Hub "The Internet Is Not A Person"
"The Internet" is not a person. "Society" is also not a person. The following is a hub of posts trying to express this thought.
As I said in my post The Way We Use LLMs Makes All The Difference:
For the societal viewpoint, on the other hand, it's important to keep in mind that society is not a person, and it doesn't make decisions. It doesn't have intentions, and you can't actually interact with it directly. So making demands on society doesn't make a lot of sense. It may make some sense to demand change from politicians, but politicians are not society.
The Internet is also not a society. The internet is a wilderness.
The Web and its visitors are not really a society or a nation state (or a union of such things) and therefore do not govern themselves. We are citizens of the web only in a very metaphorical way. The policies are enacted by governmental bodies like the EU. This makes me think that in order to change the web you need to change the society you're living in. Which means that a "3,5% rule" - if it exists - for the web would just be the "3,5% rule" for non digital societies.
As nobody owes you being okay with just letting you try out an opinion you actually don't hold on them, nobody owes you not being criticized for what you put out in the public. In the best case you're part of a community that will protect you and enforces a certain code of conduct and hopefully has values you can agree with, but the greater web doesn't work like that because it's basically social wilderness. That means the further your reach the more it is likely that you will encounter pushback.
So, I guess, what I'm saying is that a forest is not designed but maintained by its inhabitants. And this maintenance is also not done on the whole thing at once by only well meaning, well educated and wise deers and squirrels (people and institutions). The internet is a wilderness. And as such it will always include predators: skilled and unskilled ones, big ones and small ones. Some we recognize as part of the forest, others we think of as "meta predators". It is therefore also not a controlled or a flawless place where you can just be and do, guaranteed free from harm. This is exactly a thing that is more possible in smaller, more constrained places.
The social internet doesn't "simply exist" for us to just inhabit, true. It is made, yes. By us. Partly yes. But it being made doesn't mean that it doesn't exhibit the qualities of complex social systems.
The internet as a whole is not to be tamed. But maybe communities situated within this wilderness could become a society (by giving themselves rules and enforcing them).
With an eye for a more "ecologist" web, that is with an eye for dependencies and conditions that make up diversity. I think this is a great framing for the humane web, because the categories used to frame this manifesto make clear what is needed for society of the web to make it in the wilderness that is the internet[…]
Category Error Examples
This mastodon post by (the otherwise very much respected) JA Westenberg is an example of ascribing personhood to the internet:
The Internet: 'We need less performative activism'
someone does quiet, effective charity work
The Internet: 'Why isn't anyone talking about this issue?'
someone talks about the issue
The Internet: 'Ugh, performative'"
The insinuation of the internet yelling - all of it, as yelled from a single mouth - "Why isn't anyone talking about this issue?" is a great example of what the internet can't do.
But I am also reminded of the latter part of this post by Mekka Okereke[1] as well:
Making a cheap car is not hard. Just remove stuff.🤷🏿♂️
Making a safe car is not hard. Making a convenient car that people want is not hard. Making a car with luxuries and amenities, is not hard.
Making a cheap, safe, convenient car that people want, with luxuries and amenities? Is super hard.
(For my non-neurotypical friends: first of all, I love you! Second, the phrase "X is not hard, Y is hard!" is a phrase used by lots of people of all backgrounds, but is very common among West Africans and Black folk in the US 🙋🏿♂️. The "X is not hard" part is not literal. Usually the X part is very difficult as well. Making any production car at all, is very hard. The phrase is an emphasis on the relative difficulty of the Y part. )
Oversimplifying and overstating for effect or just as a technique to underline something is not the same as making a category error, of course. Also, sometimes things just need to be said, complexity be damned.
Which took me way too long to find... Gotta remember to bookmark posts I want to come back to generously. ↩︎
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