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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 10th, 2023

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  • I’m guessing I’m probably slightly younger than you, but I’m still old enough to remember how things were before the web took everything over. I definitely agree with some of your point, but I think there’s some cause for optimism!

    • finally democratize information - Information really is more democratized than any other prior time in human history. There is a bunch of bad information mixed in as well, but that doesn’t negate the benefits that the internet has brought in this regard. If I have the time and the motivation I can give myself a college level education just using free resources on the internet.
    • do away with misinformation and pseudoscience - this is definitely a problem on the internet, but I think if we didn’t have the internet it would still be a problem. We have whole news networks that were founded specifically to pump out misinformation. That just happened to start around the advent of the internet but was not caused by it.
    • promote critical thinking - yeah, I don’t think the internet has helped much on this front, but again I don’t think it has actually made it much worse. People are overall much more educated today than they were decades ago. Their ignorance is just also much more visible.
    • freedom and democracy - the internet has enabled a new rise of fascism which is horrifying, but it has also enabled unprecedented coordination and strength in minority communities on a global scale. I think we would be much farther behind socially if the internet hadn’t appeared.