[davkan]

You’re asking for a hundred million people to personally overcome engineered manipulation rather than addressing the manipulators. What you say is true for the individual but it’s not a solution at scale for our societal issues.

It’s much akin to suggesting that poor people should not blame the system that keeps them poor and instead should focus on their education and getting themselves out of their current situation. Sure it’s accurate for the individual but, it’s not an actual solution to the problem at scale.

Heroin addicts quit aided by the intense and direct efforts and support of the people around them. Whether that’s hospital staff or family. And you often do tell heroin addicts it’s not their fault. You tell them addiction is a disease. That their addiction is not a moral failing.

[epistasis]

There's room for a yes-and approach, it's not either-or.

Some people can make the change, and since social media is social, that small vanguard causes others to switch as well.

One can blame the system for keeping them poor, while also doing as much as possible to change their own position within the current system, those are not in opposition to each other! In fact, discouraging people from getting educated because of the system is its own form of oppression.

Highlighting people's own agency to make changes for themselves also highlights how the engineered manipulation of social media is not inevitable. These are complimentary things to do.

[davkan]

> In fact, discouraging people from getting educated because of the system is its own form of oppression.

Who is doing this? Did I suggest that addressing the systemic issues with the cycle of poverty precludes individuals pursuing education? No, I said it doesn’t on its own resolve the issue of poverty as a whole.

> Only if we keep repeating things like this.

I still think the answer to this problem will not hinge on individuals choosing to interact with social media less and more intelligently. The vast majority of us know social media is manipulating and dividing the population. We all know we should use it less. We already have these discussions and have been for years and it shows to have very little actual effect on the overall situation we find ourselves in.

You are right in that it can be a yes-and type situation but my worry is that bringing personal responsibility to the forefront of the conversation mostly serves to diminish the responsibility we face as a society to reign in these monstrous (in both ways) companies that are actively destroying our social fabric in pursuit of profits in the most charitable view, or in pursuit of bringing us into a hellscape of a new world order, re Thiel et al.