I grew up on the 90s internet. It wasn’t necessarily safe. The biggest difference seems to be that it wasn’t as populated, saturated, and easy for Ye Average Person to get sucked into (or groomed by) harmful communities. They were truly underground. We were hopeful the internet would benefit from (and benefit mankind) via increased accessibility and interoperability, but in retrospect I feel like that was it’s downfall. This is a subjective opinion.
The internet didn’t exist when I was a kid. If it had, I would likely have found a way to escape my abusive parents much earlier. Saying that, I am also an strong-willed, stubborn autistic person, so I may not represent the average person.
wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 1 hour ago
GreenBeard@lemmy.ca 1 hour ago
There’s a lot of “Likely would have” comments when this subject comes up, and a lot of second-hand anecdotes that don’t constitute a good basis for decision making. While I’m sure at some point, such support networks have formed, and stayed a major part of an individual’s life, in most cases, without a real grounded, in person network, most of these groups end up collapsing into isolated fragments again or turning into just another ad funnel for garbage that doesn’t actually help anyone, it just monetizes suffering.
Net good to net harm? There’s a strong case to be made that the marginal benefits of these platforms are deeply outweighed by the enormous suffering they cause.
BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
I found my people and it saved my life. All I am saying is that the internet can make it easier to find your people, even locally. There are programs for queer kids, abused women, and abortion that serve this very purpose. the question is not whether they exist and work, it is whether they are accessible to kids when their own guardians may be the entire problem. Both prongs of this proverbial “making services available” fork are important.
GreenBeard@lemmy.ca 4 minutes ago
At what cost? How many have lost hope and worse because the only thing they found in the noise of the internet was hate? Or worse, someone profiteering or exploiting their isolation?
At what ratio do we acknowledge that the “cure” is at least as bad as the disease. Could we even get reliable numbers on that given it’s all on private platforms that have every reason to lie? Facebook is responsible for igniting at least one genocide. How many more before it’s too many?