[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?

  • jetA
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    1 year ago

    It’s going to be a difficult life if you avoid every tool that a bad person has ever used. Purified drinking water has been used to hydrate villains who then do terrible things. So you shouldn’t drink purified drinking water. The printing press has been used by evil people to spread evil ideas so you shouldn’t read or write. Ascribing intent to a technology is a very slippery slope. I don’t think it’s a tenable way to live a life.

    • Pandantic@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      What you are talking about is not the same as what OP is talking about. Following the analogy, it’s not like you should stop using shovels (or knives, or water) because someone bad used them (hell, Hitler was a dog lover, and I’ll be damned if I stop loving dogs because of that asshole). Rather, it’s that you shouldn’t just use the shovel you know murdered someone because the person murdered didn’t matter to you. Stepping out of the analogy, it’s not about the tool used (though the case could be made for some things) but about the companies who made them and how they used them or knowingly allowed them to be used.