“Fixing yourself” automatically fixes the “Facebook problem”. Because then, Facebook will be completely irrelevant to you.
I block all of their sites in my hosts file so can't even view a Facebook event page or group. It has only provided benefits, and I haven't missed out on anything. Productivity is up. Social life is better.
Ideally that would be perfect.
Realistically, the people running the groups and events have 99% of their time dedicated to non-communication activities and standing-up a mailing list or website is outside their time-capacity AND experience.
As an example here in Ireland we have a group called Airliner Experiences that organise enthusiast flights on rare and interesting aircraft. They exist only on Facebook, I have asked why and it's because they "don't have time" to run a website for the few non-Facebook oddballs. So I've missed many potentially-interesting experiences but they haven't missed my money because there is such a huge audience in Facebook.
I unfollowed everyone years ago and it has made a huge difference in how I think of Facebook. Without the persistent feed and flood of ads, it’s just another tool for communicating with people, one that is seldom used when faced with other alternatives. Facebook is now mostly harmless, and I only spend maybe a minute or two on it every few days.
If a problem as 300 million causes, you still have a problem if you cut that down to 299,999,999.
The real question is whether an individual checking out from Facebook harms themselves in some way e.g. less able to find work? We just need to make sure Facebook never gets endorsement as some kind of identity / passport.
True. And people have always murdered each other. But when millions of people are murdering each other we call it war.
My body is fighting some millions of germs right now. If you add an order of magnitude or two to that I'll be sick. Or dead.
A camel can carry a lot of straw. Enough straw can crush a camel.
At some point we have to deal with the problem.
(I don't mean that everyone should get off Facebook. But I do mean it for the crowd that somehow they hate facebook but yet think they are dependent on it.)
To change society, we indeed need to fix ourselves, but those fixes would be essentially getting rid of wanting to poses. Once that's gone, we can finally think ahead, but for that, countless steps are ahead of us.
( One of the first, in my opinion, should be a base income, but no necessarily in money; cover the physical needs: food, water, warmth, shelter; and motivate people to achieve something in order to gain anything above the basics, but remove the fear of lacking safety.)
Dark ages with manipulative priests didn’t end because people decided to fix themselves. They ended because people decided to fix their society. Namely, they separated church from government, instilled compulsory education, etc.
I strongly doubt anyone believes that their actions alone can stop global warming or destructive financial cycles, however, there is still merit in individual actions. They do have an impact, though you have to consider these actions over the long term to see it.
Consider how the market for electric cars developed. I'd suggest the electric car market started getting mainstream acceptance after the launch of the Tesla Model S. However, it took a long time to get to that point. Consider how the market for electric cars looked in the 1990s. There was some activity, but it was largely a hobbyist market. However, those early adopters, though small in number, kept the market progressing until it was ready for mass acceptance.
Using your recycling example, it also took many years before people took recycling seriously. There's still plenty to be done to improve recycling practices further, but it's clear that the situation now is far better than it was 30 years ago. If you consider the work that had to be done to get us to the point we're at now, it's clear it would've taken the work of dedicated individuals to go against the grain to start making recycling normal, even if their initial impact was small. We can either build upon this foundation, or squander the progress that has been made.