Just caught up with the Guardian post of Hossein Derakhshan, “Iran’s blogfather: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are killing the web”, from December last year.
All true, but the bloggers, and other “content producers” (horrible term) are also helping to kill the web, by playing along with the rules. I can’t so much blame them for using Twitter. Facebook should be seen for what it is – the enemy of the open web. Facebook is evil in so many ways I need to breathe deeply whenever I think about it, so I’ll let Derakhshan’s article suffice.
Twitter is an evil mainly because the web depends on it too much. There are basic flaws in the way it is built, and it’s always only “somehow” worked. My main complaint is still that it is centralized – and, as we know, Twitter deliberately killed off its ecosystem of third party clients, through control of its API.
It would be so beautiful if we could create a decentralized, federated system of social networking on the model of email; or early email – as we’ve let the big companies take over there too. The means exist – I’ve just brought back my status.net instance for the umpteenth time. But it’s a pie in the sky dream, unfortunately. Mainly because we collaborate. Netizens unite; take back your power!