Crystal Website 💖

I have been thinking for so long about writing this article, however, due to time constraints, and - to be honest- a lack of motivation, it only happened now, but it's actually a good thing, because so much happened in between, a lot of new technologies surfaced (for the better or for the worse), and some of my older biases now disappeared. Note that this is pretty much based around my personal experience with the internet since 200(8)? And computer science since 2006. So you may not agree with what I'm saying, if so, please send your complaints to /dev/null

Dont know who I am ? Check https://tilde.club/~crystaltd for a brief introduction

To better understand the cultural impact of the modern internet on the world, let's take a once niche and passionate community and see what happened to it, and what are the forces controlling this shift. Now If you have been paying attention to the recent news of the Linux os state, you may have seen that it's being more and more controlled by big tech and commercial companies, the likes of Microsoft RedHat and canonical, what have started as a community effort full of innovation and new ideas now became a shadow of its past self. The new distros are just forks of Debian Arch Fedora or Ubuntu, no one is making an effort of introducing a new competitor, now it's mostly reskinned Gui-d Arch forks, generally maintained by a single person. There is also the damning requirements of newly developed software for Linux : Systems and Elogind. Since sysd is a monolithic program, and not an init system only, it is required in order to do numerous tasks, and it's getting pushed even harder after the lead Dev quitting RHEL and joining Microsoft, pushing MS ideas into Linux directly. And the list goes on as well, Snaps, Flatpaks and Appimages, trying to provide a solution to a problem that themselves cause By being this fragmented, code of conducts, chromeOS being an android-ified Linux system contributes to this downfall of The Linux quality. And the worse is that this plague touched some of the BSDs as well, specifically Freebsd and Freebsd based Ghostbsd, prioritizing ease of use for customizability , including a Linux emulator which is mostly used by Soyjak gamers to feed their need of dopamine rushes in AAA games. The only BSDs which still have the motivation and the beauty of the old times are OpenBSD and NetBSD, a group of enthusiasts making what they like and how they like, not caring about big Corp monetization or decisions. So now that we established the side effects, who is the responsible for all of this ? : Common violators are Three letters agencies (FBI CIA even the fucking IRS…you name it ) and big corp like Facebook Microsoft Google and others, often pushing their commits in exchange of monetary "donations" for big distro makers. Making them, the ones who shape the Linux spherere

Social media in general is creating a plague, a virus, an illness, and it claims to have the cure for it, while it actually sells snake oil, if not an other illness. Let me explain :

Social media work by making you addicted to them, distracting you from the passage of time, and the opportunities you missed, learning from your habits, your hobbies, your friend circle, your ENEMY circle, ideologies…etc just to provide you with that you WANT to hear, and not the truth, they do this to have a high retention rate, they always show you weak and easily refutable arguments of the other camp from time to time, just to make you feel powerful, strong, and irrefutable, while suggesting to you groups of like minded people - You are a flat earther ? We got you covered, Do you believe the holocaust is fake ? We have a group for that. Do you fantasize about having a relationship with your house ?…a little weird but sure, we got you covered- putting you in 3 m² empty room, while giving you a sound amplificator, making you believe what you say even if its false, this is at least on the surface, when they catch you in their Corporate hell, and you start to believe that anything on Insert Social media platform is 100% right, they start pushing their agendas, according to what they want and need in order to profit from you, and sure enough, Uncle Ben is behind this as well, he wants you to think like he wants . These social media websites start slowly showing you compelling arguments from the defenders of the agenda they wanna push, you start by accepting their existence, then their difference, you dig deeper and want to learn more about them, at first you find it stupid and retarded, but then you have empathy for them, and then you get influenced and dragged into their ideologies. And if this is not enough, they track you through your devices, through your networks and even accounts from different websites, but Hellas, this will be discussed in further chapters, specifically the ones about JavaScript and internet privacy, and the one about advertising. But for now, let's focus on the psychological effect of these platforms, they produce Brainless wojaks and mentally inept Soyboys, fetishising mental illnesses, degeneracy, with the mindset of [Insert Thing] lives matters, or that every single community on earth needs a day (or even a month -wink wink my follow lgbt, we all know we dont need a whole month-) to celebrate how they are different… WAIT A MINUTE, there is no day for bald people !!! I FEEL OFFENDED AND NOT REPRESENTED IN MEDIA ENOUGH. These creeps (which is the term I will use to refer for the people who control social media) want to make everyone consume their content 24/7, brainlessly scrolling (will be discussed too in the dark patterns Chapter) and silencing anyone who calls out their bullshit (and Uncle Ben's bs too) with the excuse of " Fact checking " while still "defending" and rioting for liberty of speech… Land of the free MY ASS. Look, I myself am a trans girl in a country where its illegal to be so, so the only place where I can be "Me" is mostly online, though I fucking hate when other members of the community take it to the extreme, calls everything and everyone [something]phobic, sometimes when I'm in an argument with someone (who is Respectfully arguing) I feel ashamed, sometimes babysitted when they get silenced for "Hate speech"

Social media, this is not how to have a real productive discussion, but you clearly know that, you dont was these discussions on your platforms. Take for example twitter with their word limits On tweets, or their "fact checking". I try to avoid as many name calling here, but this is sickning, that I need to mention some common violators like Meta (again, my dudd has roots everywhere) Twitter and..oh Discord, an entire chapter will be dedicated to this monstrosity. Though not fordays!!

Note : if in this chapter, you feel attacked, targeted or even triggered, regardless of your sex , sexuality, race and religion ,please mail all your complaints to /dev/null, they will be responded to in `NaN` business days :D.

Oh my beloved search engines, back in the days these web crawlers didn't exist, we had webrings, sort of websites that link to each other, often sharing the same, or sometimes different topics. But now we have multiple search engines which give us search results in a fraction of a second, what a blessing from the gods.

[Chapter Fou….. Sadly this doesn't just end up here, what started as an ambitious and honnest project quickly turned into a literal work of Satan. Let's digest every one of the popular search engines one by one :

Google: One of the biggest culpists on this list, not only does it give different results for every single user, but it also customizes them to actually make it difficult to find your desired result, making you scroll through pages of Ads, sharing its own agendas and masking opposition. Your Google search history is tied to your YouTube, gmail and drive account, which make google able to predict EXACTLY what you want to hear from them, just to comfort you

Bing : same shit, but this is actually integrated by default in your search bar since Windows(8?) And its browser since the Windows96 Era !!! At least it doesn't track your phone though (unless you are one of the three people who use a windows phone, if so. Fuck you :D)

Duckduckgo: claims to care about privacy, but actually allows Microsoft, google and others to track you and influence their search results. Hiding Piracy related search results, and Russian "propaganda" of the Ukraine war. I don't care if its propaganda or if its factually wrong. Let me read and judge

If you want to dig deeper into the specifics of each search engine, and a complete comparison. Go to Digdeeper website : https://digdeeper.neocities.org/ . he does some interesting shit, go check it out