You Should Stop Using Meta (Facebook) Products at All Costs | MindDump
4 days ago by tumbling4986 to c/privacy
I made a minimal website using Hugo just for writing blogs so I don't have to post them in groups as posts. Hope it's fine here. This is not a promotion. No tracking links either.
Yeah probably living under a rock. Nothing that’s new in the article and talking about whays already obvious. Might be even ai generated
Manosphere
Basically misogynistic content creators that give horrible advice to boys and young men, like Andrew Tate, they love the red pill metaphor to act as if they're enlightened and somehow that's why they have money and sex. In actuality most of these grifters make most or all of their money from people paying them for courses that don't work, about money, dating, sex, etc.
Edit: Tate is even worse than the average manosphere creator, he's a horrible person who did more horrible stuff than just grift, but he's the first asshole who came to my mind when explaining manosphere creators. They're all reactionary pos.
General it means incel I believe
A bunch of weird woman-hating incels co-opted the "redpill" language. I first saw it on /r/redpilll but I'm not sure that's the origin. It honestly probably emerged from gamergate. Essentially, they rejected the notion that being a "nice guy" gets you anywhere in life. They promoted shit like "negging" instead, which was the idea that women will find you more interesting if you insult them. There was more heinous stuff than that, but you get the idea.
I get banned a lot because of accidentally using words that have become problematic when I wasn't looking. How about we just stop letting extremists claim all the perfectly good words and symbols instead?
Yeah, I mean, that would be ideal. Not sure what that looks like though,. It's kind of their MO to co-opt pop culture references to prop up their "movements" that are largely unpopular. And platforms probably just blanket ban to protect vulnerable populations. You just gotta live and learn.
Redpill/blackpill/"___pilled" has become common gen z slang. Sure, the incels propagated it, but its teeth were removed like 5 years ago
Unfortunately, it is simply impossible for me to stop using Facebook.
I never started.
The only valide excuse
I only ever made a Facebook account because of one club in college that never posted their meeting time and location, which changed, anywhere else and you couldn't access it without an account. Believe me I tried. The last time I interacted with that account was a couple years ago when I Got a notification that someone tried to log into it so I went and changed the password just to make sure no one would be impersonating me. I didn't give them more information than was necessary. I don't know that I even uploaded a photo of myself. In the people you may know section I only ever saw one person that I actually knew, which means I was probably doing something right
Because of not having enough time and money to maintain the app, like the implementation of encryption and new features, founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton accepted the deal and sold the app for $19 billion to Mark Zuckerberg.
I imagine I'd also find that I don't have enough time and money to maintain something if someone offered me $19 billion for it.
Yah. Most ppl would. Not all! But most.
Which creates a perverse incentive, right? The ppl making s/w with no malware, no spyware, they are lucky if they even make a living. Often they do it volunteer, or for low income. But those who do it to amass power, and sell that power to somebody, as here, they can roll in money.
To fix the whole s/w world, I believe we must fix the bad incentives. Might be lots of ways to do it, but it certainly helps a lot, if most ppl shun spyware. And support OSS authors who are genuine about keeping it out. Right now, most ppl do the opposite.
Hang on.... that's not a gift. The hard work is making money from free software. You've indebted a foundation to the sum of $100,000,000.00 and you're telling them:
A) pay it back
B) via commercializing free software
How the fuck do you do that? You can't. What the fuck does a piece of software need that exorbitant amount for anyway? I guess that's why Signal never really was libre software. There's too much money to be made in spyware.
Generally couldn't agree more, but
What the fuck does a piece of software need that exorbitant amount for anyway?
For a widely used chat app with calling and video calling, servers.
😅 😂
it’s almost like cigarettes
It really is. They employed psychologists to make it as psychologically addicting as possible. They studied the ways to make ppl engage the most. Which turned out to be in-group vs out-group rage. They designed their algorithms to pump that, nonstop. And on top of htat, every other psych trick they could find.
Avg person has no chance, when an entire ass team of big dollar PhD psychologists comes at them.
I gave up Facebook way before cigarettes… No but seriously it does kinda suck because I do have my buddies numbers and text/call em but I’m a zoomer & we grew up in the internet age.
Even millennials / Gen X are planning family gatherings, BBQs/hangouts, even underground punk rock shows are just private Facebook groups now. Nobody really hands out zines or posts fliers around anymore for word of mouth, why would you?
Anyone who would already wants to go heard about it on Facebook. The posters were made on a laptop, never printed, posted to Instagram and FB. Kinda makes it easy to miss stuff, especially if it’s like the only way your dad or the new friend you made contacts the world or whatever. I still would never go back, tho. Just go out and talk to people in person lol & then let other people tell you about their crazy facebook posts later lol it’s more fun that way!!
WhatsApp is probably the harder Meta app to quit.
I've had plenty of people say "But that's different, it's E2EE", but it's a closed-source black box that almost certainly has a backdoor built in already.
Show them this
It's E2E but there's a 3rd E. And they send material to subcons for AI labelling, so most likely low wages countries with sketchy checks.
No shit. Why people even started in the first place is crazy to me.
But if you are using them, please stop.
Here in Spain it was because WhatsApp took over cuz carriers charged for SMS and phone calls. Now there's a massive captive audience that self-reinforces. Same with Instagram if you're young or Facebook if you like having your brain melted
Because instant messaging died out. Then it seemed like you were nothing if you weren't sharing the bitchiness of your life. Then tumblr died out. Now we're at the enshittification of it, with algorithms curating everything with an advertisement every three scrolls and an Ai post every two it's basically every one wheel scroll is your family and friends then three scrolls down you're seeing your memes.
It's shit.
None of those things would have made me interested in starting to use non anonymous services. We learned not to do that years prior to its arrival. Took one look and went hell no.
Now we’re at the enshittification of it,
Maybe, but it was always bad. Always. It was a bad idea from the beginning. No person who thought about it for 5 minutes should have thought it was ever a good idea.
Thats why when Zucks quote called the users dumbfucks for just handing over their data to him, it was no surprise. Thats what the facebook user was from the beginning: a dumbfuck.
I 100% agree, we should've stopped at MySpace.
Someone yesterday just tried to get me on Instagram. No thanks.
In the MySpace era, I definitely would not have listened. I should've but, it wasn't going to happen.
The first people have to abandon the idea that they're only allowed to use one product of a category at a time. It will not kill you to use to chat apps, it will not kill you to use two microblogging services. The second is that you need to prioritize the better one when you can. This eliminates lock-in effects which are a major moat
Same as what it took to have it take the whole market: a better alternative and enough advertisement for a critical mass of people to migrate at once, so that they stay active there.
Then the rest will flock more or less progressively.
what would it realistically take to move an entire country off of whatsapp?
Wisdom.
I haven't been on in years. At first everyone said I was left out, IDC, text me better than fb/meta. I've been sm free since ~2016. It works just fine.
Marketplace is so active, it's the one thing I'm tempted to use it for. But I wont install their apps on my phone
It's active, but poorly policed and filled with scams. I've almost given up on it.
Me too. via NextDNS.
I stopped using all Facebook products back in like 2015.
I really want to. But around here it's the de facto Craigslist, really really good for farm supplies and all sorts of used things. And well people use it for the events side, and there's lots of specific interest groups that are very active and informative. Which is why it's so hard for me to leave despite the fact I'd enjoy it if Zuck chucks himself into a volcano. I suppose I can just keep making sure I dont click a single ad, though I'm sure they're making money off me somehow. A frustrating situation.
We had a competitor in Canada, way before Marketplace: Kijiji.
It is not nearly dead yet, but if you want to avoid Meta at all cost, be ready to miss a good 80--90% of buyers and sellers (estimate provided by the Royal Institute of Guessworking).
That means there are things you'll never find even if they are sold. And things you'll never sell even if there are people looking for them.
The main difference between them is marketplace is embedded in FB app. You can search FB and find offers. That's it. That's how it won.
For most people, FB is just convenient: all in one app. Why install another? With another registration. Another site to browse. etc.
Building a competitor... easier said than done!
Craigslist still exists.
Near me, no one uses it.
Same for events really. Everyone posts their events and updates on Facebook. Especially kid’s events. Events and Marketplace are why I still have an account.
Facebook is like the phone book and local classifieds of the current day.
Situation Normal: All Fucked Up.
it's going to have to burn people. they're that dumb.
Argh. but all other VR headsets are much more expensive.
I've managed to escape all but WhatsApp but I'm going to do it
It's been about 6 months after deleting WhatsApp, and there are no issues at all. only peace of mind.
is it just an American thing or does nobody else know anyone thst uses WhatsApp
Actually, it's the opposite. In many countries other than America, WhatsApp is the default messenger for everything, including government services. And all these privacy flaws also affect them too.
I think you misunderstood the parent comment. Admittedly, it was poorly worded.
Used to be Skype
@lemmy.ml
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
go to feed...
@lemmy.ml
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
go to feed...
I'm hoping this guy just hasn't consumed any popular media in the past fifteen years because that term has been associated with some pretty specific communities...
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