Posts tagged social networks

The cozy web is Venkatesh Rao’s term for the private, gatekeeper-bounded spaces of the internet we have all retreated to over the last few years. It’s the “high-gatekeeping slum-like space comprising slacks, messaging apps, private groups, storage services like dropbox, and of course, email.” The informal, untracked, messily human space that the bots and algorithms haven’t infiltrated yet.

Venkat first proposed the term in one of his Breaking Smart emails on The Extended Internet Universe. He builds off Yancey Strickler’s companion idea of the Dark Forest theory of the web. The “dark forest” is a place that seems eerily quiet and devoid of life. All the living creatures within it are hiding. Because “night is when the predators come out. To survive, the animals stay silent.” The predators here are the advertisers, tracking bots, clickbait creators, attention-hungry influencers, reply guys, and trolls. It’s unsafe to reveal yourself to them in any authentic way. So we retreat into private spaces.

We hide in the cozy web.

The Dark Forest and the Cozy Web

I have a nagging desire to try and get every one of my friends on amateur radio. It’s been like signing up for a new social network and having none of your friends on it. Obviously, the bar is much higher than signing up. But there is also a greater utility there as well, because you learn some stuff about radio waves and equipment that is probably useful. And, also, Disaster/Civil Defense Preparedness! which is, somewhat hilariously, still the core rationale for why amateur radio is allowed to continue to exist. Anyway, the dream is, everyone is straining the WiFi at a conference or post-national disaster or something, and my circle of friends is making dinner plans via the local repeater instead.

https://ello.co/interdome/post/iSBGl1L_hSp8lBgSKmYbfA