Comment by jwr
2 days ago
If we write content for closed platforms known to do terrible things, I guess we should not be surprised when said platforms do terrible things.
I keep trying to convince people not to use Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter/X, but I'm not getting anywhere.
Write your own content and post it on your own terms using services that you either own or that can't be overtaken by corporate greed (like Mastodon).
Individual actions like this will never do anything, because the average person is not going to spend hours upon hours investigating platforms. They just want an easy way to connect with their friends and family, follow artists, etc.
Which is why I think the only solution has to come at the governmental regulatory level. In “freedom” terms it could be framed as freedom from, as in freedom from exploitation, unlawful use of data, etc. but unfortunately freedom to seems to be the most corporate friendly interpretation of freedom.
>They just want an easy way to connect with their friends and family
You'd be surprised how many people in your life can be introduced to secure messaging apps like Signal (which is still centralized, so not perfect, but a big step in the right direction compared to Whatsapp, Facebook, etc) by YOU refusing to use any other communication apps, and helping them learn how to install and use Signal.
I got my parents and siblings all to use Signal by refusing to use WhatsApp myself. And yet all of them still use WhatsApp to communicate among each other. They have Signal installed, they have an account, they know how to use it, and yet they fall back to WhatsApp. Some people really do want to choose Hell over Heaven.
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Correct. I was shocked when one of my non-technical family members moved over to Proton Mail. I was super proud of them even if it came from left field!
This is correct. Which is why "vote with your wallet" is also a flawed strategy. At the scale these companies are operating, individual action does not move the needle, and it is impossible to coordinate enough collective action to move the needle.
There is no feasible way for a normie like me to convince enough people to take any kind of action collectively that will be noticed by FAANG.
I think we like to pretend otherwise, like oh if enough people stop using Instagram, they will fail. This is only true in the most literal sense, because "enough" is an enormous number, totally unachievable by advocacy.
"Vote with your wallet" implies that the rich deserve more votes. Individual action in dollars per vote simply can't matter against the rivers of wealth in ad spend and investors. It's not just a flawed strategy, but sometimes believing in "vote with your wallet" signifies consent or at least complicity that the advertiser buying a lot of ads or the rich idiot with a lot of money invested in gaining your private data "should" win.
We need far better strategies than "vote with your wallet". I think it is at least time to get rid of "vote with your wallet" from our collective vocabularies, for the sake of actual democracy.
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So many thoughts on this...
The platforms and their convenience that one "only" has to write the post yet the internet needs so much metadata, so it tried to autogenerate it, instead of asking for it. People are put off by need to write a bloody subject for an email already, imagine if they were shown what's actually the "content" is.
About convincing: get the few that matters on deltachat, so they don't need anything new or extra - it's just email on steroids.
As for Mastodon: it's still someone else's system, there's nothing stopping them from adding AI metadata either on those nodes.
How is mastodon someone else's system? You can host your mastodon server just like you can host your email server or matrix server.
And other mastodon servers, just like other email servers, can of course still modify the data they receive how they'd like.
Use them as the public toilet they are. Never put in any effort in anything you upload.
Why deltachat, an app I've never heard of before instead of Signal, which is also open source and at least has a bit of traction?
Delta.Chat is really underappreciated, open-source and distributed. I recommend you at least look into it.
Signal, on the other hand, is a closed "opensource" ecosystem (you cannot run your own server or client), requires a phone number (still -_-) and the opensource part of it does not have great track record (I remember some periods where the server for example was not updated in the public repo).
But yeah, if you want the more popular option, Signal is the one.
Not even knowing what deltachat is, however Signal was suspected from the start of being developed by the NSA (read the story about the founder and the funding from the CIA) and later received tens of million USD each year from the US government to keep running. So it is never advisable option when the goal is to acquire some sense of privacy.
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Owning your own site and using federated spaces like Mastodon is absolutely a healthier model, and I wish it were more viable for more people. But until discovery, reach, and social norms shift in a big way, a lot of folks are going to be stuck straddling both worlds
Most people write to be read. Surely I can write on my own blog, but no one would read them (not that my social media is much more worth reading though.)
Plus, what about videos? How is a non-tech savvy creator going to host their content if it's best in video format?
> I keep trying to convince people not to use Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter/X,
I'm with you, but WhatsApp is tough. How do you keep in touch?
I left Insta the day FB bought it; closed my FB, twitter, and Google accounts a couple of years later; WA was the hardest to leave, I'll grant. Since I left, I've used: phone; email; Signal; Telegram; letters; post cards; meeting up in person; sms; Mastodon; tried a couple of crypto chats. There are so many options it's not worth worrying about.
In the cases of special interest groups (think school/club/street/building groups), I just miss out, or ask for updates when I meet people. I am a bit out of the loop sometimes. No-one's died as a result of my leaving. When someone did actually die that I needed to know about, I got a phone call.
Honestly... just leave. Just leave. It's not worth your time worrying about these kind of "what ifs".
How about close friends who live on the other side of the world?
Telegram and Signal are, to me, about as trustworthy as WhatsApp. Well, actually, nobody really uses Signal, and Telegram is about the same as WhatsApp so who cares.
Waiting to meet my friends once every 1-2 years is not enough. I want to chat daily with them, because they are my close friends.
Daily telephone conversations with a group of them? Nope. Snail mail? It doesn't work for daily conversation.
So WhatsApp it is!
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The OP is also on Mastodon already, but social networks are ruled by their gravity well, unfortunately.