Mainstream platforms such as Meta and X have accumulated a near-universal audience that is the root of all their evil. From sentiment analysis mass experiments to propagandistic political advertising. Things are worse in third countries where they are even less moderated. So I was thinking that as long as FOSS/Privacy is just geeky and elitist they just keep doing business as usual, from enshitification to fascism. Additionally, people have moved their political posting, scheduling, discussion online, so this gives them more power. Like seeing anarchist groups on Facebook is cringe, but some insist that “that is where the mass is, perhaps we move to Instagram to get to more Zedders”. Whaaaat? Questions: What tactics could be used to move people en masse away from mainstream platforms, and more generally, do you think there is a point in it?
I don’t think its viable to post on Facebook (or whatever). with the goal of getting people to stop using Facebook. People on the site will quickly disregard whatever arguments put forward, because it is very hard to maintain credibility while you are on the site that you are arguing against. And if you do make an effort to maintain your credibility there, then you can end up having the reverse effect - in the sense that you are now a valuable contributor to the platform, and people will like and respect your contributions while staying on the platform.
Criticism one platform is more likely to be taken on-board if posted on a different platform though. For example, a lot of people on Reddit argue against Facebook - and I reckon it probably has an effect the people who read it. But obviously it isn’t the ideal target audience. You really want to arguing against Facebook to people who are actually on Facebook!
I can’t really think of a good way to get people to stop using particular social media en mass. (I’d written a couple of paragraphs about general strategies for changing people’s minds; but I don’t think it was helpful enough to bother reading.) I suppose the best option would be government regulation to undermine the targeted advertisement revenue streams. If these platforms were forbidden from collecting and using personal data for advertising, then the incentive for content-churn would be reduced. Without the money, the corruption would no long be self-sustaining. So political action to support strong privacy laws is probably the best way. Aside from that, probably the best way is to degrade the quality of the platforms. Don’t contribute any content to them. Don’t give them any kind of credibility by linking to them (for any reason, even negative attention). If you feel like being chaotic, I suppose you could create spam bots to just make the place worse, but that’s probably not worth the effort. Actual spam-bots are common enough anyway.