oxjox @ oxjox @lemmy.ml

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46

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1,313

Joined

2 yr. ago

Moderating

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You haven't addressed the issue I've raised.

I am and will continue to be concerned with businesses because I'm a human being who needs to eat and has a life outside my home.
I am telling you that most businesses only use Instagram in place of any other means of notifications.
It's currently not possible to keep up with events without having an Instagram account. I already miss out on most events because the instagram algorithm usually shows me posts that are days past the event and I'm not on there for more than an hour in a whole month.

Your solution, to abstain from life, is not feasible. Maybe it is for you but for most people it's not.

You are also missing the point of the matter where these businesses are going to continue to use a platform that is now explicitly censoring information and seemingly pushing fascist agendas. If you were a business and wanted to maintain a relationship with your customers, what option do you have? As I've said, the tools to use social media to run a business have been refined for years. There's nothing close to comparable either in the fediverse, with websites, newsletters, rss feeds, calendars, etc.

I completely understand the theory and moral argument; but in practice, how does this take effect?

If I delete my account, I'm not longer able to see events and sales, etc at local businesses.

My favorite local grocery store has 32,000 Instagram followers. How many of them have to leave to convince that business owner to start using a federated platform? A local bar I go to maybe six times a year doesn't even have a website - only an IG account with 5k followers. It's only because of their IG account that I know they have a chili cookout coming up that I want to enter.

So logistically, how do we, those who want to jump ship, make these businesses jump with us?

The best I've got is some avatar change to bring awareness but I don't post enough that anyone would see it anyway. Or maybe actually post something on IG and leave it pinned there. I don't have any posts on my account so maybe leaving an inspiring post would help. This would require not deleting my account.

Moreover, for small businesses, I know a lot of them are spending a few hundred or thousand dollars here and there to promote events and sales. This is one of the weaknesses of the fediverse. I don't think it's unfair that a business or person has the ability to spend money to ensure their announcement is noticed. Another fed weakness / powerful feature of corporate-social media is the lack of tools for businesses to conduct business. It's just a lot easier to use these platforms that have ten years of updates to make things work best for the most people.

Holy Shit. It's real and it's nuts.

I only use the website instead of the app but searching for #Democrat results in démoratie and démocratieparticipative while searching for #Republican results in republican, republican party, republicanmemes, republicanwomen, republicans.

It's shocking to experience this sort of censorship in real time.

I wish I had more influence to get people to more to a federated platform. Me quitting IG isn't going to do anything other than cut myself off from information I occasionally want to access (local business events).

Ugh. And they can do whatever they want. The vast majority of people, even if they care a little, won't jump ship.

Social media is looking more like a religion these days.

Anyone here old enough to remember the Exxon Valdez?

Who's is "we all"?

There were a large cohort of Americans who were protesting the Biden Harris administration and promoting the anti-vote for Harris. Some blame this group for Harris' loss. In my personal experience, it seemed like the vast majority of people were not aware of Trump's history or intentions regarding Israel. When I tried to inform people, I was banned from a community on Lemmy for being antisemitic and a genocide lover.

Nice! Thank you.

I’ve been using Instagram as a way to stay up to date with all the local community events or small businesses doing events around me for the past couple of years.

You have?? This is what I was using the platform for but then, many years ago, they forced an algorithm on us so I was no longer able to use it. Most of the posts I see are days old so I always miss events.

I would love if more establishments / organizations would use newsletters and public calendars. I've been trying to tell people, you want to own your content and your mailing list, but Meta makes it so easy for them to do things that it's an uphill battle.

I use an RSS reader to deal with newsletters. I use BigNews but there's also Stoop which give you an email address to subscribe to newsletters without them flooding your inbox.

assess what type of DEI programs are still discriminating against Americans

The official said it was “very fitting” that the order was announced on Martin Luther King Jr. Day because “this is order is meant to return to the promise and the hope, captured by civil rights champions, that one day all Americans can be treated on the basis of their character, not by the color of their skin.”

I don't think I can handle four more years of this brain bending insanity. I've tried to understand where people are coming from. I've been of the belief that most of us are good people and want the same things. But trying to unpack the thoughts and whims of POTUS on a daily basis is just going to break my brain. I work at a computer all day so I'm not sure how I'm going to prevent myself from encountering this circus. I'm weighing the choice of living in blissful ignorance or in utter despair.

For over eight yers, my heart has hurt because of the sheer stupidity and ignorance taking control of this country. I am not seeing any signs of improvement. On the contrary, it seems very apparent that it's getting worse.

Great. Then we agree you can just remove it. No harm done and you can easily move on with your life.

Not that anyone asked me but I support a two pronged approach that involves revamping the entire immigration system while sending aid to countries suffering mass emigration. (Seriously, how do I get asked to participate in one of these polls?)

I don’t know if they’re trying to hide their racism but I’ve observed many people say they’re just focused on the illegal immigrants. I think a lot of people actually respect the value of immigrants in this country and want them to come here via the appropriate channels.

If we minimize the astounding number of people coming here illegally because their country is shit and/or because our system for processing them is shit, it should be logistically easier to track and capture people coming in for nefarious reasons.

What we should all be more concerned about is our inability to escape political theater and propaganda. We are being lied to and manipulated to hate and to attack one another for the benefit of corporations and politicians. In and of itself, this isn’t new. But it’s ability in the 21st century to spread and mutate instantaneously is something we have to make ourselves more conscious of.

Edit: Trump just signed an executive order making it more difficult for people seeking assylum to enter legally https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/jan/20/live-fact-check-trump-inauguration-day-president/

Within an hour of being inaugurated, Trump’s administration disabled the CBP One app, a promise he made during his campaign. The app launched during Trump’s first term and former President Joe Biden expanded its use. Biden allowed asylum seekers to use the CBP One application to schedule appointments at ports of entry. Illegal immigration at the southern border dropped substantially after Biden made most people ineligible for asylum if they crossed the U.S. border between ports of entry. The Department of Homeland Security says all CBP One appointments are canceled. According to CBS News, around 270,000 migrants were in Mexico awaiting CBP One appointments. A reporter for The Washington Post shared a video of a woman in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, crying after hearing that CBP One had been shut down.

If you’re just “using an app”, the whole thing would be meaningless to you.

Sorry, not sorry. Life has existed before social media and before TikTok.

I hope this is a lesson that no one should invest so much of their time or emotional energy into something owned and operated by someone else. This includes but is not limited to Google products, Apple iCloud, Netflix, YouTube, Spotify, Instagram, etc. These things will all go away one day. Prepare yourself.

Of course this sucks. If ByteDance cared as much about its users as they claimed, they would have obliged with US demands. They instead chose to shut their system down rather than not collect data and manipulate users.

I hope everyone has learned they are not the only platform doing this. We should all be very concerned with how our data and viewing habits are used to manipulate us in overt and subconscious ways. We have to put pressure on congress to implement stricter privacy laws in the US. Although, I don’t know how you win an argument against Meta and X. Perhaps we should be voting for legislators who have the best interests of The People in mind? Right, that wouldn’t be American.

Everything sucks. These platforms are driven only by the best interest of stock holders. It used to be different. The early years of social media were fun and personal and organic. Then they shoved algorithms down our throats and everyone rejoiced.

People need to take their choices more seriously. We need to put our money where our mouth is and support platforms and makers and creators that align with our values. Vote with your wallet. And when you’re not paying for something, make yourself aware of the terms and conditions. Personally, I will never use a service that asks for my phone number.

We’ve allowed algorithm-driven corporate-controlled social media to become far too powerful. It’s had an immeasurably negative impact on humanity. And we keep voting for people who want to give more power to the corporations who control our sense of reality.

With that said, I’d venture to guess this ban will be short lived. The rational makes complete sense (as SCOTUS has agreed) but politics will have more to say.

Do you also send thanks to abusive partners because they force their spouses to learn to cook for them?

I mean, yeah. It’s great that homeless drug addicts get to know how to use the public transit system so well 👍

You are delusional. You’re fitting your narrative into the situation without the ability (or desire) to step back and observe the reality.

People are learning mandarin because they are so addicted to this form of social media that they are choosing to learn a new language over using other forms of social media.

LOL Good job injecting your narrative into something completely unrelated.

These platforms would not be as successful if they were just about offering a nice place for friends to congregate. If that were the case, Myspace would still be relevant and forums would still be more active than FB and Reddit.

Here we are on Lemmy - free of ads and algorithms and corporate control. If it was all about people searching for means of connection, what aren't more people here?

Because the corporations have created an algorithm to maintain engagement to show you ads. Engagement is driven by strong emotions. Strong emotions are created by chemical reactions in your brain. What you're being shown on corporate controlled social media is what they know will keep the chemicals flowing aggressively around in your grey matter.

People have been alienated for millennia. The internet has existed and has been embracing outcasts for over 40 years. I would suggest that you take a step back and consider why people are choosing one platform over another and what differentiates the platforms from one another.

This is a case where people are so occupied with a platform proven to threaten their nation's national security and their own perception of reality that they would choose to embrace that foreign adversary over their own country. If that's not an addiction, I don't know what is.

I hope you find a place of peace to congregate with others who make you feel known. Corporate controlled social media should have never been that place.

And yet people still use what they hate.

The whole social media thing is just bizarre to me. I mean, I was an early adopter on everything from myspace to twitter to instagram. I joined and left these platforms before most people were using them. But then to companies figured out how to manipulate users by using algorithms to increase engagement and addiction - this is what solidified adoption. What I find difficult to digest is the vast number of people who are well aware of the problems around social media and still continue to use it as if they're addicted to crack.

There's nothing social about social media anymore. It's a platform for corporations and billionaires and dictators to host user generated content (AI content pending) for the purpose of extracting personal interests that help them sell ads and user data. It's first and foremost a manipulation platform. And it's free to use.

And now that people have had a taste of their drug of choice, they're stuck. Sure, some people will quit. But, until another just as enticing drug comes along, the majority will stick around and deal with ramifications of corporate controlled manipulation platforms. Where else are people going to get their news? Where are they going to share family trips? Where are they going to do this in a platform designed to maintain engagement and release the drips of dopamine they've become addicted to? If your response is Mastodon or Bluesky or Pixelfed, you're delusional.

It maintained some semblance of a challenge. A mass exodus leaves a welcome vacuum for it to flourish.

Yes. That's exactly what I said.