1.6 KiB
platform independence
one should expect any platform which achieves prominence to eventually be abused to the degree the power dynamics inherent to its design allow. e.g., no centralised platform, however well-meaning, can guarantee in perpetuity the protection of it's users' data and their social connections from one form of exploitation or another. such exploitation generally takes the form of psychological manipulation, transmuting the social capital of the privately owned "public square" into other forms of capital and, in some cases, destroying the communities who were responsible for the creation of that social capital in the first place. increasingly this exploitation is done without the platform owner's knowledge or consent; the simple fact that a lot of unencrypted data has been gathered together in one place makes the users of the platform vulnerable. (this problem is worsened by a lack of tooling targeting reputation and the deduplication of formal arguments, but that is a topic for a much later day.)
the problem with every platform built using the traditional methods of web development is that the traditional methods necessarily create an information asymmetry that favors the platform providers and those able to compromise such platforms. put another way, using such platforms could be seen as opting in to a form of mass surveillance.
in this author's opinion, one cannot be said to be platform independent unless one's ability to migrate one's identity and data and keep private communications private is not dependent on the goodwill or competence of a platform provider.