But individuals do have power to make Twitter less important. Well, maybe not Twitter, just because it’s 95% bots, but social media companies are usually only valuable if they have users. There are people who depend on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram for their business but 99% of users absolutely do not need to use those services. The analogy with recycling and climate fall flat because it takes many orders of magnitude more effort to avoid most/all plastics/packaging/fossil fuels than it does to just avoid IG/FB/X. The biggest barriers to getting rid of these shit companies is 1) too many people don’t realize how awful they are 2) too many people just don’t give a shit and 3) too many people are addicted to the dopamine hits from these trash sites.

Seriously, just don’t use them. When you’re presented with something that tries to force you to use them, say “sorry, I don’t use Meta products, do you have another way for me to get [the pop-up dates, the invite, etc]”

Individuals can make accounts on the fediverse meaning they no longer exclusively rely on meta/twitter meaning meta/twitter becomes less important.

I get that a lot of people have all their family on facebook/twitter or whatever, or business page etc. but just make an account on mastodon too, now the fediverse becomes a more attractive place for everyone else.

I think it would be a mistake to paint those two courses of action as mutually exclusive categories.

Yes, governments need to regulate businesses and industry if we want to have a meaningful impact on climate change. Blaming the consumer and putting all the impetus for change on them is misguided at best and deliberate obfuscation in many cases. But that doesn’t mean consumers should feel no responsibility at all. If two companies offer different options, we should as consumers choose to support the company with the more ethical business practices.

Likewise, governments need to regulate big tech companies. But users switching to the fediverse are choosing to be part of the solution rather than the problem, and the more it grows the more it looks like a viable alternative for others who don’t care about the ethics of the platforms they’re supporting. And when FOSS platforms reach a critical mass, it will eat into the corporations’ bottom lines.

Governments need to hold corporations accountable and meaningfully regulate them, but effectively giving consumers license to do whatever they want even if that means supporting corporate tech, and pretending it ultimately doesn’t matter, is kind of defeatist. It’s like saying “Why should the workers go on strike? That’s the union’s job.”

I think we can manage to advance on both fronts at the same time if we really try, but if for a time we can only advance on one front, then we should hold the other on as best we can while we advance on the one we can. Cause the time may come when we have to hold that front, but are able to advance on the other.

There’s no propaganda. Its very simple logic and reason. I’ve done it. There’s no reason you can’t too.

It doesn’t shift responsibility anywhere. For some reason society gets this ridiculous notion that there can be only 1 person or entity to blame for anything, when in reality that’s almost never the case. Platforms have the choice not to exploit their users, and the users have the choice to leave. Both are responsible for the way things are, and either party has the power to end it.