• HughJanus@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Sure we can but will we? No.

      Twitter has only lost ~10% of it’s userbase after repeatedly abusing its own users. Reddit probably less. After everything we’ve learned about Meta, tens of millions of people signed up on day 1 to join their new service, Threads. Google Chrome still has like 80% market share.

      Changing is honestly a trivial ask, but we won’t, because no one cares.

      • bassomitron@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s not that no one cares, per se. We just live in a society where the majority of working adults are fucking exhausted. They have bills to pay, uncertain job security, seemingly constant climate crises/natural disasters in many geolocations (e.g. Canada and US West Coast wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.), hyper polarized partisanship in many countries (yeah, it isn’t unique to the US), and on and on. That Google, Microsoft, or Amazon own the internet is such a low priority to the much more immediate, life threatening/living security concerns of the majority of people.

        I care, but I also understand why many people do not.

        • HughJanus@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          LOL that makes zero sense. It takes 5 minutes to switch to a different browser or service. If they were tired or didn’t have time, they wouldn’t be spending it on Twitter and Reddit.

          • Jtskywalker@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            It’s not really the time. It’s more about the mental effort it takes to find out what to switch to.

            Sure, it’s easy to install Firefox or sign up for Lemmy once you know that it’s there, but most people just have a sense that things suck with no idea of what they can do to fix it.

            Finding out what to do to have a better experience takes a non-trivial amount of mental energy that scrolling reddit and instagram do not require.

            The constant hustle, multiple jobs, or jobs with a high mental load, rising prices and stagnant wages all work together to create a lot of decision fatigue and stress. It often takes something major to get people out of that and get them active at changing things.

            • HughJanus@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              This just sounds like a bunch of non-sense, making up excuses for people making poor decisions. Like you can’t blame every bad decision on “wahhhh life is hard!”

              • Jtskywalker@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                No, it’s not excuses, it’s just reality. It’s hard. Does that mean people shouldn’t try to do better and make things better? Of course not. Being better and doing better is hard, and we should do it anyway. That kind of personal growth is central to the human experience, or it ought to be.

                The thing is, just because people aren’t doing better in the area that you understand and care about doesn’t mean that they aren’t in other areas that you may not know about.

                For example, someone who is stressed out and overburdened with work may be using all of their available energy to be a better parent and make sure that their child is raised in a healthy and emotionally stable home. If that doesn’t leave room for people to support FOSS and privacy friendly browsers that’s ok.

                Just be the best human you can be every day and don’t beat yourself (or others) up for not being perfect.

                • HughJanus@lemmy.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  No, it’s not excuses, it’s just reality. It’s hard.

                  It’s not hard. It isn’t. Not even a little.

                  If that doesn’t leave room for people to support FOSS and privacy friendly browsers that’s ok.

                  No one is talking about “supporting” FOSS. We’re talking about using less exploitative software and services.

                  Spend 3 seconds Googling and install and use anything that’s not Chrome. It’s literally that simple. They just don’t care.

      • iegod@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        You realize all of that old shit is still possible today right? Static plain html still works. It loads quicker than ever. The only thing preventing it is the creators of the content. The masses on social media were never going to create that so having Twitter around doesn’t change the possibilities. Get cracking.

        • HughJanus@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          I interpreted “we” as the general public. And yes, that was kind of my point. ActivityPub exists. NOSTR exists. Probably a dozen other decentralized social media protocols and services. And yet no one leaves the garbage-ass, bot-riddled, insanely-popular social platforms.

    • Auli@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      No we can’t. It’s been consolidated. Sure some of us might get a little piece of freedom but the web is going to stay consolidated unless something major happens…