You see the same sort of thing around here with people complaining about the death of Google Reader on anything that even vaguely mentions Google.
replyI don't see that.
replyYou know what else I don't see? Google Reader, because Google killed it!
replyPhilosophically I want to agree with you more but Meta is the informational equivalent of RJ Reynolds. They’ve facilitated crime waves (remember all of the hand-wringing about shoplifting which died down when the government went after Facebook marketplace and Amazon?), supported genocide, and elevated some of the worst voices in the world. Giving them more money and social control is a risk which should be discussed.
replyYou're doing it too. Please don't.
replyI realize it makes you uncomfortable but the harms are done whether or not you ignore them. That’s the problem: people can exploit that desire to be fair, “neutral”, say it’s “just business”, etc. for years until the negative impacts on society are too hard to ignore. Think about how the fossil fuel industry managed to get people to talk like there was a debate with two sides deserving equal respect and parlay that into half a century of inaction after the scientific consensus correctly recognized that there was a real harm being done. We’re going to look back at the attention economy similarly.
reply> I realize it makes you uncomfortable
replyI think you're misunderstanding or misrepresenting them. The fight to have the most jaded or pessimistic take, the hottest flame, the spiciest rant, it's all so predictable and it's just a bunch of the same people saying the same things and agreeing with each other for the nth time. It brings nothing new to the table, and the posts that actually respond to the new information get drowned out or worse downvoted for insufficient vitriol.
Evil deserves to be called out as evil. Why should we constrain the discussion to anything else about them? The absolute best thing they can do for the world would be to disappear, as soon as possible.
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