A culture that thinks like an algorithm also “projects a future that is like the past,” James Bridle explains, because “that which is gathered as data is modelled as the way things are, and then projected forward — with the implicit assumption that things will not radically change or diverge from previous experiences.” In a world reliant on computation to make sense of things, “that which is possible becomes that which is computable.”
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Alright, so; I'm mostly in your camp - looking back, maybe my OP question was a bit too leading but anyway, I'll try to verbalize why I'm not 100% on the 100% of that attention capture.
The internet, as you mention, is not yet entirely colonized by cookie-clickerish skinner box abominations, articulated entirely towards selling shit and culture war bullshit. While it's a shrinking part, there is still an outside to these gigantic, hegemonic platforms (fb, google/yt, twitter and all that shit), for example this very hexagonal bear we reside on, but also other little sites that try to do their own thing. In general, audiences are not totally captive to big platforms, though they are inert, slow to move to, let's say a YT-alternative like peertube - they, in theory, can make that shift. We've seen it before with the goliath of MySpace becoming a ghost town when everyone moved over to the quirky little upstart facebook. Of course fb is a goliath in its own right nowadays, but it had real underdog energy waybackwhen. Same with Digg and Reddit. Of course it isn't exactly "Resistance" to switch from one capitalist platform to another, but it shows that these platforms can indeed be dethroned from their perceived cultural importance, and relatively quickly too.
Let's get back to algorithms; let's see them as purposive systems - what's their purpose? They are obviously pretty central to a site's (or app's - TikTok!) functioning and overall value. Somehow they manage to output profit from the input of raw attention. Let's skip forward and call them control systems; they control audience attention and they do so in various ways and towards various ends - BUT they are always limited to a specific platform. Users, real human participants, are not. We're not in an entirely closed system; sure there's the hellsite of twitter on my screen, but there's also a YT-tab, a twitch stream running and a hexbear comment section going over here. These attention control systems are all in competition with each other, referring to each other by necessity and while that may make them more competent on aggregate on account of them being continuously refined by feedback and more structural patches - they are also imperfect, flawed, forever unfinished. I think this permeability of audience attention across various sites and platforms offers at least a gap in the proverbial machine. The question being, can you throw a wrench into it? You can certainly game these systems, by buying artifical-but-human-coded clicks for example; buy a million clicks on your new album, have it go viral through recommenders and the clicks will pay for themselves. Of course, this requires resources not necessarily available to a theoretical resistance.
Most of, maybe all, of the internet is preoccupied with highly engaging culture war bullshit, funneling into some form of consumerism. After all, that's the monetization strategy for all capitalist platforms: ads, one way or another - leading to commerce. Now, there's some differentiation to be made here: While the platform runs on ads, the content itself and the content's creators also run on ads, but differently - brand deals, sponsorships and all that. Not much of a difference at first glance, but it lays bare the fact that the (economic) interests of platform providers and content creators are not aligned perfectly, they can even diverge drastically in some cases. This may lead to creators dropping out of a platform, moving to a different one or even banding together to try and start their own thing (e.g. Nebula) - all still in a capitalist framework of course, but already we can see some forms of subversion emerging; a way that things could be different somehow - maybe even radically different. Hexbear is a radical re-envisioning of what reddit could be, for example. Sure, dunking on twitter screenshots (there's that permeability of audience attention again) isn't exactly political action, but we're doing pretty good on the theory-side of the struggle on this little island in the internet - And if anyone has shown that theory can become a material force, it's Marx himself.
Overall, I see an immense emancipatory potential in these systems. Sure, they are currently articulated entirely in line with capital - but they don't have to be forever.
Anyways, I'll end it here for now, let me know what you think. This has gotten away from me a bit, sorry for the length.
I don't know if online forums and stuff are really gonna be any kind of crazy new platform that will change anything more than it is now (it's changing a lot of stuff right now though).
However (as a programmer) I do think it would be cool to build alternative services to ones that currently rely on software designed around commercial use cases (and I keep saying this over and over on here), but instead specifically tailored to more organizational left wing use cases. For example, most websites hosting left-wing content are probably being hosted on the same big web hosting platforms, using regular software like WordPress for content management. I think that's perfectly fine for the most part, but it would be nice to build up more of a knowledge and resource base for making entirely custom and potentially self-hosted websites. hexbear.net is like that, although it isn't really "secure" because it uses Cloudflare as a content delivery network. Of course it's also probably easier for feds to infiltrate and mess that kind of thing up since big software projects have more professional scrutiny over code that gets integrated.
I think news websites and messaging applications could be more independent. Stuff that would be useful to socialists/communists in other countries would also be good. Not really to change people's behavior or anything, but to create internet tools that left-wing movements rely on more, and make them easily auditable and modifiable. I don't think they need to be radically different. Hexbear.net/Lemmy is a good example. It's basically a Reddit clone that uses more modern web features and can be self-hosted. Self-hosting is the most important thing, not that it's like "distributed" or something. Although for messaging platforms you'd want better end-to-end encryption and so on. Stuff that could basically be useful to DSA chapters and things like that. Websites that are good over low-bandwidth and metered connections would also be good.
Agree with all of your points. Just to elaborate though, when I was talking about radically different systems, I was thinking of better, more transparent, ideally user-operated platforms for the short-term, but for the long-term I was thinking more about stuff like Urbit; radical re-imaginings of how a computer and an internet could function.
I've really got no deeper understanding of Urbit and I don't mean to hinge this point on that one implementation of this OS+Meshnet-thingy, but it does look like something that could grow to be something significant.
That Urbit thing looks pretty unique. It seems very esoteric though and kinda suspicious since it involves Ethereum stuff and it sounds like you can sell your urbit stars or whatever. It also sounds like the original creator is one of those weird right-libertarians or something weirder lol.
Yea, it's not really what is needed, but it certainly is something different - and I think it's at least going in the right direction.
That's the thing with all these crypto peeps; some of them certainly try to actually do cool shit with the tech. Still, it's often misguided, and it often is just an expression of how they think capitalism isn't capitalistic enough; free market radicalism and all that shit. But they're certainly building... something. It's often disgusting, usually outright predatory grift and not exactly towards any form of emancipation - but it is something. It's there, it does end up becoming something real sometimes.