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slow movement and internet media?

The Slow Movement has created a global subculture that rejects the Faustian bargain of convenience over quality offered by the spread of corporate commerce. While some think of the Slow Movement as propounding a slower pace of life, another way to think of it is simply as being conscious and careful about the forces one allows to dictate their pace and their choices.

The Movement started in the 1980's in a protest of a McDonald's restaurant opening near the Spanish Steps in Rome. Since then, it has been applied to various subjects such as city planning, fashion, education, and more. One place the Slow Movement is needed as much as anywhere else is in our use of the Internet.

But what does it mean to apply the Slow Movement to your Internet usage? First of all, to preempt misinterpretations: it is *not* about slow internet speeds.

To understand the application of Slow to the Internet, it is useful to focus on two common uses of the Internet: news and social media. Significant problems caused by these two mediums are largely a result of their profit models.

Both news and social media revolve largely around an advertising revenue model that incentivizes platforms to seek ever larger audiences and to hook users in order to keep monitoring them, analyzing them, and feeding them targeted advertisements.

Side effects of this include a disregard for the quality (or even truthfulness) of information content and the cultivation of passive, uncritical media consumption habits among users. Both of these are bad for the individual and poison for democratic societies that rely on an informed, engaged citizenry.

Another side effect is that data collection on users grows both more pervasive and more invasive as advertisers seek to better target ads to user preferences. There are obviously many risks associated with this.

News and social media on the internet interact with their user bases in different ways, but they share a common approach: they both appeal to the emotions of their users rather than their intellects. They manipulate their users by triggering the lowest instincts of human nature, and use these triggers to keep users engaged and coming back for more.

Mainstream internet news media-- think CNN or FoxNews --have long abandoned any sense of media integrity. Rather than serving the public interest and the democratic process by investigating and publishing objective reports on relevant events, they have become nothing more than infotainment, sensationalism, identity politics, and drama. Anything to keep users coming back in fear of missing the next "breaking news" headline.

Social media is no better. Rather than promoting healthy interactions among members of shared-interest communities, platforms emphasize shallow, viral content and employ the fear of missing out (FOMO) as ways to hook users and keep them engaged. Social media may serve a news function as well. But while internet news media is biased by structural pressures on the editorial process (a la Herman and Chomksy's Propaganda Model), news in social media is further "edited" by the whims of the viral process, which often consists of little more than confirmation bias among readers.

The result of both models is that people are coerced out of using the Internet for pursuing their own interests and needs, and instead are whipped into a frenzied, addictive relationship with the platform. Mainstream news and social media on the Internet effectively work by short circuiting individual, self-directed thought. They work by pushing users into constant impulse reactions.

There is no easy solution to this dystopian state of affairs, but one form of resistance is for individuals to reject the pace and content set by these platforms in favor of finding their own path. This is how the Slow Movement applies to the Internet. Again, it is not so much about slowing down the pace as it is about fiercely defending ones right to set their own pace and decide how they allocate their time online.

Some people simply turn their backs on the most abusive commercial platforms on the Internet, adopt a skeptical and critical mindset about any online service they use, and find alternatives.

A more involved part of this Slow Movement is practiced by those who have or are willing to build hands-on familiarity with Internet and computer technology. These people are building an alternative dimension on the Internet, one that is diverse and decentralized rather than revolving around a few massive platforms; one that revolves around people and communities rather than warping them to revolve around the platform. The services, tools and platforms in this alternate dimension aren't designed to compel users toward consumerism. They are designed to support communities, and to to share information and experiences; and to be used however people want to use them, rather than how corporate sponsors want them to be used.

Building and supporting this independent, decentralized ecosystem is so critical because people and societies need an alternative to the huge, centrally controlled platforms that dominate the Internet now. The huge, corporate-financed platforms have no incentive to support a sustainable future for society and are in fact cannibalizing society in the name of short-term profits.

A Slow Movement for Internet users is about resisting the destructive forces of unrestricted corporate domination of Internet media, and supporting healthy, sustainable futures for individuals and societies.