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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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I’m doing my part!
I never used Twitter in the first place, so I guess I'm not in the "addicted" category, but I did have an account, in November of 2024 I did actively cancel that X account. Google pushes me X links in my "news feed" I consistently tell Google "No more stories from ____ on X" (they won't let you block all of X, I wonder why....)
Seriously, folks, how hard is it to just walk away? I was on BlueSky for about 3-4 months, got a little invested/addicted to the platform and took a hard look at what value I was getting from it - on balance: negative. Cold turkey, do I miss it? No.
Facebook holds a (solitary) users group I occasionally want to talk with captive, they acknowledge it's a terrible platform but they're too lazy to leave, so I log in when I need to talk with them and that's it. Anybody "in there" I care about? Long distance phone calls are free these days, e-mail works, why should I be sharing stuff with people I don't know just to communicate with people I do know?
I read recently that "will power" doesn't meaningfully exist, but it's rather the result of many other factors. That said, many people seem to be bankrupt of what one would call willpower. I don't know why.
Maybe it's the capitalist hell scape. Maybe it's the plastic in our bodies. Maybe people are just largely social followers, and with a large enough contingent of idiots many people who would behave better follow down into the slop.
"Idle hands are the devil's workshop." - when people are busy and focused, it's a lot easier for (most of) them to avoid 'bad choices.' This ranges everywhere from harmful recreational drug use to overeating, even to highly addictive behaviors like smoking - yeah, people take "smoke breaks" at work, but if they're not at work / engaged with something most tend to smoke much more...
Thing is, you don't have to be slaving away at a subsistence level wage job that you need for food and shelter in order to avoid bad choices, although the U.S. Puritanical culture seems to think that "those people" who are poor by circumstance must be saved from themselves by such a system.
There are so many factors involved that generalities barely paint any kind of accurate picture of any one individual. Statistically you can say that X% have "addictive personality" and Y% are "genetically pre-disposed" and so on, but it really is different for everyone. Some people get "addicted to sex with strangers" others avoid that trap through paralyzing fear of diseases... Some kick the nicotine habit based on early presentation ill health effects of smoking, some who experience even worse health effects don't. Obesity sneaks up on you, oh - I'm just 5 points heavier than I would like to be, or 15, or 50 - don't bother me! I love food.