Cindy Cohn Warns Jon Stewart That Americans Have to Make X and Meta 'Less Important' | Video
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Cindy Cohn touched on the toxicity of the social media space in a wide-ranging interview with "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart Monday night.
  • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.worldEnglish
    52·
    8 days ago

    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.

    • xtr0n@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      11·
      6 days ago

      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]”

    • Bluescluestoothpaste@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      7 days ago

      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.