[deepsun]

Yet every time I point to the root of the problem -- that most social media web properties are privately owned by their respective shareholders, who just benevolently let you store your* texts and photos at their premises for free -- I get downvoted heavily here on HN. The community doesn't want to hear that here.

[Kilgore54]

Yeah absolutely The problem here is the profit motive. What we need are sustainable communities that are not controlled by sectors of private capital and they treat their users like products or widgets.

I know some people are in America, especially above a certain age, refuse to think this way. Decades of Chicago school neoliberal propaganda has convinced them that anything good has to be driven by a profit motive.

I would have hope this community would be a little bit better than that but I'm fairly new to it

[aceazzameen]

It's more than a profit motive. Profits can be fine. The bigger issue is the need to show unlimited growth on the books. That whole system drives the gradual enshittification of everything.

[voisin]

Everything, including our climate and other basic needs as humans. Wild that it hasn’t been overthrown yet.

[aceazzameen]

I'm hoping when the day comes, it isn't too violent. But history has its own thing to say about that.

[moskie]

It is troubling that, in the US at least, one of the two major political constituencies has a lot more guns than the other....

[zo1]

It's not troubling to me - seeing as I think that specific group of people are the saner of the two and less likely to punish me for my beliefs. I honestly don't know how people can think that things are "peachy" on the "left", they look positively Orwellian.

[CatWChainsaw]

Consider that one constituency might simply be way more quiet about it than the other.