Switch from being a data cow, being data mined to furthering your own aims and fulfilling your own purpose.
Mark Jeftovic: https://outofthecave.io/articles/the-collectivist-nature-of-social-media-platforms-and-big-tech/
It seems to me, that Covid-19 has accelerated the complete immersion of people into Social Media 24×7: it’s almost like when I first moved and people would ask me “did you see the news?” referring to some celebrity gaffe…it took me quite awhile before I figured out that “the news” meant Entertainment Tonight to these folks. Nowadays it is social media: “Did you hear?” almost always means did you see that tweet/post?
As Mark points out in his post and as Edward Bernays pointed out long ago (1928) in Propaganda, social media is just the application of mass shaping of accepted opinion. Everyone seems to swarm whomever or whatever the “influencer” (read not you, nor to your advantage) says to. Not to mention that social media tends to reinforce by repetition (how many times in your feed do you see the same links/posts over and over) whatever narrative “they” tell you to.
And, I haven’t even gotten to my larger point: which is how much data you are giving away to these clowns. There is an old saying from the poker world: “if you can’t figure out who the sucker at the table is, it’s you.” Likewise, if you are using a “free” product, you are the product. The amount of data the tech oligarchs collect on you is dumbfounding. Not to mention the latest push to forcing everyone to give their cell number for “two factor authentication.” There’s a reason for that: now they have unlocked everything on your phone from where and with whom you spend, to your phone’s (your) movements, etc. And don’t think if you’ve turned off “location (gps) that they aren’t tracking your movements. To rephrase the poker maxim: if you don’t know who the data cow is, it’s you and you are being milked dry.
I’ve checked out of all social media except LinkedIn and mostly just still there for professional reasons. To paraphrase Timothy Leary: I’ve turned on to doing other things besides social media, I’ve tuned in to other things, and I’ve dropped out of social media.