How to stay in touch without Instagram?
oxjox @ oxjox @lemmy.ml Posts 31Comments 1,260Joined 2 yr. ago
oxjox @ oxjox @lemmy.ml
Posts
31
Comments
1,260
Joined
2 yr. ago
assess what type of DEI programs are still discriminating against Americans
The official said it was “very fitting” that the order was announced on Martin Luther King Jr. Day because “this is order is meant to return to the promise and the hope, captured by civil rights champions, that one day all Americans can be treated on the basis of their character, not by the color of their skin.”
I don't think I can handle four more years of this brain bending insanity. I've tried to understand where people are coming from. I've been of the belief that most of us are good people and want the same things. But trying to unpack the thoughts and whims of POTUS on a daily basis is just going to break my brain. I work at a computer all day so I'm not sure how I'm going to prevent myself from encountering this circus. I'm weighing the choice of living in blissful ignorance or in utter despair.
For over eight yers, my heart has hurt because of the sheer stupidity and ignorance taking control of this country. I am not seeing any signs of improvement. On the contrary, it seems very apparent that it's getting worse.
Great. Then we agree you can just remove it. No harm done and you can easily move on with your life.
Not that anyone asked me but I support a two pronged approach that involves revamping the entire immigration system while sending aid to countries suffering mass emigration. (Seriously, how do I get asked to participate in one of these polls?)
I don’t know if they’re trying to hide their racism but I’ve observed many people say they’re just focused on the illegal immigrants. I think a lot of people actually respect the value of immigrants in this country and want them to come here via the appropriate channels.
If we minimize the astounding number of people coming here illegally because their country is shit and/or because our system for processing them is shit, it should be logistically easier to track and capture people coming in for nefarious reasons.
What we should all be more concerned about is our inability to escape political theater and propaganda. We are being lied to and manipulated to hate and to attack one another for the benefit of corporations and politicians. In and of itself, this isn’t new. But it’s ability in the 21st century to spread and mutate instantaneously is something we have to make ourselves more conscious of.
Edit: Trump just signed an executive order making it more difficult for people seeking assylum to enter legally https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/jan/20/live-fact-check-trump-inauguration-day-president/
Within an hour of being inaugurated, Trump’s administration disabled the CBP One app, a promise he made during his campaign. The app launched during Trump’s first term and former President Joe Biden expanded its use. Biden allowed asylum seekers to use the CBP One application to schedule appointments at ports of entry. Illegal immigration at the southern border dropped substantially after Biden made most people ineligible for asylum if they crossed the U.S. border between ports of entry. The Department of Homeland Security says all CBP One appointments are canceled. According to CBS News, around 270,000 migrants were in Mexico awaiting CBP One appointments. A reporter for The Washington Post shared a video of a woman in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, crying after hearing that CBP One had been shut down.
If you’re just “using an app”, the whole thing would be meaningless to you.
Sorry, not sorry. Life has existed before social media and before TikTok.
I hope this is a lesson that no one should invest so much of their time or emotional energy into something owned and operated by someone else. This includes but is not limited to Google products, Apple iCloud, Netflix, YouTube, Spotify, Instagram, etc. These things will all go away one day. Prepare yourself.
Of course this sucks. If ByteDance cared as much about its users as they claimed, they would have obliged with US demands. They instead chose to shut their system down rather than not collect data and manipulate users.
I hope everyone has learned they are not the only platform doing this. We should all be very concerned with how our data and viewing habits are used to manipulate us in overt and subconscious ways. We have to put pressure on congress to implement stricter privacy laws in the US. Although, I don’t know how you win an argument against Meta and X. Perhaps we should be voting for legislators who have the best interests of The People in mind? Right, that wouldn’t be American.
Everything sucks. These platforms are driven only by the best interest of stock holders. It used to be different. The early years of social media were fun and personal and organic. Then they shoved algorithms down our throats and everyone rejoiced.
People need to take their choices more seriously. We need to put our money where our mouth is and support platforms and makers and creators that align with our values. Vote with your wallet. And when you’re not paying for something, make yourself aware of the terms and conditions. Personally, I will never use a service that asks for my phone number.
We’ve allowed algorithm-driven corporate-controlled social media to become far too powerful. It’s had an immeasurably negative impact on humanity. And we keep voting for people who want to give more power to the corporations who control our sense of reality.
With that said, I’d venture to guess this ban will be short lived. The rational makes complete sense (as SCOTUS has agreed) but politics will have more to say.
Do you also send thanks to abusive partners because they force their spouses to learn to cook for them?
I mean, yeah. It’s great that homeless drug addicts get to know how to use the public transit system so well 👍
You are delusional. You’re fitting your narrative into the situation without the ability (or desire) to step back and observe the reality.
People are learning mandarin because they are so addicted to this form of social media that they are choosing to learn a new language over using other forms of social media.
LOL Good job injecting your narrative into something completely unrelated.
These platforms would not be as successful if they were just about offering a nice place for friends to congregate. If that were the case, Myspace would still be relevant and forums would still be more active than FB and Reddit.
Here we are on Lemmy - free of ads and algorithms and corporate control. If it was all about people searching for means of connection, what aren't more people here?
Because the corporations have created an algorithm to maintain engagement to show you ads. Engagement is driven by strong emotions. Strong emotions are created by chemical reactions in your brain. What you're being shown on corporate controlled social media is what they know will keep the chemicals flowing aggressively around in your grey matter.
People have been alienated for millennia. The internet has existed and has been embracing outcasts for over 40 years. I would suggest that you take a step back and consider why people are choosing one platform over another and what differentiates the platforms from one another.
This is a case where people are so occupied with a platform proven to threaten their nation's national security and their own perception of reality that they would choose to embrace that foreign adversary over their own country. If that's not an addiction, I don't know what is.
I hope you find a place of peace to congregate with others who make you feel known. Corporate controlled social media should have never been that place.
And yet people still use what they hate.
The whole social media thing is just bizarre to me. I mean, I was an early adopter on everything from myspace to twitter to instagram. I joined and left these platforms before most people were using them. But then to companies figured out how to manipulate users by using algorithms to increase engagement and addiction - this is what solidified adoption. What I find difficult to digest is the vast number of people who are well aware of the problems around social media and still continue to use it as if they're addicted to crack.
There's nothing social about social media anymore. It's a platform for corporations and billionaires and dictators to host user generated content (AI content pending) for the purpose of extracting personal interests that help them sell ads and user data. It's first and foremost a manipulation platform. And it's free to use.
And now that people have had a taste of their drug of choice, they're stuck. Sure, some people will quit. But, until another just as enticing drug comes along, the majority will stick around and deal with ramifications of corporate controlled manipulation platforms. Where else are people going to get their news? Where are they going to share family trips? Where are they going to do this in a platform designed to maintain engagement and release the drips of dopamine they've become addicted to? If your response is Mastodon or Bluesky or Pixelfed, you're delusional.
It maintained some semblance of a challenge. A mass exodus leaves a welcome vacuum for it to flourish.
Yes. That's exactly what I said.
Fascism is going to win.
As people leave these platforms - permitting a welcome space for lies, hate speech, bigotry, and zealotry to flourish without consequence - history will recall, this was when the spark of fascism was given the last breathe of oxygen it required.
I don’t mean to excuse Meta for their unforgivable ElonTrump-influenced actions but running away is not going to win the fight you think you’re avoiding. That is, unless you all really commit and make it economically unfeasible for Meta to continue this policy.
Meta is successful because people can promote their small and local businesses. Because money can be made from ‘likes’. Because of the algorithm. Because people can get their news inline with their family photos. It’s everything. The fediverse has a long way to go to offer a seamless migration for users’ addiction to these platforms.
Dude. How do you say “addiction” in mandarin.
I would, again, encourage you to read the article.
I don't know how you could possibly argue that reducing nicotine in tobacco won't benefit anyone. I would encourage you to read the statement I linked to.
I fully agree with you that these "gas station products" are potentially even more harmful. What actually scares me about this is the marketing on social media around these products. Over the past few years, people have come to trust influencers (and their feelings) more than science. I just don't understand how we've become so gullible over the years. It's could suggest that it's the government's lack of investment in these important agencies, the public's lack of trust, and the influence corporations have over them; but people these days seem more in favor of a company or a billionaire telling them what to do rather than the government agency or an academic.
You're absolutely right. Any president (or former president) claiming to have accomplished something when either someone else did it or because it's a wholly fabricated lie or something never materialized at all is a danger to democracy.
We need stronger standards for our press (and our DOJ / courts) to hold elected officials accountable. It's also on the people to be more intelligent and not believe everything they read (especially with the loss of fact checking). The lies and misinformation that have become prevalent in nearly all reporting by all media outlets over the past ~8 years is a threat to our democracy and seeds for the unraveling of the nation.
Being that the efforts to reduce nicotine from tobacco began under the Obama administration and have stalled for a variety of reasons, I would say that it's not fair for any president to claim success with this matter. This is the FDA doing its job. We should give them the 100% of the credit. And that credit given should reflect on the fact that it has taken far too long for them to reach this conclusion. Government moves too slow. Politics gets in the way of making our lives better. We really have o do a better job of paying attention and rejecting conservative (small "c") ideologies.
I think you bring up a good point about college and high school classmates. I don't personally care about this but I imagine millions of others do. IMO, these groups should maintain their own social platforms. If you want to keep in touch with your classmates from Harvard, Harvard (or a private student counsel board) should maintain a forum for you.
Right - you want to post a picture of your kid for family, classmates, friends, coworkers to see all at once. Well, that's (supposedly) where the fediverse comes in.
The fediverse, of what I know of it, is still lacking a lot of these tools that would be useful to people. People are pushing it really hard but it is not ready for the masses.
STAR and RCV is growing among some states and counties. Have hope.
I recently watched this Thoughty2 video on YouTube that touched on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRN2p7sSL_Y
He essentially concludes that, at this point, technology has been able to mitigate the overpopulation fears that have existed up until now.
I full agree with you. Just because we can exist on the planet does not mean we're better off. We're already living with the consequences of over population.
The first thing we need to do is change our eating habits. The over-farming of land is increasing the need for chemicals to grow food - not to mention climate change. Bird flu is coming. The manner in which we have to raise animals is atrocious and leading to pandemics. Everything is full of antibiotics so farmers and ranchers don't have to throw away "bad stock". Which of course is due to the increasing need to produce more food.
I think the worst part is that when this is brought up people blame the corporations and the governments. They're right that legislators should do more about this but, in America at least, the people are the one's who are supposed to have the power. We're supposed to make choices and cast votes for the world we want to live in. Instead, we keep making the same choices that give corporations more and more power.
America is torn between wanting all the freedom to make their own choices while complaining that government isn't doing enough.
You have?? This is what I was using the platform for but then, many years ago, they forced an algorithm on us so I was no longer able to use it. Most of the posts I see are days old so I always miss events.
I would love if more establishments / organizations would use newsletters and public calendars. I've been trying to tell people, you want to own your content and your mailing list, but Meta makes it so easy for them to do things that it's an uphill battle.
I use an RSS reader to deal with newsletters. I use BigNews but there's also Stoop which give you an email address to subscribe to newsletters without them flooding your inbox.