[Edit 2: I think anyone commenting should identify how much they use Facebook in their comment lol]
On the list of people I describe in the subject, I place myself first. If you’re here to defend yourself by showing me your receipts, congratulations, you win, I just saved us who knows how much time. I’m typing this out in an attempt to describe phenomena, not persuade you of anything in particular, other than, this is a thing I see happening a lot; too much would be my take.
I’m just gonna grab [a] most egregious example, but I would like to talk about this, not as a horrific fail, but as an exemplar; at the moment I believe that most people categorize it as the former.
[edit: there really is no “most” egregious example, and I just thought of a much worse one, and unlike Facebook I am fully guilty of this one: I own and drive a car, a lot, and boy am I ignoring some real world consequences there.]
That example being, Facebook Acted As The Main Propaganda Outlet For A Genocide Of The Rohingya In Myanmar, and therefore, Anyone Who Uses Facebook Is Using A Tool That Has Bloodstains On It And Are Somehow Not Horrified.
To more easily conceptualize this, it’s much the same as me needing a shovel, and having a neighbour that I happen to know murdered someone with their shovel, but has not been arrested for it, and right when I need the shovel, they walk over with their bloodstained shovel and offer to let me use it for my non-murder task. And I just go “Wow how convenient that you happened to be here with that bright-red shovel just now, I think I’ll use this one one of yours with the little spatters of brain on it, instead of walking over to my shed and getting my own shovel out!”
We are talking about murder here, Facebook was used to foment mass murder and in a world that made sense, Zuckerberg would be handed over to the ICC years ago, along with Henry Kissinger and a number of others who instead hang out at the Nobel Peace Prize club where Barack makes a mean Mai Tai.
The problems that people use Facebook to constructively solve is connections to family and close friends, event and interest group organizing, the marketplace, and for the avid user it constitutes a daily journal.
These problems could each be solved using something else that is also just as gratis. It might be a small amount of effort more, but then you maybe don’t ever have to touch the remains of a human life that once existed and now does not, due to this particular device being used to end that life.
But it seems that it’s more convenient, easy, zero effort, to simply ignore the gore.
That’s what I see on the internet. I don’t think anyone has ever accepted a bloodstained shovel and set to digging a ditch with it who didn’t also feel that their life was next if they didn’t, but as long as there’s no visible bloodstains, as long as it’s just a few articles and podcasts from known radical leftists, eh, look at little Jimmy’s recital, isn’t he cute?
I know, everyone in the world who is not on the Fediverse is an evil, lazy scumbag and the absolute best way to get them to switch is to sneer and scold. No matter what communities they have built, what access to information they need, how difficult it is to rebuild that elsewhere, they’re all just terrible people compared to you, polishing your halo in the corner.
This line of argument is bogus and self-defeating. Quit it.
im not suggesting judgement, you are injecting that from a perspective I don’t have.
this is what people do, suggesting its the same as the carbon problem is a bit disingenuous as its entirely mental rather than systemic.
i get there are similarities but they are not the same thing.
i have seen sites with millions fold and other sites grow in its place in extremely short time spans. The idea of the current immutability of the internets services is a fallacy and the tools to communicate are open to all, there are no blocks beyond what is truly easiest and most understood.
It is not surprise that there is an embedded profit in making sure people think its so immutable, wouldn’t want to bleed users from the garden after all.
In this particular story, most users are both unaware and are actually served a version of the internet that is designed to make them want to stay in the gardens.
Stoopid sheeple. They should listen to you, sneering at them.
Lot’s of anger at a straw-person there it seems. I’m suggesting they are unaware at a level that takes an understanding that there is an option and a desire to do so.
Whats interesting is that in the last year I see more angry people like you rather than clueless ones.
this tells me awareness is growing and thats good.
be as angry as you want. ive been pissed since these people starting trying to take away the internet we paid to build.
FFS. There is no point lecturing people from on high. Talk about it, sure. Information is good. But moralising will do nothing useful. Point your fingers at bad systems, not the people who are just trying to live their lives under mostly quite difficult circumstances. Improve the environment in which people are forced to make difficult trade-offs. Don’t bully them for facing difficult trade-offs and not being obsessed about exactly the same things you are. It will not do you, or anyone else, any good. The problems are structural, fight the structures.
Isn’t it difficult to initiate change to big companies without user pushback? What impetus do they have to change when their user base accepts what they are given? Sure, regulators and legislators should do something, but they aren’t going to do it on their own. People need to do their part, and mass exodus is something the media reports on. I’m not asking anyone to abandon these places entirely, especially if their communication with certain people relies on it, but anyone can move away from them to some extent. Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s not with doing. Also, in no way am I saying that it is the users sole responsibility to bring down or hold these companies accountable, but it usually takes some grassroots to get something started.
People need to do a lot of things. Very few people have the time to do everything they’d like to do, let alone everything you’d like them to do.
Attack the systems that trap us, not the people who are trapped by them. This is not hard.
How do you think we should attack the system? Isn’t boycotting exactly that?
Of course it is. But attacking other people for not joining your boycott is attacking other people, not the system. Like I said, talk about why you boycott X but don’t sneer at or lecture anyone who is not also boycotting X.
This is not hard.
im not sure where you are seeing this, unless you are speaking generally.
if this is directed at me, I would say its this tone I get from people that would inspire me to look down and potentially lecture.
as i am often told, its not what you are saying, its how you are saying it.
Yeah, they really come off as an angry jerk when they’re telling us not to be jerks.
ive projected my online anger before too. on lemmy there are going to be a lot of
“i dont like this about the internet”
wit replies that say
“well dont use the billionaires toy, drive your own internet instead”
which regardless of how its presented i expect can feel like an onslaught if you are trying to understand and still feel connected in some way to those networks.
Ive never really depended on them for connection and have always considered it extremely rude to expect me to communicate with you using systems like these. Its not just a game of “come talk to me here” its “you can only talk to me if you click 3 agreements, hand over your personal info to a large corp and accept multiple trackers on your browser”
thats quite an ask for messages I can send via email if its REALLY that important.