Human beings have spent hundreds of years maintaining community, friendships, and relationships without having a billionaire decide what we should and shouldn’t see. The idea that any tech-billionaire's advertising platform is our only option to move into the future is a farce, their stranglehold over the world’s digital footprint is less than 20 years old, and we can be leave them behind.
No one likes advertisements, and no one likes having their every move tracked by corporations. Meta’s swing from “woke” to anti-woke proves that they’re not interested in anything but latching onto the political pendulum shifts of a divided nation to maximize revenue. They have no principles besides making money, and they don’t see their users as anything but a vector for increasing profit. Is that all you are? A vector for increasing profit? A point on a scatterplot that can be sold and marketed to? I certainly hope that framing of your personhood disgusts you, it disgust me.
Social Media is the same advertising, marketing, and news media we’ve had for the last 70 years with a new coat of paint. The lie that they're offering anything new has only served to inflate their pocketbooks and their power. The only thing social about their business is that their power depends on their user base continuing to scroll and interact. They depend on our eyes, ears, and minds to fuel their multi-billion dollar advertising scheme.
We can break these chains by rejecting the whims of “social media” giants and technology companies. We can break these chains by logging out and moving our attention to connections in the real world.
The digital-utopia of the internet is dead and cannot be resusicitated.
Reach out to your friends directly, join community groups in your local area, and check out as many bulletin boards as you can find. Make friends and connections the way human beings have done for hundreds of years. Tech-giants like Meta, X, Amazon, etc. only seek to further atomize our society because it lines their pockets. We must reject Meta, reject X, reject all billionaire oligarchs using your participation in their advertising revenue scheme as a cudgel to attack your human rights. Billionaire interests are not your interests, thus you should not be interested in what they're selling you.
All the best,
Bree@ns4b.org