Very nicely put. I’ve used all this for deep reflection about my internetting as well and I don’t think I have come to terms with everywhere being ruined by corporate. It’s not like they don’t fuck us over as well in the real world and I now realize what kind of fight we’re in on- and offline. Don’t want to give up any bit of space to evil corporations. I think it’s easy to create really quiet Lemmy instances (or other social sites, federated or not) where one can rest from all those aggressive algorithms, and if I do it at some point I will make it very connected to real life and good for information gathering. Other than that, I like real life, I’m not interested in much virtual stuff.

These products - Googles convenience products as well as the Social Media shite - were introduced gradually at the time. The single steps people took towards using these products seemed innocuous. Before you know it, your whole life is enmeshed in a privacy nightmare and the convenience and quality you were used to is gone. It’s like buying an apartment in a nice place of town and then within the next two decades the area turns into a shady ghetto slum.