[rapind]

I’m of the (unpopular?) opinion that users ruined the internet, and not megacorps.

For example is google crappy now because they just don’t care or is it really all the “content marketing” that did it?

I suspect any forum that gains significant enough traction to attract the bad actors will turn to shit.

[jimkleiber]

I think even in the cases where users hurt the experience, we tend to blame the higher org for not resolving the conflict. "There are people bullying on the platform" -> "Why doesn't Google get rid of the bullying behaviors?!" instead of "Why don't people stop bullying?"

I think we also have a tendency to take it to the next level, which is often government. If people are scamming me through Gmail, we can tend to not think it's the fault of the people scamming or of Gmail but of the government for not forcing Gmail to stop the scamming or the person from doing scamming directly.

So I appreciate you bringing the attention back down to the ground level. While I disagree in that it would be only the users, I believe they (we) contribute to the problems as well as Google and the government and many other entities.

[rapind]

Yeah I don’t mean to give megacorps a free pass either. I just think it’s in our nature to collectively ruin most things that start out great… and like you say, blame everyone else.

[jimkleiber]

Yea I hear ya. The more I've observed it in my own life, the more I notice that a lot of the blame I give others is blame that I have been privately giving myself.

Blaming my family for an Xmas event where I may have been exposed to covid? Mostly just blaming myself for choosing to go against my own desire. So on and so forth for soooo many situations.