What is an influencer?

Since you said I’m wrong, what is the inflection point that I’m describing?

Did I say he flashed his wealth?

I do expect people to be aware of their impact, directly and indirectly, especially on kids. The more people you can potentially impact, the greater the responsibility to be aware.

Is data collection, exploiting children to sell products, and the consequences of profit-seeking something that we weren’t aware of at the time PewDiePie became famous?

I agree PewDiePie didn’t sell things to children. He didn’t need to. He was the product. I’m against commercial pressure on the internet, which seems like a radical concept now. PewDiePie didn’t need to hawk products to kids i know he did a good job with that. But he was the product. He was the point at which kids saw they could become a gamer and help commercial sites collect people’s attention and sell it to advertisers. That model is what broke everything. It turned the internet into cable television 2.0.

We already had corporate-approved media that was just a way to sell our attention. The internet, for a brief moment, was something for us. It was as close to a gift economy as we could get. It was the difference between a lawn sprayed with glyphosate to kill anything that wasn’t good old American Texas bluegrass devoid of originality, beauty, or color but looking neat and a lawn allowed to grow wild, full of weeds but also flowers, plants, and life.

PewDiePie wouldn’t have been the only one to make money, but he was the first to hit that milestone, and everything changed after that.

He laid the groundwork for those shitty influencer. He had the attention of young people who looked up to him. The minute they saw he could make millions by becoming the walking embodiment of a Nascar fender he set the attitudes and aspirations of a generation.

Would YouTube continue without him? Yes of course.

Could he have pushed back and created helped influence a generation of kids to reject the selling out of themselves to this influencer culture? Absolutely.

There were a few influencers in those early days that could have changed things or at least maintained the zeitgeist that we had then. Nobody did. That money was too good. Everything after he made that first million would change how the internet worked.

He was the inflection point. He could have impacted everything going forward. He could have told kids that these companies were stealing their data. That they were soliciting gamers to use as Trojan horses for what would eventually make everything worse.

You think not having total control of an organization means he’s free of blame. Would you say that your MAGA uncle doesn’t control Trump so isn’t responsible for his actions.

Pewdiepie is literally called an influencer. He warped what many young people belief they can become today and that belief is what ushered in a world of influencers chasing the all mighty dollar. That has given all these corporations fuel to create content and that content is stealing our data, eliminating data scarcity and used to influence politics.

He’s not the cause of it but he was an inflection point and could have went in a different direction to push kids to reject this new paradigm. Instead he was the face of it.

Her helped usher in this new enshittification. He was the Trojan horse. First one to reach a million

I bet you’re all being used to manipulate stock prices.

Something like that. I see a weird pattern with articles about AI and articles about immigration in right wing circles. They’re the same. Like the themes and focus in the headlines for each all seem to be reused

Sort of but like the post is saying, I’ve been way more right then wrong over my life. The amount of times I’ve argued online with people about things only to have that thing become the big issue 5 years from the point I was arguing it is disgusting. I remember 20 years ago sitting in a bay at work being made fun of because I kept talking about Russia and how they have started to allocate a higher percentage of their budget to cyber warfare that was unseen in budgets outside of wartime. It indicated they were building something. Stuff like that I get hyper interested in. I think I have a good nose for sources. I get into those sources and then find some weird thing nobody else is aware of and then you’re just aware of this looming issue and all you can do is watch it unfold.

Same thing with online bots. I can see when certain activity spikes. Certain topics get AstroTurfed and all of a sudden we’re talking about nuclear power for a week or some other topic that is really a facade for some bigger issue we’re slowly being steered towards. AI was a big one, go to any AI article and tell me that is not the exact same approach Republicans use against immigrants. It’s the same fucking thing. “they’re taking your job” “they’re going to destroy your culture” “they’re coming after your women and children” “They’re using up all the resouces”

AI has it’s issues. But you cannot convince me that there wasn’t something pushing articles and headlines on left wing spaces when it was first introduced. There was a massive push to set the tone.

I’m with you, I just think on top of those we also need to focus on where people are. Facebook does the heavy lifting now. They show you the most popular right wing groups now. It’s easy to post to them

no they don’t. That is what they tell their people. Israel is a foot hold into the Arab countries. Any military needs to be able to deploy rapidly. First to the battle has strategic advantage and smaller less powerful armies have destroyed larger ones just with that advantage. Israel lets America control that area and gives intelligence that it wouldn’t have otherwise. Without Israel, they lose a major strategic advantage to controlling the Arab world. The Big J side is all woo woo. Not even sure I’ve seen anyone really say that. Almost all of America’s moves are to control territory that gives their military the ability to deploy rapidly and to control territory.

I think it’s a bold strategy to leave the bigger more populated and used platforms to constantly exist on the smaller less relevant ones that never grow and offer everything the major platforms do just worse.

Shall we take Stalingrad? nonono it’s full of nazi’s, lets focus on Dieppe

That doesn’t make any sense. We all left these platforms. Like an exodus. How would that make it harder for these nazi’s to take over these platforms?

Is that enough? Isn’t there only like 11 million on mastadon?

Makes me think they’re there to scan the entire stadium and upload it to their new tracking database

You’re awesome. AI is fun and there’s nothing wrong with using it especially how you did. Lemmy was hit hard with AI hate propaganda. China probably trying to stop it’s growth and development in other countries or some stupid shit like that. But you’re good. Fuck them

I fucking hate lemmy sometimes.

Don’t roll with pigs it’ll only get you both dirty

Hey I’m just updating here. I said this sarcastically guys. You’re not suppose to upvote this. It’s a shameful cowardly wimpiest comment anyone could ever write. You’re a huge POS if you ever wrote this honestly. Roll with pigs, fuck them up. Especially if they’re nazis. You don’t turn a blind eye just because your delicate sensibilities are offended or because you think you’re just to important to bother. Don’t leave it to other people to handle. You handle it. Put your fucking big boy/girl pants on and stop running away from these problems. Stop giving digital spaces to nazis.

Oh yea, let’s continue doing fucking nothing then. Things just work out

Why don’t developers spend a few hours a week working together to ruin the Salesforce image just to make an example of them to never do this.

To stop enshittification, we all need to chase away any attempt to capitalize on the internet and get back to the roots of preventing data scarcity. Anyone running an ad or promoting some product should be chased out. Their product stolen and copied and shared until these people know they’re not welcome. It would have prevented all of the enshittification had pewdiepies and Joe Rogans and Mr beasts were treated as the time vampires they are. It’s not just simple advertising that we could turn off. It turned into a massive machine that stole our data, built profiles, created digital addiction tools and tracked all our movements just to sell us things.

What about in the opposite direction. Isn’t AI a tool that can be used to create, analyze and research. Which is why I think it’s pushed very hard for the left to alienate themselves from it. It gives anyone who embraced it a big advantage.