This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
They aren’t important to me, that’s for sure. I never use them and maybe have a stale IG account (since that’s meta related). They could turn off tomorrow and I wouldn’t notice. Good riddance is what I’d say.
Hey Cindy, are you in this thread?!
How could they be less important.
The issue is in order to do so, they will have to make themselves feel less important. These social platforms are designed for exploitation by offering users instant soapboxes, immediate gratification in the form of likes/views/comments, a false sense of connection, etc. This is a sliver of the sickness they've spread.
it used to be just for nice social bubbles
now it's for political disinformation bubbles and the two cannot be untangled. users will not do it voluntarily
real identities and moderation in the form of fact checking are the only way on all social media
Goddammit, I think you just described my relationship with Lemmy.
Upvoted to feed the habit.
To be fair, Lemmy has a ton of really smart people that I learn a lot from too.
I agree with @wesker@lemmy.sdf.org in their comment. No one in real life is on twitter. Twitter is place that seems real because people on media convince themselves its real and give it substance.
No materially meaningful thing happens on twitter, and its perceived importance is a byproduct of media hyping it up.
Now meta.. thats an altogether different beast. FB market place captured most of what used to happen on craiglist. Its how entire families organize and keep together.
In terms of analysis, I'm annoyed at Cohn here. This isn't something we as individuals have control of. Her saying people individually have to make the difference is like saying you individually have to make the difference regarding climate change by making different choices, like recycling.
I get a lot of my business for my company from facebook marketplace and my facebook reviews. It enrages me that I have to use facebook to succeed, at least at this point in my business.
When I need to buy or sell anything for my farm activities, its pretty much the only game in town.
So Cohn did mention comprehensive privacy laws and the ability to leave platforms. These are absolutely things that need to happen.
However as an individual there are still things you can do. Cohn mentions Bluesky because it has no algorithm (except the "Discovery" feed). Cohn also mentions (in the video) Mastodon. And the truth is you don't need to switch fully, just don't only slurp down the concentrated hate machine(s).
Look at Lemmy. Reddit decided to be pricks and a bunch of individuals jumped over here to create what I think is a pretty good community. That doesn't mean the problem is solved. That doesn't mean Reddit isn't still a problem. That doesn't mean Lemmy is perfect. But that is a win and something individuals can do.
Additionally, those are things you can do now. You don't need to wait for some law to be passed to fix things. You can make the move now. (While still advocating for laws to fix things.)
The point of the critique is that individuals have no power to make Twitter less important, or at least, not the audience of this show. Who she should be bringing that critique to is someone like Jon Stewart himself, not to Jon Stewart's audience. And actually, Jon is a great example of someone who did exactly this, with his Crossfire video.
Jon didn't go on Crossfire and tell Crossfire's audience to stop engaging with the content. He went on Crossfire and told the people in power to stop. Broadly, if you are ever doing something where you are shifting responsibility from those in power, to those out of power, you are doing the job of the oppressor.
Literally, Lemmy does not matter whatsoever to reddit, and likewise, Mastodon does not matter whatsoever to Twitter. Those things do not matter. Moving to lemmy or mastadon might make you feel better, but it has made not one iota of difference to those platforms.
Regulation, changes from those in positions of power, those can make a meaningful difference. But its utterly disingenuous to put things that require systemic reform as "collective reform". Its utterly bonkers, and shields those in power, who can make different decisions, from needing to do so.
But individuals do have power to make Twitter less important. Well, maybe not Twitter, just because it’s 95% bots, but social media companies are usually only valuable if they have users. There are people who depend on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram for their business but 99% of users absolutely do not need to use those services. The analogy with recycling and climate fall flat because it takes many orders of magnitude more effort to avoid most/all plastics/packaging/fossil fuels than it does to just avoid IG/FB/X. The biggest barriers to getting rid of these shit companies is 1) too many people don’t realize how awful they are 2) too many people just don’t give a shit and 3) too many people are addicted to the dopamine hits from these trash sites.
Seriously, just don’t use them. When you’re presented with something that tries to force you to use them, say “sorry, I don’t use Meta products, do you have another way for me to get [the pop-up dates, the invite, etc]”
at one time, Twitter was amazing
if you could catch the attention of someone you wanted and they replied, it was amazing
i found that moment a few times
talking to The artist you had wondered about for years answering the question you had
it was fucking special
and that is over. it is something that I am saddened by
This isn't something we as individuals have control of.
Absolute nonsense.
Oh its absolutely not though. And you thinking that, thats decades of propaganda operating on you. And it worked. It shifts the responsibly from those in positions power, who can make societal scale decisions, to those who have the least power, who can only change their individual behavior.
And its not an accidental thing as a mechanism for governments, corporations, etc.. to use to shift blame. Its all very well established.
There's no propaganda. Its very simple logic and reason. I've done it. There's no reason you can't too.
It doesn't shift responsibility anywhere. For some reason society gets this ridiculous notion that there can be only 1 person or entity to blame for anything, when in reality that's almost never the case. Platforms have the choice not to exploit their users, and the users have the choice to leave. Both are responsible for the way things are, and either party has the power to end it.
There’s no propaganda.
Of course there is no war in bah sing seh! How could I forget.
Individual choices are practically immaterial and have almost no impact on the outcomes societies endure. For all practical purposes, individual choice is meaningless. You doing or not doing something doesn't mean shit, because you aren't in a position of power over systems.
Yes...you are. Claiming you're not is exactly the kind of attitude that perpetuates these monoliths and they thank you kindly for your service.
I bet you don't vote either, do you?
EFF supporter for years. Have so many of their t-shirts (amazing designs, btw). Cindy Cohn is the real deal. Anyone online should go pay attention to them.
Americans: No.
