I saw somebody suggest that the voting buttons should be used to indicate whether the comment benefits the discussion or not.
I suppose the same would be true of the original post; does the post benefit the community.
For example, posting a blog of why Mitsubishi is the best car maker to a photography forum is a downvote, true or not. Posting that veganism isn’t a sustainable lifestyle to a vegan sub is an upvote, but you’d better be ready for some backlash.
Perhaps you can find inspiration from Daryl Davis, who convinced 200 Klansmen to give up their robes.
I heard something on a radio show during Covid on how to talk to people who have “gone down the rabbit hole”. It was discussing MAGA as a cult. The guest on the show was a woman who was raised in a cult in the 70’s and she “got out” and spent her time talking with others in the cult to help them to break free. I can’t find a reference to the show, but I think it was Carrie Miller hosting.
My takeaway was that you can’t come at people and tell them that everything they know is wrong and you will show them the way. They’ll fight you. You need to deprogram them similarly to how they were programmed into the cult. Small bits, here and there to slowly guide them to questioning their beliefs. Once that happens, show them how to research and seek out information and let them know that they will be safe.
If someone found a link to the podcast/radio show, I’d be super happy.
I think what we’re dealing with, in part, is a collective action problem. There’s a lot of people who want to do something but either don’t know what to do or don’t agree on what to do. It’s one way that a minority population can stay in power.
What an individual can do is miniscule compared to a crowd. Also, some people are willing to break laws to make change and others are not.
You’re both right. I’d do the same to jump ship before the enshitification sets in. Often, I’ve seen how innocuous policy and feature changes creep in and before you know it, the switching costs are too high.
I had an app on my phone and one day they removed the export function. I only used it for backing up my data but when they raised rates and started slamming with ads, I wanted to leave but could not take my data with me. I ended to just uninstalling and starring over elsewhere.
Also, this is exactly what happened to reddit. They cut the api first so it was harder to take your communities and saved stuff with you.
I find your parents’ mindset interesting. They trust the big companies but not the government (I assume the list is a government list). Do they know that the big companies harvest data and make it available for sale, even to the government? It’s a loophole.
I’ve been using Noscript on firefox for a while. It basically blocks any JavaScript (and other stuff) unless you specifically allow it. It’s not something that I would recommend for a casual user, because it breaks lots of sites. By using it, I’ve discovered how much nonessential stuff is jammed into your browser. Most of it is analytics and tracking. One home improvement store has over 25 scripts when less than a quarter are needed for a functioning site.
Some of the biggest offenders: offenders:
Also, a shoutout to decentraleyes, a plugin to use local copies of JavaScript code so that it’s not downloaded (and reported back to) Google.
Point taken. It was probably a bad example. I was trying to find an example of something that would be an unpopular topic rare hat would ultimately benefit the community.