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generator: pandoc
title: Excuses For Using Facebook and Twitter
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2020-03-23T06:46:06Z
I don't think 'i have nothing to hide' and 'mainstream metadata
harvesting is not targeting/going to harm me' are arguments with any
validity.
Neither are 'everyone uses mainstream social media, and I won't be in
the loop', or 'the metadata collected about me aids me, and knows me
well', or, especially in the case of activists: 'we need to go where the
masses are' (virtually the same argument as: 'we should publish all our
material in a Rupert Murdoch newspaper'
when I spend some time explaining movies like Facebookistan and books
like The Twittering Machine, people I talk to quite often turn to
fatalism and moral relativism in order to answer my arguments: 'there
has always been surveillance', 'you believe in a utopia, there isn't a
single right way for everyone'
there has also been some bizarre arguments levelled against me that
Facebook is easily accessible to disabled people, therefore I am an
ableist by saying they shouldn't use it...
The doublethink and doublespeak around mainstream social media is really
worrying. I suppose I keep talking to people to whom the system is
treating kindly, and that don't seem to worry about how things are going
to turn out for them