Comment on Creating a Lemmy assignment for college level comp course
wowwoweowza@lemmy.world 5 weeks agoHad I been truly bold, I would have included in the assignment guidelines that they use the platforms themselves to execute their “creative projects” with the Fediverse — this way you’d be able to see what was done “live.” As it is, I used a digital format for their work they are all familiar with… they’ll be presenting live presentations with google slides…
My guidelines are general enough that the hideous things some folks have run into cannot come back to bite me, but as you predicted, some have run into genuinely nauseating material. I’ve just smiled and said, “I hope you clicked away.”
I believe the best response I’ve received after some adventuring in the Fediverse one student came back hooting about how much she has dreamed of “Internet one point oh.” This is what she calls the Fediverse — and she’s not wrong. Zero corporate Shenanigans.
OpenStars@discuss.online 5 weeks ago
Yeah, advocating for literal murder, e.g. of someone who chooses to own stock, we have not only a toxicity problem but overall a quite shocking divergence from the experiences visible on other more moderated platforms, such as X (which also advocates for murder these days I hear, but only in such matters as are soon to be approved by The State, like giving cops free reign to murder anyone they choose - but only lasting for one hour, bc otherwise that would be just ridiculous, you know!?🤪🫠).
On the one hand, getting out from under the thumb of regulations is fantastic, compared to not being able to do thus at all. While on the other, people can be so unfriendly and waste so much of our time having to sift through such nonsense (as is sponsored by The Other, Opposing State).
So yeah, I guess it is a bit like 4chan? (Not that I’m speaking from personal experience, but from the stories told about it, it shares similarities?:-P) But then again, Internet 1.0 did not offer the ability to federate as we now can, so actually I think it’s a step forward, more than merely back - yes we are rolling back some features that were quite bad (corporate sponsorship), but we get to keep most of the good - e.g. the ability to view images and even videos directly inside the post without having to leave the site to view them elsewhere and then return. We have the best of both of those worlds!?:-)
wowwoweowza@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Update on the class project. I asked students to report for week 7 about their adventures in the Fediverse.
Out of 23 students, not one genuinely grocks, as it were, the why.
Oh, they can give lip-service to the tropes we’ve been exploring in the SF class— privacy, autonomy, freedom, ethical uses of technology etc but none of them have become inspired, or even curious by these alternative platforms.
I believe it was you who wanted me about this attempt. Perhaps you were right. Not because they’d encounter vile things, which they do but do not blame me for, but because … I have dragged them out of the cave too fast? It’s too jarring for them? Too cumbersome. Requires too much.
The simplest features you and I take for granted in dealing with the mechanics of a Federated platform are simply too challenging and disheartening for these college students.
It’s like the corporations won in a single generation — as they anticipated.
OpenStars@discuss.online 5 weeks ago
I mean on the one hand kinda yeah, and it was always going to be thus. On the other hand, allow me to encourage you by reminding you that your job was not to teach them about freedom & open-source goodness so much as critical thinking skills. So even if they don’t get it NOW, so long as they have the tools to get it LATER that will be enough.
If you are in America, then realize that No Child Left Behind did a grave disservice - sorry if you said that earlier and I forgot, though also, I am hearing of similar occurrences all around the world as the wealthy do not see a need for the middle class to exist any longer, hence are pushing to cut back funding for edumacashun.
Add to that how the current generation is all about achievements involving “scores”, not really intellectually curiosity - plus, how could they truly know much of anything anyway when the body of knowledge is now so much vaster than what a human brain could hope to comprehend? Which was always true in our lifetimes anyway, but now it’s true even for one field or even sub-field underneath a field, plus Googling existed - or at least did, whereas its demise lately might feel like a blip while we merely await its return, being rebirthed from the ashes of a purifying fire, a Phoenix of internet searching if you will? :-P Anyway, in the absolute height of irony, they literally cannot afford to be too curious, or they will be kicked out of college for refusing to “learn”.
But give them a few years after leaving it and… maybe they’ll turn around, some of them anyway? Perhaps your REAL job is to inspire in them a lifetime love of learning? :-P
It does bug me that spez was correct though - he really did see clearly into the hearts of the lazy bums who endlessly mindlessly scroll through content regurgitated from decades past, plus those actual niche subs that are too frightened to move away. Then again, we can be pretty toxic here as well, just like there, so is it really all that different here, vs. there, except that here we lack the content that they have there? I strongly, vehemently maintain that the MAXIMUM experience here is better, and probably the average is too but e.g. I was reading a post this morning where someone said that they thought that lemmygrad.ml was named that way as a joke and almost joined it, before realizing that it was serious - if they had though, then its being defederated by almost other instance would have enhanced its echo chamber effect enormously, by bringing in next to no outside material, only what is local on that instance itself. And could you imagine joining hexbear, or even making a post there unawares? I still shudder from my own experience of merely making a singular reply to a comment there, all of ONCE (something middle-of-the-road such as “at least Biden brought gas prices down just prior to the midterm elections, which helped Dems win those crucial Congressional seats, which isn’t nothing” - and I got my ASS handed to me for several WEEKS and WEEKS where they would just all pile on, long past when I was so done with it, and ngl after I made the same mistake in lemmygrad.ml I very nearly left Lemmy myself rather than put up with such a barrage - all from different accounts, mind you, so that blocking is horribly inefficient).
We are still fairly new, and dynamic, and all of us still learning how to make things work - e.g. slrpnk.net/post/15217190. But that’s also what makes it “exciting” for some of us. And yet, the interface and interactions are legit less polished overall, so it really does seem to endear itself more to those of us with an “early adopter” mindset. And maybe that’s okay, especially for now, and all the more so if that is what keeps us kind and worth coming here to:-).
Don’t lose heart. In the assignment sure, but deeper than that, you’re doing a good work - which I can say with certainty b/c you care, and that right there is basically everything? The details you’ll work out later:-P.
wowwoweowza@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
First — allow me to say how impressed I am by your keen thinking in all of your responses. I feel like my own engagement with the Fediverse, and Lemmy, is really casual compared with yours. I’ll be honest: I’m a tourist.
And like a tourist, I have always tried to focus on what’s good and ignore what’s bad, keeping myself safe from what’s dangerous. I don’t know anything about hexbear despite that I may have seen the word before.
The assignment has been a real eye opener.
I simply presumed my students would be curious. Then interested. Then engaged.
I predicted wrong. They felt irritated in the main and never inspired. More will be revealed still but I fear that this round might end in a wash.
They do not find the primitive charming as I do. And they do not relish the brief freedom from being surveilled by corporations. And they do not thrill to the idea of participating in genuine acts of resistance against the totalitarian dictatorship of corporate hegemony.
I’m left but nowhere near “red.”
I like the capitalism of the renaissance for example — yes… things were awful, but there was motivation to be innovative and to work hard.
So… my disdain for universal surveillance is so thorough that I have an air gapped old Mac that I use to manage about a terabyte of data on my terabyte iPod classic. A Chinese refurb that was literally out of the box like new! In fact I think it is new — just a great copy— and I know for a fact that click wheel is not original. So I have worried there is some stealth blue tooth there or something but I doubt it.
Just saying that by way of articulating why I really want the Fediverse to become a thorn in the foot of the lion. Then I want it to be a land mine.
That’s probably the toxic stuff at hexbear? But seriously, I’d like to see the world taken back to tech level 1998. Keep Wikipedia and pretty much toss the rest. I’d like to see the Lemmyverse as is though — but without millions of users mindful of resources — like that video streaming article you sent — they were moving to spread the burden.
But honestly what I see corporate social media doing is using humans like the battery people in the Matrix — exploiting them in vats while giving them unreal hallucinations and zero truth.