Start regulating Facebook. There, I fixed it to make it more realistic, otherwise it’s about as useful as saying “Stop Using Oil”.
Equating the usefulness of oil with facebook is a stretch.
Stop Using Facebook
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Re: Stop Using Facebook
#12Start regulating Facebook. There, I fixed it to make it more realistic, otherwise it’s about as useful as saying “Stop Using Oil”.
The comparison to oil isn't apt at all. Stopping oil use is next to impossible because it's a part of almost every mode of transportation and everything that's made out of plastic. And even if you decide to abandon your life and live naked in the woods, your individual contribution will be minimal. On the other hand, you can delete your Facebook right now with minimal consequences to your quality of life and some very likely upsides. And the network effects work in the other direction too - you disappear from the list of friends of everyone you're connected to.
I guess my overall point is that when it comes to Facebook, people have a lot more choice than you seem to be suggesting.
Re: Stop Using Facebook
#13> Because Facebook hired climate change deniers as fact-checkers.
Source:
> Facebook has announced that it was teaming up with CheckYourFact.com, which is an offshoot of the anti-science media site, The Daily Caller
> The CheckYourFact website brags that: "Our mission is a non-partisan one. We're loyal to neither people nor parties — only the truth. And while the fact-checking industry continues to grow, there are still countless assertions that go unchecked. We exist to fill in the gaps."
Source's source:
> The Daily Caller, which has published misinformation about climate science for years, was co-founded by the science-denying Fox News host Tucker Carlson and is backed by major conservative donors, including Charles and David Koch, the billionaire fossil fuel barons who are the single biggest funders of climate science misinformation.
They use a source, which uses a source, which argues that CheckYourFact employees are climate change deniers because it's a spin-off of a site that was donated to by climate change deniers.
Looking at the evidence, one of the first links I saw on CheckYourFact's site was debunking a bad thing that Hillary supposedly said [1], which suggests it is not the same in agenda as The Daily Caller.
To the creator of this site: If you want this to have an impact, present the facts as-is, with no sensationalism or dramatization. Most of what you're writing very well may be true, and this seems like a noble cause, but if a reader can pick apart one questionable if not false statement, its legitimacy will be destroyed.
(If you're interested in a great piece on the importance of making claims conservatively and retaining legitimacy in reporting/writing, highly recommend checking out Spotlight, which chronicles the Boston Globe's exposure of the Catholic Church protecting pedophile priests).
[1] https://checkyourfact.com/2019/11/20/fact-check-hillary-clin...
Re: Stop Using Facebook
#14I think these calls to action are preaching to the choir. I don't even use Facebook and my eyes glazed over when seeing this.
Why are “these calls to action” just preaching to the choir? Over the last year a bunch of people I know have stopped using google search, Facebook, and the epic games launcher. It’s working slowly
Actual Google and Facebook usage data strongly suggests otherwise. In cases where one could argue that people are leaving Facebook for a competitor, it has nothing to do with privacy concerns (it would certainly be laughable if anyone thought TikTok would be better in terms of privacy).
Re: Stop Using Facebook
#15I only use Facebook for events, yet there seems to be no alternative, partly because of the network effect where small and large organizations keep posting their events only to Facebook. If there was some kind of bot that would automatically crosspost events from Facebook to other social media platforms, then perhaps there would be a chance of winning me over.
On top of that, you have certain niche online communities that seem to only be on FB those days (the days of websites with discussion forums are long gone, sadly).
Also, some of my (smart) friends insist on using FB/Messenger for group messaging. I tried to convert them to Whatsapp a few years ago which IMO is way superior, but they still prefer Messenger (which I won't ever install, so I have to use FB web to keep in touch with them).
Whatsapp is now FB-owned, so lately we wanted to move our workgroup chat to Telegram, but one of coworkers boycotted the idea, because she has already a dozen different apps to keep in touch with her friends all over the world and she refuses to install yet another app.
The network effects and inertia are really hard to overcome.
Re: Stop Using Facebook
#16Start regulating Facebook. There, I fixed it to make it more realistic, otherwise it’s about as useful as saying “Stop Using Oil”.
This is a tactic that I've noticed right wingers using increasingly: to frame societal/collective problems as individual responsibilities. We shouldn't tax billionaires because some are philantrophists. We don't need social security because you can help your neighbors through gofundme. If you worry about climate change, lower your emissions. Back in reality, only taxes, laws and regulation actually works (which they know) but it's a pretty clever rhetoric.
Re: Stop Using Facebook
#17Start regulating Facebook. There, I fixed it to make it more realistic, otherwise it’s about as useful as saying “Stop Using Oil”.
The comparison to oil isn't apt at all. Stopping oil use is next to impossible because it's a part of almost every mode of transportation and everything that's made out of plastic. And even if you decide to abandon your life and live naked in the woods, your individual contribution will be minimal. On the other hand, you can delete your Facebook right now with minimal consequences to your quality of life and some ver…
The analogy is not about the difficulty of quitting, but about externalized costs. Quitting oil won't improve your life in any way, and if you look at the lists of reasons to quit fb, most of them are not of individual concern. Just like climate change, they are collective problems. Asking people to change their habits to improve society almost never works. Taxes and regulation work.
Re: Stop Using Facebook
#18I know it's almost become a trope here already, but I'm really becoming increasingly worried about the cultural impact of the kind of entertainment that optimizes for rapid action / reward cycles. Facebook is definitely in that class, even if to me personally it's never been that attractive.
I used to say that it was impossible for me to understand how people could become hooked on activities as ridiculous as gambling on slot machines, and yet I have to shamefully admit that I've probably now spent one or two full years of my life just cycling through different news sites, even when I knew I had probably read almost all of the interesting articles already.
The insidious thing about these things is that you do get something out of it, too. I've come to realize that it's not worth it ultimately. For me, the point where I started to understand that this really wasn't healthy was when I realized that the hours I spent on rapid-reward websites per day was pretty well (negatively) correlated with my mood. It can become an escapist activity, the go-to thing to do to avoid facing actual real-world issues.
I think rapid-reward websites are particularly dangerous to people who are intrinsically very curious and thus drawn to novel information. It's sad to think how much genuinely interesting thoughts of genuinely worthwhile thinkers you could absorb instead, if these sites didn't exhert such a pull. The pessimist in me is really worried about all the 12-year-old John von Neumann's right now being intellectually poisoned by ubiquitous, rapid-reward entertainment.
Anyway, I finally made the decision to change something and blocked almost all of the rapid-reward sites in my hosts file, via browser extension and Android apps... Defense in depth. ;) [1] Now, when I feel really compelled to check some news site, I go for a run. I can honestly say that this is one of the things that I have done in my life that has had the biggest positive impact on my well-being, relative to the effort needed.
[1] Yes, I've made an exception for HN and for one super boring newspaper website. I feel those are actually worth it.
Re: Stop Using Facebook
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
The comparison to oil isn't apt at all. Stopping oil use is next to impossible because it's a part of almost every mode of transportation and everything that's made out of plastic. And even if you decide to abandon your life and live naked in the woods, your individual contribution will be minimal. On the other hand, you can delete your Facebook right now with minimal consequences to your quality of life and some ver…
The analogy is not about the difficulty of quitting, but about externalized costs. Quitting oil won't improve your life in any way, and if you look at the lists of reasons to quit fb, most of them are not of individual concern. Just like climate change, they are collective problems. Asking people to change their habits to improve society almost never works. Taxes and regulation work.
> if you look at the lists of reasons to quit fb, most of them are not of individual concern.
Some of the main reasons like privacy and mental health are of individual concern. I'm not arguing against regulation for oil or Facebook, just pointing out that the incentives are very different on an individual level.
Re: Stop Using Facebook
#20Oh boy this again.
Everybody has heard about all these things on the telly, on online newspapers, etc. The media launched a massive campaign against Facebook. It didn't work. People find value in Facebook and they don't care about your predicament. Let people enjoy things!