We is everyone that isn’t those companies and is impacted by social media.
The only power you or I have is local, and this is a national problem.
We do have little power on a national level, but that doesn’t mean the only power we have is local.
Sure, we can’t flip a switch tell the engineers to program a switch and flip it for us like Musk and Zuckerberg can, but that’s not the only power that matters.
We can build and support alternatives to addictive, enshittified centralized tech (like the Fediverse). I was offered the “choice” of accepting a degraded Twitter experience or paying for Twitter premium. I chose to check out Mastodon.
We can use the parental controls we do have, both inside the ecosystem and in the real world. No screens in the bedroom or at the dinner table. No smartphone until you’re 16. Schools that ban phones in the classroom. Venues that ban phones during shows.
Edit: Another option is educating ourselves and our children to be safe on the internet. I had to learn that the correct response to “what are you wearing” is “a robe and wizard hat” and then blocking the pedophile all on my own because my parents didn’t know those threats even existed. I do. Most parents in 2026 do.
I’m not imaginative, but we have a lot more power than just choosing between “let it suck forever” and “give up even more of your privacy and I’ll pretend to fix the problems I created/encouraged because I make more money that way.”
I agree that they’re not mutually exclusive. I wasn’t saying that they were.
I was pushing back against the idea that age verification is the best and only reasonable response to our internet problems (the “lesser of two evils” argument).
I personally exclude age verification when other, better options - like the ones mentioned above - exist and haven’t even been tried.
It’s like watching someone try to build a fire, fail, and then chuck a grenade in the firepit.
It’s easy, but it’s not going to get you the result you were hoping for and it’s likely to make everything worse.
We is everyone that isn’t those companies and is impacted by social media.
We do have little power on a national level, but that doesn’t mean the only power we have is local.
Sure, we can’t
flip a switchtell the engineers to program a switch and flip it for us like Musk and Zuckerberg can, but that’s not the only power that matters.We can build and support alternatives to addictive, enshittified centralized tech (like the Fediverse). I was offered the “choice” of accepting a degraded Twitter experience or paying for Twitter premium. I chose to check out Mastodon.
We can use the parental controls we do have, both inside the ecosystem and in the real world. No screens in the bedroom or at the dinner table. No smartphone until you’re 16. Schools that ban phones in the classroom. Venues that ban phones during shows.
Edit: Another option is educating ourselves and our children to be safe on the internet. I had to learn that the correct response to “what are you wearing” is “a robe and wizard hat” and then blocking the pedophile all on my own because my parents didn’t know those threats even existed. I do. Most parents in 2026 do.
I’m not imaginative, but we have a lot more power than just choosing between “let it suck forever” and “give up even more of your privacy and I’ll pretend to fix the problems I created/encouraged because I make more money that way.”
deleted by creator
I agree that they’re not mutually exclusive. I wasn’t saying that they were.
I was pushing back against the idea that age verification is the best and only reasonable response to our internet problems (the “lesser of two evils” argument).
I personally exclude age verification when other, better options - like the ones mentioned above - exist and haven’t even been tried.
It’s like watching someone try to build a fire, fail, and then chuck a grenade in the firepit.
It’s easy, but it’s not going to get you the result you were hoping for and it’s likely to make everything worse.
deleted by creator