On the other hand, Stewarts is also right. An Instagram feed is not free speech, it's brain rot and propaganda and ruins society and lives. It needs to be regulated. Just letting then go on as they are while promoting alternatives misses the mark as to the threat posed by these platforms. Cohn seems to have a blind spot here.

I don't think so. She said she wants to make them unable to continue with their business like they did before, with regulations. Just not outright censorship, but instead go fight their data harvesting, decapitating their business strategy.

I think Mozilla's controversial "Deplatforming is not enough" lays out a better strategy for "the algorithm" problem to me.

Having big tech be able to work in secret to pick anf choose what content isnt allowed and then being super charged by the state to do it for them as well just doesnt sit well with me

Not just a spokesperson. Cindy Cohn is a warrior queen. She's retiring as Executive Director of the EFF this year after serving for over 10 years. She's a lawyer who has been fighting for our civil liberties for over 20 years. Maximum respect.

So Cohn did mention comprehensive privacy laws and the ability to leave platforms. These are absolutely things that need to happen.

However as an individual there are still things you can do. Cohn mentions Bluesky because it has no algorithm (except the "Discovery" feed). Cohn also mentions (in the video) Mastodon. And the truth is you don't need to switch fully, just don't only slurp down the concentrated hate machine(s).

Look at Lemmy. Reddit decided to be pricks and a bunch of individuals jumped over here to create what I think is a pretty good community. That doesn't mean the problem is solved. That doesn't mean Reddit isn't still a problem. That doesn't mean Lemmy is perfect. But that is a win and something individuals can do.

Additionally, those are things you can do now. You don't need to wait for some law to be passed to fix things. You can make the move now. (While still advocating for laws to fix things.)

This isn't something we as individuals have control of.

Absolute nonsense.

I guess they had the opposite development of Twitter, banning hateful content and trying to keep their house clean. Compared to Zuck and Musk whoever runs Reddit can probably be argued to be a great humanist.

Not saying it's a good platform. It's still a cesspool in my experience, and their approach to moderation produces a wild amount of false positives while bots are roaming free. It seems to me very far from a place for genuine human connection.

Nevertheless, for someone who sees social media as being Instagram, Facebook, X, TikTok, Reddit, and Snapchat, I can see how Reddit stands out as the better option.

It's too bad Cohn didn't get to talk more about Mastodon.

While Jon comes across as a white knight, and I really enjoy his satirical personna, I sometimes find his lukewarm condemnation of the Gaza genocide, and take on other subjects, a bit suspicious.

I guess age makes me more cautious.

I never used Twitter in the first place, so I guess I'm not in the "addicted" category, but I did have an account, in November of 2024 I did actively cancel that X account. Google pushes me X links in my "news feed" I consistently tell Google "No more stories from ____ on X" (they won't let you block all of X, I wonder why....)

Seriously, folks, how hard is it to just walk away? I was on BlueSky for about 3-4 months, got a little invested/addicted to the platform and took a hard look at what value I was getting from it - on balance: negative. Cold turkey, do I miss it? No.

Facebook holds a (solitary) users group I occasionally want to talk with captive, they acknowledge it's a terrible platform but they're too lazy to leave, so I log in when I need to talk with them and that's it. Anybody "in there" I care about? Long distance phone calls are free these days, e-mail works, why should I be sharing stuff with people I don't know just to communicate with people I do know?

Just checked them out after the video. Thinking about signing up to volunteer.

Pushing SSL was probably the last big tech effort/push that actually benefited users. Sure it made self hosting a little harder, and probably consolidated some tracking behind bigger players, but overall end users did benefit.

Most of what I see now is purely for their benefit and users don't benefit.

Living rurally, the main thing I hear is "but marketplace". It's a pretty crucial way of getting cheap goods.

The problem is addiction. Same as any other drug. It's no coincidence that Facebook and X were rolled out as free services, with free accounts, where you can interact with anyone for free.

Before the digital drug dealers running each changed that deal. Needing money, running ads, and restricting what you can do that all used to be free.

These companies got us addicted to using tech in place of human socialization and then monitized that addiction.

People can't leave because for some it's the only human contact they have. Even if it's artificial, they still want it to the point of it hurting themselves. Just like any other addiction.

it’s so hard for so many to just, not use them

Networking Effect is a bitch. It's like telling someone to stop using AT&T or United Airlines. These are the major arteries of communication for billions of people. Individuals can't abstain from using them without isolating themselves.

You can delete your account and I promise you won’t find yourself missing them.

Spoken like someone who doesn't have their entire extended family posting and chatting on the sites regularly. I get calls from extended family, asking me to weigh in on long conversations and exchanges and posting sprees. And then when I respond on the phone, I get a "No, you have to post it, I'm not going to just repeat it to everyone for you".

Tons of social pressure to just go where everyone else is.

In Jon's defense, Reddit was fairly good and useful (unlike Twitter or FB) at one point many years ago. If you're not active there it would be easy to think things are still good.

Yeah it's just follow the money, if a giant corporate entity owns it, it's going to fuck you and leave you for dead without flinching. It's really that simple, whether its mcdonalds verizon google geico paramount or any of the other large companies, youre a number on a spreadsheet and if you die they don't even notice and they will sell you dogshit and leave a smiley face on the receipt. If you owe anything they send your account to collections and minimum wage workers will tell your family they have to pay the debts you left behind.

Problem is discipline. Reach for a book instead of doom scrolling. Get something done on the house instead of reading X shitposts. The way most people use phones is a sick addiction that needs treatment, and nobody intervenes. I mean people can't look in front of their 2 ton steel cage while they hum down the road at 80mph without checking if some random twat added to their snap story lol.

probably sunk cost (time invested, followers gained, networking) + real addiction (meta and x will try to trigger any emotion from you so you are invested in the platform) + accessibility (free or cheap access on mobile data with big providers)

Im surprised there aren't student clubs or something hosting instances now that you mention it. That would be a great student project for any CS or even journalism schools.