and the creator learn from each other. We should strive for that instead.
As for trolls, there should be rules and moderators on applications specifically designed for public discourse. If there isn't, or it isn't managed well, then we risk having a harmful ideology take over. Again this is a tight rope we must walk.
3. Build Better Apps
This is what makes engineers, engineers. The idea that you can make things better for people and society is deeply attractive. However, we must understand that this is much more of a psychological problem rather than a technological problem. Eating healthier food doesn't make people necessarily more healthy. There needs to be an entire behavioral change with the technological change.
Build Separate Tools & Applications That Are Designed For Public Discourse
We should build more applications to have public discourse like Effective Altruism, Arbital, Less Wrong, Agora Road, The Motte, Tildes, and Lemmy.
Build Separate Tools & Applications That Are Designed For Relationships
We should build more applications to have relationships like Signal, Matrix, Revolt Chat, and Meetups.
Build Separate Tools & Applications That Are Designed For Ourselves
We should build more applications for Personal Websites, Blogs, and Video Essays.
Build an Interface That Combines The Psychological And Technological Benefits of Centralization & Decentralization
Rather than building an entire app from scratch, the Fediverse is hopefully going to make this process easier. Different instances can insert whatever rules work for them or their culture. The choice will be up to the people running them (kind of like subreddits, discord channels, etc.). And of course you will have different Fediverse apps for microblogging, media sharing, discussions, messaging, and talking about ourselves.
The people that are going to build the successful applications are not going to be the genius tech nerds, the corporate businesses, or the publicy funded entities. The people who are going to build the successful applications are going to be the people who know what their consumers and users actually want.
And so, if we want the best experience possible - if we want the best future possible - if we truly want people to benefit society and themselves then we damn better make sure we use, build, and share applications that will allow us to do that.