| ▲ | pixl97 4 hours ago |
| >I don't have or use Facebook, Instagram, Whats App, Reddit There is a particular amount of economic privilege in this statement. While I am a person who doesn't use those services (and recently stopped using reddit), a large number of people are required to use those services for their job, so they can get money, so they can put food on the table. Worse these companies ingrain themselves into a lot of physical locations and data collection from other sources so your not free of them. Individual boycotts rarely work, even ones that attract attention from a good number of people, companies are better at waiting than individuals seem to be. Political action has a much higher likelihood of success when driven by smaller motivated groups. |
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| ▲ | ericmay 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > There is a particular amount of economic privilege in this statement. Good, I am pro-privilege and support being privileged. I'm not sure how and why we came to the point in our society where if someone says "hey these products suck and I'm not going to use them", someone has to come along and attempt to guilt them into using them? You want me to create a Facebook account and post pictures of funny cats because Joe and Sally podcaster need eyeballs for their rage-bait podcasts or quirky coffee mug they drop-shipped from China? Sorry, not buying it. Don't like the products? Stop using them. Reliant on them? Go complain to regulators. Not my monkeys, not my circus. |
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| ▲ | tygon 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | For many, it is less silly cat pictures and more listing products for sale from a legitimate registered business (catering is a common one for example). Gotta do what you gotta do sometimes. If you do not take advantage of tools afforded to you, someone will and because social media like facebook is "free," that is a go-to. | | |
| ▲ | tescreal 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The "someone will" arguments never work for me. I live in a community (outside USA) where it is common to advertise offline or alternative outlets. There's no dependence "because others do". That is just defeatism. If people choose en masse to change their habits, the world has to follow suit, imho. | | |
| ▲ | pixl97 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | >If people choose en masse to change This is nearly saying "If people stop murdering each other we won't have murder any more". Well, yea no shit, a tautology is a tautology. The question is how do you elicit social change in an environment that is actively fighting back against you doing so and has a massive amount more information than you do. One of the key points here is you live outside the US so it's much more likely that your communities are far less digitally integrated and have a much different history of social change and dynamics. For example car culture presents an absolutely massive amount of friction to social change. It literally physically separates us at much larger distances than states that do not have car culture. There is also the fact the modern social media swept over the US first drawing in most of the population long before we recognized the dangers of it. Government agencies and businesses moved a healthy amount of their communications to things like social media platforms. The network effects are powerful. The next thing I'd like you to do is get on social media where all these people you want to change are and tell them to get off.... oooh, your account was banned. These companies are organisms that will fight back against what your trying. You forget the tobacco companies fought in the US for 30+ years inventing entirely new methods of propaganda before we developed laws to protect the rest of us against smoke in public. You are not talking about a choice. You are talking about a war that is actively being fought. |
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| ▲ | ericmay 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Sure, folks can do what they want. I'm not disputing that, but this idea of "privilege" in this context, to me, is quite ridiculous. |
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| ▲ | singleshot_ 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > a large number of people are required to use those services for their job Okay, but their job is a net drag on our society, so you haven’t quite convinced me. Counterproposal: ban influencers |
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| ▲ | pixl97 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Counter-counterproposal, ban influencers without attempting to ban advertising triggering an immune response from a multi-hundred billion dollar a year industry. |
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| ▲ | GJim 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > a large number of people are required to use those services for their job, so they can get money, so they can put food on the table. You mean 'influencers'? Nothing of value has been lost. > Worse these companies ingrain themselves into a lot of physical locations and data collection from other sources so your not free of them Please can you provide an example. I can't say I've ever experienced such a thing (and would never GDPR opt-in to such data sharing even if the opportunity was there). |
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| ▲ | tygon 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | While, yes, influences of course use social media, most companies have realized having a social media presence is important today. I would be interested to see stats on how beneficial social media has been to, say, Wendy's. | | |
| ▲ | pixl97 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yea, I think among a fair portion of HN there is a misunderstanding of how economically connected social media is to businesses and people. For example Meta is one of the largest advertising agencies on earth. My wife for example has a $200k+ job that involves a whole lot of interaction with social media. For her that would mean ending her job and moving on to god knows what, but probably not anything that pays near as well. And then you come to the people that represent her customers. They make 70%+ of their income advertising services either on line or social media platforms. So you end up in a race conditions. These people can't quit social media in one way or another or they stop eating. The customers have to move somewhere else first to redistribute the power the companies hold over those needing to advertise. Mostly what we see is not people quitting social media, but just moving to another social media platform shifting the problem. But also, because these people are advertising and doing tangentially related things on social media it brings their users to social media to get information. | | |
| ▲ | ericmay an hour ago | parent [-] | | Sounds like the coal miners in West Virginia whose livelihoods depend on coal production. | | |
| ▲ | pixl97 24 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I mean it's also the same thing we're starting to see with programmers and AI too, which is highly ironic after tall the "lrn 2 code" stuff that was posted online around that time. If a programmer says I'm not going to use AI and the company says use AI, the programmer can absolutely walk, but god, I would not want to try to find a new job right now. This is why things like unions and consumers pushing for consumer protection laws are fought by companies so hard. They are far more effective than individual actions because the incentives are against individual success. |
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| ▲ | tjpnz 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| If your business requires the use of one of these platforms in order to exist I would question its viability. Willingly giving a single company that much power over you is a horrible position to be in. Maybe it does put food on the table this month, great! But what happens if Zuck (or a piece of dumb automation) decides next month to boot you? |
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