The ever long line of minorities taken advantage of in Silicon Valley

Club house

I saw the story about Clubhouse recording conversations (Found via @aral@mastodon.ar.al of #smalltech).

1. New VC-backed startup enters the scene
2. People flock to it
3. They discover it’s a surveillance capitalist (and still have no clue what that is)
4. They’re shocked (because, see 3)
5. It’s too late, they’re too big and they’ve exited
6. Goto 1

Likewise, I am not shocked or surprised. Its surveillance capitalism in full effect. Worst still, they made their base off the back of minorities like black creators, which is another nasty trend in Silicon Valley. Once the mainstream pile in, the original creators are dashed to the wind or forcefully rejected.

This narrative needs to change…

Telepath, yawn…!

Friendcamp

I have been hearing a bunch of stuff about a brand new social network called Telepath.

…Richard Henry and Marc Bodnick are. The duo, who previously worked together at the question-and-answer community Quora, today announced a wider release for Telepath, a new app for discussing your interests. The app, which like Clubhouse is available only in private beta and requires an invitation to use, resembles a hybrid of Twitter and Reddit. As on Twitter, the app opens to a central scrolling feed of updates from people and topics that you follow. And as on Reddit, every post must be created within a group, which Telepath calls a “network.”

Hearing about it, I was almost yawning. Another centralised social app trying to make its self bigger and better than whats come before using the tried, tested and very abused dark pattern of growth hacking.

For a very short moment I thought, maybe this is built on decentralised technology or works alongside other fediverse platforms? Something like hometown which powers friend.camp but heavily funded? That moment passed very quickly.

Who cares???

Its the same centralised system with a new face, its boring and I’m fed up of it all. Seriously! Don’t send me an invite, it will go straight in to my virtual bin.