[nkrisc]

People can choose to not consume crap they don’t need. They won’t, but they can.

Advertising is now just worthless noise to me because I generally don’t buy stuff anymore but what I need.

I can’t imagine why anyone would buy most of the crap I see advertised, but they do. Halloween was a recent example: how many tons of plastic shit for costumes was shipped from China only to be thrown away the next day? How much candy was bought? Even when I was 12 I started to see what a disgusting consumerist affair the whole thing was and it lost its appeal. And yet we have adults participating.

The ad machine exists because people let it be successful.

[FinnLobsien]

Would you make the same argument for smoking?

I think we’re in a world so dominated by the attention economy and things optimized to hook us in that it’s hard to just say “I quit”.

[nashashmi]

> They won’t, but they can.

That is the problem with this advice. “Can choose not to” is code to stop someone complaining. “Just don’t use it then”. It sounds equivalent to the “love it or leave it” slogan used in the 70s in America.

We don’t leave. We fight. We don’t stop using. We openly and publicly criticize

[lrvick]

Leaving it is the right choice though. The corpos will never care about you. I consume no ads, or Google software, and still do anything I want in the tech world.

[macintux]

I left Facebook, but its algorithm continues to actively encourage the divisiveness and misinformation that’s poisoning the world I live in.

Sometimes “you don’t have to participate” isn’t strong enough advice, not that I know what the answer actually is.

[lrvick]

Get yourself off the toxic platforms first, then immediate family and friends.

It is a bit like denormalizing smoking. It is a long game and a lot of education work but it is working.