I suggest watching the video, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QkC1aK7jfLo but the article has an OK summary.
Also a Mastodon shout-out in the video.
good luck, this is like trying to convince a heroin addict to quit because it’s bad for them…
social media algorithms are too good, they are too enticing. They have turned distraction into a multi-trillion dollar industry, and they are impacting every single one of our lives whether we are even on the platform or not
Problem is discipline. Reach for a book instead of doom scrolling. Get something done on the house instead of reading X shitposts. The way most people use phones is a sick addiction that needs treatment, and nobody intervenes. I mean people can’t look in front of their 2 ton steel cage while they hum down the road at 80mph without checking if some random twat added to their snap story lol.
You and I are the same. Ive been replacing phone distraction crap with better things like books and crafts. Or my GBC, lol
The human brain can’t handle all the shit in our devices. They’re detrimental to learning.
I recall a book where people were mandated to have an ear piece that shrieks every 6 seconds, to make sure no one ever has any deep thoughts, to keep them dumb and compliant. Guess what our phone notifications are doing? Its probably the worst thing humans have done in the long term.
That would be the short story Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut.
Thank you I had forgot the title
Insane how much literature from over 50 years ago had so much foresight. Just started 1981 and it is eerie to say the least!
Isnt it crazy? I know its been memed to death but reading 1984 is like HoooLlly shit how does no one see this and why is it not being stopped. Similar with reading grapes of wrath.
I literally started reading 1984 because of the memes and constant references to it last few years lol. Have not heart of grapes of wrath will have to check that one out next! Thanks for the book recccomendation!
Oh its a classic. Needs to be read by everyone IMO. Also, east of eden .
Good quote that has been true for hundred years:
I’m trying 🤞 I came to the realization a couple years ago that I was in my phone too much. Memory not what it was, focus lost. It’s an uphill battle but I have been getting further away from it every day. Focus, like reading, takes practice. A lot of people out there are “self diagnosing” ADHD these days because they can’t do anything without watching reels while doing it and their focus is lost. Not trying to demean any mental health issues, just know the phone thing will lead to mental problems! If you smoke crack every day you WILL get addicted and it will impact your health. Phone is no different, nobody is immune no matter how strong willed you think you are.
I do those things… and social media/phone users tell me I’m an asshole for not being addicted to my phone.
It’s socially isolating for a lot of people if they aren’t doing what everyone else is doing and aren’t following social media trends that most people are freaking out about.
I’ve had to socially isolate myself a lot more the last few years because it’s so intensely pervasive. Like I meet people, they ask me what my social media handle is, and they get ANGRY when I say I don’t use it. And even ANGRIER when they ask me what I spend all my time doing and I say I read paper books, watch films from the library, etc. and they tell me that makes me anti social and a pretentious douchebag.
That’s rough man. Wise woman once told me tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are, probably just as well to loose some of that crowd. Probably the same folk that before phones would be regulars at the same bar 7 days a week, and only befriended bar mates.
Yeah, they tend to be heavy drinkers and can’t socialize without alcohol. They just get drunk at home and doom scroll and group chat now.
Watch the video, they have a great discussion. Jon Stewart seems to think Reddit is great now and Cindy Cohn fights back a little.
The value of social media lies is in it’s ability to change thoughts, opinions, and long-term behavior. The public underestimates how effective this technology is, especially when it comes to children. In the absence of regulations, these platforms can make people believe just about anything by exploiting perceived peer pressure.
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.
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.
Lemmy is sufficient, and if we stay, it will grow, along with piefed.
Reddit was good too, and still is decent.
The important thing is that the communities that are good are generally small and the commenters actually know each other and that creates a lot of positive social pressure to act like a normal person.
You can be recognized and develop a reputation. For example, I recognized @pelespirit@sh.itjust.works from their community: Politics@sh.itjust.works. I recognize Kolanaki by his giant unicode character username. I see Ada from Blahj everywhere.
Because of this, I have a more human view of their personality and even when we disagree it’s way less likely to devolve into toxic social media slap fights because it’s a lot easier to give them the benefit of the doubt due to previous positive interactions.
I, honestly, think forum communities pre-Myspace were the peak social media experience
I know you’re joking, but it made me think.
On platforms like Twitter I never felt seen. I felt like I was talking to myself for the 30 seconds I actually engaged with it (I never could stand the format or the interface really).
On Lemmy I do feel seen, because it’s so much smaller. I know people read what I write and I get way more feedback here than I’ve ever gotten since (maybe) 2010-era Reddit.
But important? Anyone who can use the Internet to make themselves feel important must have been a sociopath to begin with because as near as I can tell the Internet is a misery machine designed to make you feel like a dumbshit.
Come to think of it, that’s probably why I hate the entire concept of “influencers” and the human toilets who call themselves that.
For me it’s just the character limit.
I like reddit because people could write in paragraphs. Twitter never had any appeal to me because it could never be more than slogan-slinging and when i briefly used it it just seemed utterly stupid to be limited to like 10 words.
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
It’s such a modern problem, clearly we need some new solutions. Maybe verified, none anonymous social media is at least part of that solution.
I’m not saying that all social media should be verified accounts. But if everything becomes bots run by EvilCorp, then there’s nothing left for the rest of us.
As far as I know there’s nothing about the Fediverse that protects us from EvilCorps bots
Id’ing everyone to what they say on social media is not the “only way,” it’s the path to ruin. Have fun with your palantir crafted social score being used against you pal. Such a shit take, no wonder we are where we are. And you are railing against propaganda too, the irony.
Yeah anonymity and pseudonymity have been stolen from us IRL in a lot of cases and we shouldn’t cede them online. We should also take them back irl. Go lie about who you are to someone you meet.
“Who, me, officer? I’m just captainlezbian@lemmy.world.”
I love how Jon thinks reddit is now good. way to miss the mark there man.
as a long time daily show fan this is the very first time i got really confused by jon’s apparent world view. what was it?
15yrs ago reddit was a mess. now it is welcoming to people
da fuq?! or maybe i am just a weirdo
I had a lot of hopes for Jon, and he’s kind of letting me down here. Not the guy we need, he lacks the killer instinct we need. To take the nomination from the dems establishment and challenge the r’s that is. He trusts the establishment too much.
He could win though, if he tried.
he’s a comedian. not a politician.
It’s not about what he is now, it’s about answering the call for what we need. It’s time to man up and serve because we need a champion.
There isn’t a distinction between those two things anymore. They’re the same.
I’m doing my part!
Same. I dropped FB and Twitter several years ago. It helped that I’m old and never kept in touch with family through FB to begin with. Also, I don’t buy crap I don’t need, so I never used their marketplace.
There are alternatives, but as long as FB doesn’t remove features that people use, they won’t leave. They can’t see that they’re being abused, just like every other abusive relationship.
Have u ever bought a used car? Market place is kind of the only way to go, nevermind if you want to sell stuff. I REALLY miss craigslist.
Yeah. I only use fb for market place. Fb knows this, and its getting insanely enshittified every day now. I give it a year before you have to pay to use it.
Funny… the one thing I still use Facebook for is getting rid of crap I don’t need - my neighborhood Buy Nothing group is there, though I wish it weren’t.
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.
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.
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]”
Individuals can make accounts on the fediverse meaning they no longer exclusively rely on meta/twitter meaning meta/twitter becomes less important.
I get that a lot of people have all their family on facebook/twitter or whatever, or business page etc. but just make an account on mastodon too, now the fediverse becomes a more attractive place for everyone else.
The “Gee thanks I’m cured” theory of social change.
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 understood her differently. I understood that she advocated into making it possible to leave platforms, saying that it currently isn’t. She said the people are the victims here and often don’t have a choice.
People cannot leave platforms because each platform is like an isle, and leaving it means losing connections to other people. It that sense they are locked-in, by social pressure.
This is is a natural monopoly which, gives social media companies so much power and prevents newcomers (like the fediverse) from joining the market.
Making the current social media companies less important, for instance via privacy laws, means people can connect and stay connected to other people via other means. It makes it easier to just leave twitter or meta, if they don’t like it there. Instead of being peer pressured into right extreme politics, because the algorithm decided that it gets more engagement when surrounding thrm with nazis.
She made it clear that replacing an dictator with another dictator that censors differently is bad, so she made a point against bluesky and for Mastodon and the fediverse.
(Sadly ehe wasn’t given the opportunity to fully complete her arguments though.)
The only way I can see forward is regulation. Antitrust laws have been suspended for too long. They have to be enforced, and interoperable standards must be fiercely enforced, without loopholes, without exceptions. If leaving Facebook for another social media platform does not have to mean you’ll lose all your connections, thanks to interoperable standards, it will be easier for people to ditch them and harder for them to become monopolies.
Droppin the link to the EFF website save you the search
She was a great guest - and it was really cool to hear the “mastadonverse” shoutout haha.
While not 100% her final point, one of the greatest disappointments of the Internet has been watching rot and crumble into just 5 websites, each just posting screenshots/videos from the other four.
Gee, wonder Fediverse users, how is that even possible? /s
People still use them? Why?
probably sunk cost (time invested, followers gained, networking) + real addiction (meta and x will try to trigger any emotion from you so you are invested in the platform) + accessibility (free or cheap access on mobile data with big providers)
Marketplace killed Craigslist because they’re actually halfway decent at detecting and removing scams. Basically the only redeeming feature
If we had proper anti-trust laws, Marketplace would have been a separate entity that could survive on its own, while the rest dies.
Turns out getting your news from entities that financially support fascism is a bad idea.
