Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

To me, it looks like personal criticism of Zuckerberg as a means of influencing Facebook is effective. It's not very pleasant, but it seems like it works, and that's why people do it.

I think if you asked most progressives to list every means of influencing gun policy they could think of, virtually none of them would mention pressuring CEOs. But it you asked "Should gun-maker CEOs be held accountable for gun deaths?" they would overwhelmingly respond "yes."

On the flipside, I don't think most progressives think criticising Zuckerberg is at all effective at influencing the trajectory of FB, and I don't think they really even know how they'd want Facebook to change. "Breaking it up" sounds fine, though they don't know what that means.

I'm picking on progressives with this example because it's the one I've been thinking about recently. I don't think typical conservatives are any more thoughtful re: efficacy or any more likely to avoid having their attention manipulated by availability

Perhaps my problem here is my own inability to conceive of a better use of people's attention than campaigning, which requires a focal point (an individual with real power) to attempt to influence.

I could just be doing the contrarian thing of constructing reasons for why lazy imitation is actually rational. I might also be insulting the intelligence of the campaigners by assuming they're better off following the herd than trying to think of their own personal strategy.

Some of your replies suggest you think this is a conscious strategy rather than an unconscious failure to notice the range of possible moves, & some seem to contradict that. The latter is my entire claim, so ambiguity there probably means we're completely talking past each other

Thanks, that does clarify it a lot. My position is definitely more ambiguous, so at least I managed to communicate that!