Comment by keiferski
2 days ago
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.
The primary and most important feature of a messaging app is the ability to message a lot of people.
Signal is the best messaging app, but not by metrics people use to measure messaging apps, because not a ton of people use it. I use signal, but I also still use SMS (garsp!) because ultimately sometimes I just need to send a message.
It sucks and it's stupid, what we need more than anything else, more than any app, is open and federated messaging protocols.
Great first step either way! The pressure for social conformity is a hell of a drug and I try to have compassion for those suffering from it, even as I try to gently encourage them to grow past it.
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.
Sayings like "Vote with your wallet" come about as a byproduct of living in an economic system that is on its face democratic and capitalist yet somehow still concentrates political and market power in the hands of a few.
If something is bad, it's said that the free market will offer an alternative and the assumed loss of market share will rein in the bad thing. It ignores, as does most un-nuanced discourse about economy and society, that capitalism does not equate to a free market outside of a beginner's economics textbook, and democracy doesn't prevent incumbents from buying up the competition (FB/Instagram) or attempting to block competition outright (Tiktok).