[Edit 2: I think anyone commenting should identify how much they use Facebook in their comment lol]
On the list of people I describe in the subject, I place myself first. If you’re here to defend yourself by showing me your receipts, congratulations, you win, I just saved us who knows how much time. I’m typing this out in an attempt to describe phenomena, not persuade you of anything in particular, other than, this is a thing I see happening a lot; too much would be my take.
I’m just gonna grab [a] most egregious example, but I would like to talk about this, not as a horrific fail, but as an exemplar; at the moment I believe that most people categorize it as the former.
[edit: there really is no “most” egregious example, and I just thought of a much worse one, and unlike Facebook I am fully guilty of this one: I own and drive a car, a lot, and boy am I ignoring some real world consequences there.]
That example being, Facebook Acted As The Main Propaganda Outlet For A Genocide Of The Rohingya In Myanmar, and therefore, Anyone Who Uses Facebook Is Using A Tool That Has Bloodstains On It And Are Somehow Not Horrified.
To more easily conceptualize this, it’s much the same as me needing a shovel, and having a neighbour that I happen to know murdered someone with their shovel, but has not been arrested for it, and right when I need the shovel, they walk over with their bloodstained shovel and offer to let me use it for my non-murder task. And I just go “Wow how convenient that you happened to be here with that bright-red shovel just now, I think I’ll use this one one of yours with the little spatters of brain on it, instead of walking over to my shed and getting my own shovel out!”
We are talking about murder here, Facebook was used to foment mass murder and in a world that made sense, Zuckerberg would be handed over to the ICC years ago, along with Henry Kissinger and a number of others who instead hang out at the Nobel Peace Prize club where Barack makes a mean Mai Tai.
The problems that people use Facebook to constructively solve is connections to family and close friends, event and interest group organizing, the marketplace, and for the avid user it constitutes a daily journal.
These problems could each be solved using something else that is also just as gratis. It might be a small amount of effort more, but then you maybe don’t ever have to touch the remains of a human life that once existed and now does not, due to this particular device being used to end that life.
But it seems that it’s more convenient, easy, zero effort, to simply ignore the gore.
That’s what I see on the internet. I don’t think anyone has ever accepted a bloodstained shovel and set to digging a ditch with it who didn’t also feel that their life was next if they didn’t, but as long as there’s no visible bloodstains, as long as it’s just a few articles and podcasts from known radical leftists, eh, look at little Jimmy’s recital, isn’t he cute?
The thing about it, though, is that we are all already on a universal network; the internet. We all have email, give or take a few weirdos. We are perfectly capable of reaching our loved ones that way.
It is a question of convenience in this case, not necessity.
In my car example, I can argue - or rather, I used to be able to argue, because I work fully remote now - that I had no choice but to commute, and since I moved to the country with not even a bus service into the city, it was quite arguable on the basis of your comic.
But I left facebook and my friends and family did not change; they had less of me, perhaps, but I had just as much of them.
I believe you responded to the wrong comment, as I didn’t post that comic. Either way-
It isn’t always a matter of convenience over necessity. For a personal example, my grandfather knows how to use Facebook and basically no other communication technology; he isn’t really able to learn new things now, so my options are to use Facebook or to not talk to him. If you’re saying I’m acting unethically unless I do the latter I don’t think much more needs to be said; if not, well, that’s my point.
He can’t operate a telephone?
Time zones and limited schedules are the issue there. Smartphones for texting are difficult for him. But either way, that’s beside the point; what I’m trying to get at is that an inconvenience to you might be more than that to someone else. Learning a new platform might be easy for you, but it’s basically impossible for someone with dementia. Leaving a job that requires you to use unethical tools might be fine if you can get another one easily, but some people can’t. Not talking with friends on unethical social platforms might be fine if you have more social opportunities, but to someone with social issues, finding a group of people that you can be comfortable around isn’t trivial.
The comment I originally responded to was saying it’s unfair to compare oil/plastics industry with social media, because you have a choice with the latter but not the former; while that’s the case more often than not, it’s far from universal, and applying the same standards to someone for whom the opposite is true is unreasonable. You never know how much someone has to sacrifice to do things that might seem easy, and you never know how easy the things that seem hard might be.