I don't know of they fail to see this because they are blinded by their hope or there is a more complex viewpoint I'm missing.

There is. "We want to escape" is a very different viewpoint from "we want to liberate the masses."

Freeing yourself from the social media is definitely doable. Depending on how firmly engaged you are at the moment, it can vary in difficulty between fait accompli and moderately challenging. It's obviously possible for anyone to do themselves.

Liberating the masses? Morpheus said it best:

"The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it."

> "We want to escape" is a very different viewpoint from "we want to liberate the masses."

I don't think this is a point the author spoke about at all.

To crudely summarize what I think their claim is: Cyberdecks are an anti-big tech creation. They are spreading outside traditional hackers and the proof is these reels.

My claim is that cyberdecks are not spreading, and instead those reels is just evidence that (a) people will mine all subcultures for topics that they can create views from and (b) the author themselves is enabling this behavior.