Technology

In terms of analysis, I'm annoyed at Cohn here. This isn't something we as individuals have control of. Her saying people individually have to make the difference is like saying you individually have to make the difference regarding climate change by making different choices, like recycling.

I understood her differently. I understood that she advocated into making it possible to leave platforms, saying that it currently isn't. She said the people are the victims here and often don't have a choice.

People cannot leave platforms because each platform is like an isle, and leaving it means losing connections to other people. It that sense they are locked-in, by social pressure.

This is is a natural monopoly which, gives social media companies so much power and prevents newcomers (like the fediverse) from joining the market.

Making the current social media companies less important, for instance via privacy laws, means people can connect and stay connected to other people via other means. It makes it easier to just leave twitter or meta, if they don't like it there. Instead of being peer pressured into right extreme politics, because the algorithm decided that it gets more engagement when surrounding thrm with nazis.

She made it clear that replacing an dictator with another dictator that censors differently is bad, so she made a point against bluesky and for Mastodon and the fediverse.

(Sadly ehe wasn't given the opportunity to fully complete her arguments though.)