Brilliant. This properly frames so much of what I have been seeing. I actually worked at a social media building their applications. When our business people spent so much time telling us to build things to show the user what we wanted to show them, I always thought how idiotic it was that we would pretend to know what our users want. It's a form of corporate narcissism. I left :)

So if I buy the philosophy (which I do), how do I (practically) get started? Let's say I want to use the internet to actually interact with people in my community. Is that even possible anymore? Do I just download Mastadon and start wandering the dark? I've wanted to penetrate this "intellectual" space but I just do not know how, and I am a software architect of 20 years.