It's the idea that someone arguing against something they think is wrong (on moral, strategic, practical grounds - it doesn't matter) is somehow less valid because it's unlikely that the arguing person will ever be personally affected by it.
It's completely bogus, though; technically, it's an ad hominem. A distraction.
I truly cannot fathom there are people who actually enjoy ultra-targeted ads.
You understand the purpose of advertising is to attempt to manipulate you into spending money you wouldn't otherwise, right? Even if you enjoy the product, I too enjoyed smoking. A lot. I miss it actually.
The point is that it's targeting your brain, and the monkey-brain of humanity in general, with the intention of siphoning money from you to them. Hyper-consumerism isn't a virtue, it's an addiction. Sincerely, I doubt you'd be worse off if you bought less stuff. Or, rather, considered your purchases in a less impulsive manner - buying from an ad is impulsive.
I also struggle to understand how Facebook and Instagram have made anyone "socially richer". From where I'm standing, the proliferation of social media has greatly increased all the bad parts of human social nature. Competitiveness, insecurity, self-hatred. These platforms are designed for maximum engagement and as such they target your most sensitive emotion, particularly fear.
It's gotten to a point where most people cannot even socialize in-person properly due to the fear. Everyone is hyper-aware of how they may be perceived, and everyone is constantly comparing themselves to others. In addition, fear about the state of the world has been on the rise for a while. There's 0 doubt in my mind that social media has been instrumental to this degredation.
I was buying more generic stuff before, now I’m buying products that are tailor made for the very specific demographic I am. Win-win for me and for the entrepreneur targeting me. Who cares if Facebook also benefits? Who cares if that entrepreneur becomes a billionaire? I get a gadget/book/product that solves my specific problem. I just don’t see how I, or anyone, is the victim here.
> socially better
I have vastly more contact with family and old friends now. I’ve had career opportunities from Facebook messages with old pals.
> people are going nuts due to social media
I have no answer to this one, except that we clearly have to mature into this as a culture, the same way we’ve done with phasing out smoking and are currently phasing out alcohol.
People are only getting sucked into social media vortexes because of bad mental habits they had going into it. Banning social media for under-16’s and changing attitudes towards it will certainly help a ton. If you use it as a connection tool, it’s amazingly valuable and helpful.
The inherent problem is that what you want out of social media and what it wants after you are at odds. It's not intended to be a social tool; it's intended to keep your eyes on the platform as much as possible. Their goal is to incite an addiction in you, not unlike gambling.
Naturally we can take measures to try to prevent ourselves from developing an addiction. But ultimately the product itself will always attempt to undo those.
In my view there's two camps of people: those who have to recognize this reality, and those that haven't. I have seen many family members literally destroy their lives and relationships due to the dopamine addiction they've developed with social media. They now only respond to blatant lies, conspiracies, racism, homophobia, and the most extreme of emotions. The trouble is this is a unique addiction, one that does not rely on a substance. I have no doubt I would have an easier time weaning them off of heroin than off of Facebook.
OK but that’s true for literally every relationship between a human and an organization.
But you have to balance what you give and get so it remains mutually beneficial. You can choose the optimal level of your engagement, including none at all.
Just like McDonalds doesn’t make people fat, Facebook doesn’t make people sad.
I’m really sorry about your relatives getting sucked in, but wouldn’t they have fallen for some other thing if not Facebook? There is lots of shit out there on the radio, TV, books, cults.
This is an extraordinarily generous and almost child-like perspective on business.
You're correct that McDonald's doesn't hold a gun to your head and make you fat. That doesn't mean McDonald's plays no role in making you fat.
As with everything, there are many compounding factors that contribute to an outcome. If McDonald's only sold, say, kale salads, would you gain the same amount of weight? No, right? So therefore, McDonald's must have some hand in making people fat.
Again, I circle back to Tobacco because nicotine is plainly addictive, but do you truly believe that the Tobacco industry had nothing to do with societal smoking? That's rhetorical, I know you don't believe that because it's so obviously incorrect.
While social media does not contain nicotine, how confident are you that it is not addictive? For me, I'm not very confident.
> but wouldn’t they have fallen for some other thing if not Facebook? There is lots of shit out there on the radio, TV, books, cults
And instead of smoking, could those people have just gotten addicted to sunflower seeds? Well, why didn't they?
Because the nature of the medium and product matters. Social media is always immediately available. It features bright colors. And it's extraordinarily fast-paced. Compare that to a book - and it should be obvious why people are addicted to Facebook and not To Kill a Mockingbird.
We come down on different sides of this - don’t assume people who don’t agree with you are being children.
2. To the extent that FB is addictive, it should be treated the same as alcohol and tobacco as I noted earlier. Restrictions on young people. A cultural movement to regard use/overuse as uncool.
Meta has been a huge positive for me and many others; just because you hate it doesn’t make it fundamentally bad.
Such an innocent and naive view can only be described as child-like. I was under the impression only a small child could legitimately believe businesses don't have the intention of maintaining the addictive practices that keep them profitable. Otherwise, why have we never seen nicotine-free cigarettes?
Consider: if McDonald's had the power, right now, to rid the world of Ozempic - would they? I think absolutely they would.
> Restrictions on young people. A cultural movement to regard use/overuse as uncool
These are rather vague and not really how things have gone historically. Smoking stopped working because every doctor was telling you it would kill you. And then it became very, very hard to smoke. You couldn't smoke just about anywhere in public. And then you couldn't even smoke in your rental car, or apartment, or hotel.
If you could only access Facebook in the confines of a property you own, I imagine it's use would plummet. I don't think a "cultural movement" could do that. Especially when such a cultural movement would need to take place ON Facebook. Because it's a platform.
> Such an innocent and naive view can only be described as child-like. I was under the impression only a small child could legitimately believe businesses don't have the intention of maintaining the addictive practices that keep them profitable.
In my defense, I think just about any adult on Earth would have said exactly what I said. Not sure if that makes you feel better or not.
To clear up why I'm so blunt about these things - there's a large influx of people who knowingly play stupid, and it's exhausting. What you're arguing is so obviously wrong and not even remotely in-tune with reality that I must assume you're either playing stupid or are really just that naive.
Most likely you're a smart person with a brain capable of deducing even simple logic like "make them money = they continue practices". So you're probably just playing stupid, which I don't care for. "Know nothing" types aren't worth arguing with.
I just don't understand that you like to get your product recommendations from a social media platform. So you're basically saying "yeah I'll put my social life on your platform so you can sell better stuff to me".
I mean, when I'm browsing and searching on Amazon, yeah, it is handy that Amazon kind of analyzes what I am looking for and gives suggestions to what I might want from their catalogue. That seems logical to me.
But I'm not gonna just give some company all my life's data and what I'm doing and not, and then let them decide what products I should get.
