eYou, you are simply too late to the party. As the piece highlights in the early paragraphs, its already being done by Mastodon and the Feds (the good Feds).
I just discovered Mastodon and the Feds (that should be the name of a band) and I’m utterly thrilled to have control of what I see. Its a breath of fresh air. I look forward to my feed every day. I know its not going to be full of bollocks about Trump and other toxic stuff. Its a game changer for me.
The future is FOSS and data sovereignty and I feel a little bit closer to it today that I ever have.
🙏🏼
People don’t really care about anything other than convenience. Twitter could be grinding up puppies live on camera and most people would just shrug and be like “well the good memes are here”.
Personally I think that’s downstream from how we’re all too polite about shit like this. We just smile and change the topic instead of doing the intensely uncomfortable “You really shouldn’t use twitter” conversation. But also we’re all too… childish, I guess, because most people if someone says that will not respond with “You make a good point and I will change in accordance,” but rather with “Fuck you for saying things that make me feel bad. You suck. I’m not listening to anything you say.”
So I guess we’re fucked because people are immature, fragile, little shits.
I think there is a fatigue. Morally, I can’t justify eating animal products, but I do eat cheese and drink milk. I should take the bus instead of driving, but sometimes I use my car out of convenience. Chocolate means exploiting workers in some country. Etc. People see the world burning and feel powerless.
Yeah, that could be some of it. We can’t all be perfect all the time. It’s impossible.
I’d appreciate more honest appraisals, though. “I know Twitter is garbage run by a Nazi, but I got linked to it and scrolled a bit” is far better than “well other people are worse so who cares”. There’s this childish whataboutism that a lot of people bring out to justify their poor behavior.
I agree, honesty is a good first step. So, given all this, should we focus on simply being the more attractive option? Or a combination of principles and convenience? If the good option is cheaper or more convenient, we wouldn’t strictly need principles and moral arguments. I’m just thinking of strategy here, it can feel good to be a righteous preacher, but what actually gets us the results we want?
