I think SM has done a lot of damage to us as a society and it has to go. I think a lot of radicalizations have happened because of SM and while I know such people have always existed in Human history, I just think they became more prominent and a force to be reckoned with due to SM. The past several years have shown me that social media is the bane of civilization and that we’re already at a threshold in which we as a society will collapse because of it.
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Yeah I agree.
Journalist used to be held accountable. If they were caught doing something shady, they were crucified.
Now any kid, celebrity, bored mom, etc can be a “creditable news source” to the gullible without repercussions. The stuff I hear coming out of a college student’s mouth is hilarious but he thinks it’s 100% da truth cause someone said it on TikTok. It was something insane like the majority of Tylenol you get from a drug store has fentanyl in it. Or when my sister was told on Facebook that my dad didn’t have to die from cancer because weed is actually a cure but doctors are sitting on the research “for money.” Dead serious about both stories.
But you’re fighting a losing battle. If you fight against it kids think you’re an old loser that’s not with the times and people your own age think you’re just a plain loser that’s not with the times.
If you havent seen it yet, there is a documentary called The Social Dilemma on Netflix. Created by people that worked for these companies on how they KNEW what they were doing in many cases and with those that were on accident, they kept pushing it after they saw the harm. Even the CFO (Second to CEO) of Facebook quit on moral grounds and he is in the documentary…they knew they were getting people killed and kept pushing it.
I know social media is inherently manipulative, and yet I’m too addicted to it to just give it up. Hearing more about the negatives pushes me a little closer to permanently deleting accounts.
I’ve had FB for years and never really socialized as-casually as I would like to in order to maintain an appearance of professionalism. I keep FB around nowadays just for Messenger to keep in-touch with like 3 people.
X has shown me how blatant manipulation can be on social media. The entire platform is designed to entice people to it with unrealistic expectations; people call themselves “content creators”, post trivial nonsense or no-effort engagement questions, get thousands of likes, and also post about how X is paying them hundreds of dollars in ad-revenue, which you can only partake in by paying for X Premium. But the real hook for Premium is the blue check-mark which gives the appearance that you look “better” than others and feeds into the idea of more people engaging with your posts, and thus more potential for ad-revenue. Basically, X encourages people to manipulate others to engage with posts, instead of just being a platform for people to post on.
It’s beyond gross and I assume anyone who willingly uses X today is in it for bad intentions. I though Reddit was bad, but it turns out Reddit just hosts the content and users generally guide themselves and others to certain content. FB has the rep of data collection and giving it to whoever. X actively encourages the worst behaviors for social media and simply doesn’t need to exist. I’ve had the pleasure of not really using Instragram since I don’t know the point to it (looks like you just take pictures, upload them to a wall, and talk about it? how’s it differ from FB? does IG let you even organize pictures after upload? FB has albums)
Don’t even get me started on the Tesla/Elon propaganda accounts on X. I never actually blocked anyone on social media since MySpace days, but had to add over a dozen accounts in about 2 months on X because their “algorithm” prioritizes putting their posts all over my feed. I suspect X is primarily a Tesla/SpaceX/Elon propaganda engine to cover-up related controversy.
If someone really wants to take down social media or at least take a stand against it, start with X. That non-liar platform and whatever other right-associated platforms may be echo-chambers, but they’re at least small and obscure. X is right-lite on the surface, takes no effort to scratch a little deeper, and the platform entices on the base of manipulation.
X, X, X, X, X…
Twitter was always that way with the exception of being paid directly by them. The entire platform was designed with everything else though and the thing you keep using, Facebook is the single worst social media company on the planet.
X is only being targeted now because Musk owns it and outed the entire industry for doing what he is being accused of doing as if only he is bad for doing it. He is making people out their own hypocrisy every time they single X out. And you mentioning him personally shows that social media, owns your brain.
Twitter has been around for over 15 years. It’s been used to push garbage and lie to us for over 15 years. I laugh at people that want to treat it as evil now (now = Musk owns it.)
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why not just ban stupid people? Its almost like the concept of majority opinion being correct is rightfully dieing now that people are suddenly realizing view count means nothing.