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Many of us have left the big social media platforms; far more of us *wish* we could leave them; and even those of us who've escaped from Facebook/Insta and Twitter still spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to get the people we care about off of them, too.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/20/capitalist-unrealism/#praxis
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"This is why Bluesky is in a dangerous place: not because it is backed by VCs, not because it is a for-profit entity, but because it has captive users and no constraints. It's a great party in a sealed building with no fire exits"
Friends don’t let friends use Facebook.
Dr. King did it without social media and with the media of the time fully against him. So we need to go back and re-learn the lessons from the civil rights movement.
Yes, changing social media will offer some obstacles, but massive and successful protests happened before the Internet and social media existed. Seems incredible now. The 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Justice surpassed 200,000 and was organized by telephone and in person conversations by Bayard Rustin and team. When certain social media outlets are captured or compromised as organizing tools, the organizing will move to other tools, including texts and (shudder) phone calls.
I'm deleting all Meta platforms for at least a week. And I'm looking forward to the attention span I get back from just focusing on the Fediverse and real life.
LB: I think I agree with everything @pluralistic says here. Every time I got to a "but..." [finger raised] place, he either addressed it or went in a different direction than I was expecting.
This also answers my own question about "why not Mastodon?", also asked by many others.
My only question now is "can I get hired to work on this..."
Caring about those they can connect with there is the reason people stick with enshittification-based social media, but that is itself one more reason to leave it. Participating does harm to the people you care about by encouraging them to keep that bad habit. Even if it doesn't persuade anyone else it's enough motivation for me.
They are locked in because they lack perspective and self-discipline and because their dopamine loops have been hacked by evil techbro sorcerers who used Big Data to fashion history's first functional mind-control ray resulting in real, material things.
They are locked in because actually they don't care because they lack way to much perspective and self discipline and are way to happy with their dopamine.
They are as locked in as the bodies in matrix movies that provide the system with energy and sustain the system with their energy. They are their self fulfilling prophecy, because they don't care enough, they don't understand enough and they never experienced the alternative.
They are as locked in as Germans were in their society in 1933 and as we all are in our consumerist customs and daily life in the face of climate change.
And that's why this whole discussion ultimately is kinda senseless and useless because what climate change will impose on the societies will shadow everything you (we) can imagine.
They could work on plan B and leaving step by step, building up first the alternative till they come to the tipping point and than move ultimately.
But, they wont because they are way to hypnotized and "programed" by their acquired customs. Even choosing bluesky as the option just proves that point again.
As Malcom stated, they are "house negros".
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