1059
Cindy Cohn (EFF) Warns Jon Stewart That Americans Have to Make X and Meta ‘Less Important’
(www.thewrap.com)
this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2026
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The issue is in order to do so, they will have to make themselves feel less important. These social platforms are designed for exploitation by offering users instant soapboxes, immediate gratification in the form of likes/views/comments, a false sense of connection, etc. This is a sliver of the sickness they've spread.
Goddammit, I think you just described my relationship with Lemmy.
Upvoted to feed the habit.
To be fair, Lemmy has a ton of really smart people that I learn a lot from too.
Lemmy is sufficient, and if we stay, it will grow, along with piefed.
Reddit was good too, and still is decent.
The important thing is that the communities that are good are generally small and the commenters actually know each other and that creates a lot of positive social pressure to act like a normal person.
You can be recognized and develop a reputation. For example, I recognized @pelespirit@sh.itjust.works from their community: Politics@sh.itjust.works. I recognize Kolanaki by his giant unicode character username. I see Ada from Blahj everywhere.
Because of this, I have a more human view of their personality and even when we disagree it's way less likely to devolve into toxic social media slap fights because it's a lot easier to give them the benefit of the doubt due to previous positive interactions.
I, honestly, think forum communities pre-Myspace were the peak social media experience
Wow happy to know my comments have been reaching people 🙂↕️
I know you're joking, but it made me think.
On platforms like Twitter I never felt seen. I felt like I was talking to myself for the 30 seconds I actually engaged with it (I never could stand the format or the interface really).
On Lemmy I do feel seen, because it's so much smaller. I know people read what I write and I get way more feedback here than I've ever gotten since (maybe) 2010-era Reddit.
But important? Anyone who can use the Internet to make themselves feel important must have been a sociopath to begin with because as near as I can tell the Internet is a misery machine designed to make you feel like a dumbshit.
Come to think of it, that's probably why I hate the entire concept of "influencers" and the human toilets who call themselves that.
Lemmy is a different kind of platform. Twitter wasn't for me, but I never clicked with Mastodon either. Some people like the microblog format but I just never got it, or maybe I never worked out how to use it probably.
Mastadon and twatter (past tense) are popularity contests. And all that popularity you are building can be taken from you for an unpopular take, even if it's just misunderstood. The lemmy/piefed style is egalitarian, your comments stand on their own, you can post regardless of how many followers you have people may see it.
For me it's just the character limit.
I like reddit because people could write in paragraphs. Twitter never had any appeal to me because it could never be more than slogan-slinging and when i briefly used it it just seemed utterly stupid to be limited to like 10 words.
I feel called out.
Here, please enjoy my upvote 😊
with the constant AI slop propaganda as well.
it used to be just for nice social bubbles
now it's for political disinformation bubbles and the two cannot be untangled. users will not do it voluntarily
real identities and moderation in the form of fact checking are the only way on all social media
Id'ing everyone to what they say on social media is not the "only way," it's the path to ruin. Have fun with your palantir crafted social score being used against you pal. Such a shit take, no wonder we are where we are. And you are railing against propaganda too, the irony.
Yeah anonymity and pseudonymity have been stolen from us IRL in a lot of cases and we shouldn't cede them online. We should also take them back irl. Go lie about who you are to someone you meet.
"Who, me, officer? I'm just captainlezbian@lemmy.world."
It's such a modern problem, clearly we need some new solutions. Maybe verified, none anonymous social media is at least part of that solution.
I'm not saying that all social media should be verified accounts. But if everything becomes bots run by EvilCorp, then there's nothing left for the rest of us.
As far as I know there's nothing about the Fediverse that protects us from EvilCorps bots