Reading the comments above, I wasn't even done before I was imagined how to write this exact response lol. Guess I'll contribute this instead:
Roads are for local human freedom, rails are for proper logistics, which is where you want your computers integrated as much as possible. People don't realize that in WW2, most of the distance travelled by tanks was on trains, not by their own power which is very resource intensive.
One rejection in college had me pegged as a creep to the point many of my own friends stopped talking to me. All I did was ask someone to get some tea once but I guess I didn't do the mating dance right or something idk.
Was a pretty powerful lesson in seeing how people will believe what they want to believe. I guess it's the same for many of the "creeps" and "sluts" out there.
I don't understand what you're failing to grasp. You see what you're allowed to see. They are signal boosting shit heads while suppressing everyone else. If your message begins to spread, they will just pull the platform out from under your feet.
How do you propose to win on billionaire-owned social media when they can just kick your legs out at will the moment you stand too tall for their good? Look at all the Reddit protests that amounted to nothing besides getting moderators booted from their subs, they're a perfect example of this.
"Social media" is not society; it's a series of platforms built by billionaires for the purpose of control.
To be honest one of my biggest takeaways from this round of Trump is that the Democrats had this much power the whole time Obama and Biden were in, but elected to just sit around. What was their excuse?
There's some truth to that but the lack of algorithmic manipulation will make it easier to deal with. Plus you just have more options here on Lemmy to deal with it. Most instance operators have shown a willingness to restrict or even defederate from other instances when they are consistently shit to deal with.
Way I see it there are two productive paths to take here:
An utterly unproductive use of your time would be trying to fight misogyny on oligarch-owned platforms. You will never win because they find this content useful, as it divides workers and wastes their time and social energy. Just get out, and help others do it too.
Well someone has to be first to switch platforms.
This isnβt a platform problem
It is though. You think the spreading of this content is an accident? They could change the algorithm tomorrow and it would disappear, but they won't because this division is useful to them.
"Stop using social media" is literally the only real solution because oligarchs will never again risk letting us actually connect with each other. You stay on "social" media and you will just be getting run in circles by engagement algorithms and bots.
You cannot save Facebook, Instagram, X, or Reddit because their owners will not allow you to.
You're not going to save Instagram. The owners do not want you to save it and you do not control it. It was a lost cause before you even knew there was a problem.
Some systemic problems cannot be solved from inside the system.
That really is not ok, sorry bro. This happened to a friend of mine too, and I saw what that did to him. It's so much worse than people realize. He nearly got kicked out of school over it even.
What saved him was the same thing that saved you: she was stupid enough to make a pattern out of the behaviour. That said it didn't make it all better, because he no longer trusted the people who abandoned him. The social dynamics of that group never recovered.