Best to do both.
Recruit on Big Tech platforms, but always, always link somewhere better. Siphon people out. How else are you gonna reach anyone using them?
The “anti Big Tech” influencers that make a living on Twitter or Tiktok or YouTube or whatever do massively annoy me, though. They aren’t even trying to break out, they’re just selling attention for cash like everyone.
The EFF put it plainly that relying only on the non-manipulative platforms is only a strategy if you don’t want anyone new to find you. They stated that they use platforms they don’t agree with because that’s where the eyes they want to influence are.
tiktok[dot]com/@efforg
And for them that’s fair, but they have a reason to reach the broader public. They also don’t use AI to make their points for them tho
Removed by mod
Meanwhile Twitter and Instagram have your best interest at heart right lol, you are still living under an authoritarian dictatorship run by the rich dressed as a democracy
Removed by mod
While i do hate TikTok for the complete and utter garbage it produces and addiction it creates to short form content.
China bad point has really lost its edge over the last few years.
How so?
ICE executing a person on the street and generally acting rather similarly to an authoritarian governments military arm. And the conditions in detention camps being rather horrible for any human.
Tech giants lobbing the government into surveillance state and not to even speak of some governments willingly making ID identification mandatory, for the protection of children of course.
Of course government representatives demanding censorship from social media as well.
So basically all the authoritarian issues we have blamed China for are already happening with us.
That ICE officer, Johnathan Ross, 43, is under state criminal investigation despite the Trump Admin trying to quash it.
China promoted the right wing government in the USA and Germany using TikTok, is arguably responsible for the second Trump admin given we saw the largest shift towards conservative if any youth voter demographic ever recorded.
China executed four Canadians last year with a specially designed “mobile death van” over drug related charges, after Canadian PM asked for clemency. China executes more people every year than any other nation, with Chinese sponsored Iran coming in at a close second, both more than three times the number of third place Saudi Arabia. And those are only the official killings.
The USA “surveillance state” resembles the way China looked well over a decade ago and it has only gotten worse.
But even if we all close our eyes and pretend the USA will ever be as horrible as China is now, it doesn’t absolve China of a goddamn thing, or have anything to do with largely unregulated private tech companies. Nice Whataboutism.
I think you’ve had a little bit too much American propaganda to drink today.
That ICE officer, Johnathan Ross, 43, is under state criminal investigation despite the Trump Admin trying to quash it.
Okay. What about all the others who have killed innocent civilians? What about even more that injured innocent civilians? Threatened? What percantage is currently under investigation? Two percent? Less? Stop trying to fool yourself and others.
China promoted the right wing government in the USA and Germany using TikTok, is arguably responsible for the second Trump admin given we saw the largest shift towards conservative if any youth voter demographic ever recorded.
And so did American platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more. Of course social media platforms facilitate propaganda. That’s what they’re for, regardless whether they’re Chinese, American or even European.
China executed four Canadians last year with a specially designed “mobile death van” over drug related charges, after Canadian PM asked for clemency. China executes more people every year than any other nation, with Chinese sponsored Iran coming in at a close second, both more than three times the number of third place Saudi Arabia. And those are only the official killings.
Gonna need a source for this. However, a few things to note. China has a population of one and a half billion people. Of course it hands out capital punishment to more people than countries with not even a quarter of its population. Still, I suspect that accounting for population and crime, death penalty would have higher numbers in China. They employ it more frequently, including for politicians. Something entirely unthinkable in the US or Europe.
The USA “surveillance state” resembles the way China looked well over a decade ago and it has only gotten worse.
True, it’s no secret that China runs a vast surveillance network. I absolutely think it went too far and should be changed. However, let’s look at some additional circumstances.
In no small part thanks to surveillance, crime in China is non-existent. Whereas the US has both the second largest surveillance network AND highest crime on the planet. In China, all the cameras and sensors at least partially serve citizens, because they are used for everyday things like payments, apartment complex entry, etc.
I’m by no means saying those points justify such vast surveillance, but at least there are some benefits to it. The US has absolutely no benefits, outside of the pedophile class. Everything is strictly for monitoring and gathering data.
Again, I don’t agree with or support Chinese surveillance, but at the very least it has some practical uses that benefit everybody. That’s the bare minimum a rich country should do. But the American empire can’t be bothered to help anyone but a bunch of ultra rich mass murderers.
But even if we all close our eyes and pretend the USA will ever be as horrible as China is now, it doesn’t absolve China of a goddamn thing, or have anything to do with largely unregulated private tech companies. Nice Whataboutism.
The USA has been far worse for a long time now. The number of foreign civilians slaughtered by the two countries is incomparable. Largely because China doesn’t invade other countries. Whereas for Americans it’s standard everyday procedure.
While the US bombs children in poor countries, China offers them interest-free loans to rebuild, and sometimes sends massive shipments of free food, so that people don’t starve. Do you still wanna act like the US is anything but a parasite for planet Earth? It is an enormous net loss for humanity as a whole, and easily the biggest factory of suffering to ever exist.
Saying that this or that country is worse, because it ran a genocide is pure braindead propaganda. Of course, genocide is bad, regardless of how many people it kills or where it occurs. But has it ever occurred to you that the US had something like 70 genocides at this point, and that 70 is a whole lot worse than 1 or 2?
The second part is true though. No matter how evil and despicable the american empire gets, it does not excuse China’s crimes, which definitely exist. China should absolutely be held accountable for all of them. As soon as the US is defeated once and for all, and all of its oligarchs, billionaires, CEOs, and politicians are serving their sentences. Before that it makes no sense, because it’ll only give the empire more time before its inevitable collapse.
Of note, the vast majority of Chinese death sentences are commuted to prison terms or even parole if the offender does not re-offend within 2 years.
Removed by mod
China wants to kill you and steal your gran’s savings
Ok defend this now
They used TikTok to promote the Trump admin, they oppose NATO, and they’re the source of the vast majority of global acted upon tech vulnerabilities from turning hundreds of thousands of routers into bots nets to “pig butchering” scams. China is the singular crutch which allowed Russia to stay afloat economicallg while attacking Ukraine. China itself has been prepping to conquer Taiwan and have been aggressive towards the Philippines, previously deployed military force in their takeover of Hong Kong, treat their colony like shit in Tibet with extreme violence and the tearing down of temples.
China celebrates when the USA is worsening, China wishes to spread its borders until only China remains, and under it you will have no rights if your demographic is even spared the death penalty.
TikTok in the US is controlled by US tech organizations now.
TikTok has always had servers centralized in Beijing, is still plurality owned by the same people at ByteDance even after the forced sale, and never actually moved the algorithm to the cloud like they claimed: only US user data is hosted there (and still accessible by ByteDance and Beijing military).
It was created to be used as, and is used as, a weapon. It having a high evaluation and some ad revenue will always be second to that.
Bahaha
It’s the new face of slacktivism. Whenever i see some “activist content” made with AI i just shrug it off like right wing content made with AI. It’s all spam.
regarding platforms whatnot, this is really easy to say as an observer not doing any work- if you believe it go build something
Most people don’t understand this tech, so if you do and they don’t, the only way to make this tech a part of progress is to go do that work as the person who understands this tech and why its important
And that doesnt just mean showing up in someone else’s project demanding they integrate this thing thats very important to you you need interpersonal skills if you’re going to build successfully.
Too many of these orgs solely use big tech platforms with no redundancy though. You need to use twitter for the reach? Fine I guess, but don’t be paying for a blue checkmark and mirror to an RSS feed hosted in some friendly country. Maintain fail safes. If you don’t, you risk getting the rugged pulled on you or worse.
It’s very difficult not to rely on big tech for communication… It’s a spectrum of how much you use it. Do you avoid Facebook… But use reddit? Avoid reddit, and use lemmy? Does the lemmy server live in Amazon Web Services, or is it self hosted? Do you host it on your hardware, then use a commercial ISP like AT&T? Are you building out your own LoRa mesh to communicate on, using hardware you bought off Amazon?
I’m not saying it’s a pointless effort. I think it’s a very bad look to try and use AI generated images for protests and stuff like that… But still, I think it’s ridiculous to try and pretend you’re above using or relying on big tech, then taking an Uber out to a restaurant and paying with your Android or iphone that you fed all your credit cards to out of convenience.
I would love to know what the person claims is a more “practical, secure, and convenient” solution that doesn’t rely on big tech
This post is mainly about using AI. As more people use AI the demand for data centers grows. Data centers are eating up computer parts driving up prices, eating up land making it harder for new house development, eating up energy driving up demand, creating noise and heat pollution hurting the local ecology, and actively boiling our planet.
Edit: I mean personally? I don’t use Reddit, Facebook or Google products. I use mailbox.org, Lemmy, Mastadon, etc. Mostly I go out of my way to avoid services and companies I don’t agree with where possible. It’s a bit of a hassle at first but you get used to it and it stops being an issue.
As for servers like on Lemmy, there’s instances like sh.itjust.works which focuses on using renewable energy. I was using them for a time but I think I switched to world just due to up time. Not sure how or where their servers are hosted tbh. Not many instances advertise that info like sh.itjust.works
On top of that, the audience that you are likely preaching to doesn’t exist on smaller, more open media. The people using those tools likely already agrees with whatever point you are trying to make.
Everybody on Mastadon is already aware of how invasive and harmful mainstream social media is, and have probably already begun to take steps to convert. The average Twitter or Facebook user probably doesn’t know just how much they are sharing, either voluntary or involuntary.
Counterpoint:
You can choose to have 8,000 people see your message or 80. Just saying.
The group I volunteer for is entirely offline. We do outreach in person and everything by calling people. Not only does this give privacy, but also people volunteer more if they are contacted in person.
You make a post that 8000 people see and get no one acting, or get the message to 80 and get 70 people actually doing something.
The medium is the message
I have a Substack. I use A.I. gen for a cover image. It’s more to build branding than anything else. I’d use an artist, but I have to pay an artist, and sadly, I myself am broke. I have too much respect for artists to pay them in “exposure.” So AI gen it is. Now if you’d like to help me change that: Subscribe, please?
This is the worst way to reach out you could have chosen, if I was subscribed to your substaco I would unsubscribe for this alone
Have you tried drawing something yourself instead of using the shitty art theft environment killing machine?
Asking for money right after that, too, shameless.
We just draw our own shit art and people still show up. Respect DIY and fuck AI.
there are so many free stock images out there, no need to involve the slop machine, it’s an instant turn-off as a reader
wait did you actually change your image to that hand-painted dragon? thats way cooler than the genai thumbnails further in hell yeah
Removed by mod
