770
The Moral Case for No Longer Engaging With Elon Musk’s X
(www.bloomberg.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
770 points (87.6% liked)
Technology
59710 readers
3611 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I dunno', kinda' sounds similar to, "racism would be over if you'd just shut up about it."
X and Elon don't magically disappear because you choose to ignore them.
And it would be similar to that if racism was a business that survived based on engagement.
I mean... Isn't it? Racism is very self-perpetuating. Especially when it's allowed over other forms of distasteful speech.
I don't think so. Racism being self perpetuating means it will exist even if we stop talking about it and will probably just be worse because even well meaning folk can be racist if they're not aware of it.
X on the other hand stops existing if we stop sending it traffic and just let it die.
Nah, self-perpetuating is not the same as spontaneously inevitable. Just like species can go extinct despite all life self-perpetuating in some way.
The people on Lemmy are likely to agree not to use it, and that just makes it more stupid to say, "don't talk about it.", since it won't further its demise at all.
Well, it seems like racism has unfortunately failed to go extinct so I'm not quite sure what you're getting at there but I'm probably missing something.
I don't think everyone has agreed not to use it? The more it gets talked about and spread the more people are drawn to the platform. Why do you think Musk has successfully made sure the site has been in the headlines constantly? I'm not saying we have to all stop talking about it and pretend it doesn't exist. But maybe we don't need multiple articles every day posted across multiple communities.
Anyway, doesn't really matter what I think. It keeps getting posted and upvoted so I guess we'll just have to live with it.
People are not drawn to the platform in a positive way by talking about it negatively on Lemmy...
It's like you idiots take basic expressions like, "any attention is good attention" and turn it in to a fucking axiom for life. It IS NOT TRUE in all contexts. Fucking grow up and realize generalities are SPECIFICALLY NOT TRUE in all cases. Ever. Generalities are always fucking stupid to use to judge specific occurrences unless it is a quintessential example. Which very VERY few things are quintessential examples of, "any attention is good attention.".
Something that's self-perpetuating doesn't extinguish without being actively stamped out. Noticing it's still around is the most basic observation that means nothing about it except that it's still an existant problem.
I mean sure, people aren't drawn to it in a positive way but advertiser's don't really care how you're drawn as long as you're drawn.
As for the rest of your comment I'm not really sure how to respond to be honest. Doesn't seem to relate to our conversation but good to get off your chest I guess.
Unlike systemic racism though this conversation isn't self perpetuating so I'm going to peace out and let it die like I wish everyone would do with X.
Have a good one and might catch you around in the next post about X. We're overdue for a new one by now I'm sure.
If you think it isn't, you clearly haven't been paying attention to all of racism in general and hypercapitalist neofascism in particular.
If everyone shuts up about racism, then racism will be worse. If everyone stopped talking about twitter, then twitter will die. It's not the same thing at all. Not even close.
You are mixing "talking about Twitter" with "being on Twitter". If nobody on Lemmy or Mastodon said a single word about Twitter ever again... it would still outnumber them by hundreds of millions users. I don't like it, but that's still how it is. But consequently, ragging on it is not going to recruit people who left for the Fediverse.
But if you mean making everyone on Twitter to shut up in general, well, easier said than done.
Yes overall but even then it's not so cut and dry. Think of, say, queer artists who depends on this to have a living, or minority activists who need it to be heard, to push back against the same hate spreading across it. If they simply up and leave before building up an audience elsewhere they'll just end up worse for it. For activists, even if they have other platforms, they still consider what will happen in the wider picture if a major platform like this is left to bigotry and toxicity unchallenged, and those who aren't bothered by it.
Sometimes taking the moral high ground is a luxury. Given the way some people criticize the irony of minorities who still rely on it, I don't think they really get how complicated the matter is.
Nah. That doesn't make a bit of sense, that's stretching those generalizations to the breaking point. How is talking negatively of it going to make it more appealing to people who already left mainstream social media out of dissatisfaction. Who do you think this person is who's like "I had enough of Twitter, but now that they said it's vile and falling apart I absolutely must go back there"?
Even if the average person on Facebook could vaguely feel interested in it as a talking point, which is already a strange logic, here it doesn't seem likely or meaningfully impactful.
The difference is that racists are usually racist due to a moral stance, not because it makes them money; ignoring them means we'll hear about it less but it won't actually go away. Clickbait/ragebait, on the other hand, isn't a moral viewpoint - it's meant to bring a person money via exposure/engagement, so less engagement leads to less money which leads to less bait because it's no longer working.
I dunno', you'd find plenty of economic justification if you go back and read why the confederacy got started. Or why Germany went a little crazy in early 1900's...
While it is correct to logically dismiss the actual arguments of rage bait, it is purely foolish to pretend that it has no tangible effects worth counteracting all the same.
To say these things aren't even worth talking about in general is akin stepping aside for bad actors to take over.
It’s not “x” it’s called Twitter.
This is a good case for deadnaming.
Corporate deadnaming is the only good deadnaming.
Facebook also only deserves to be called Meta as a reminder that they rebranded into a failed trend and lost billions because of it.
I dunno. Racism isn’t entirely manifested by one man. He’s just one more bucket of piss in a sea of piss. Fuck him. We can at any time choose to ignore him. Choose to ignore his shit app. He doesn’t matter to any equation, he’s just an annoying rich person struggling with their addiction to child pornography. Wups did I say the silent part out loud. Shit.
What you say is completely correct for engaging with his platform.
Not about not talking about the rise of bigoted morons in general. That is sticking your head in the sand.
Well kinda, except for these articles that pop now and then in my timeline, I haven't heard of XformerlyTwitter for a while.
It was fun for a few weeks, joking about what bulls**t idea Musk had during the weekend with colleagues, but after a while the joke was a bit repetitive.
It's not news because he joked about it. It's news because he's flippantly doing it with production.
While some of the same words appear in these two things, they are nothing alike.
The debate over whether recognizing racism can help us eliminate it has nothing to do with an unhinged billionaire who uses shock tactics to generate PR, and the bottom-feeding publications who give it to him by stoking our disgust.
No, it's very much similar. You're saying don't even talk about it, when the article is about how it is a corrupted service. A service that at least used to have global reach. If a service is a globally used resource, it's kinda' institutionalized.
Since when did ignoring institutionalized injustice ever fix it? Never. It never gets fixed in the dark.
I understand the concept of not feeding trolls, but do not misjudge and accidentally ask people to ignore villains.
It’s a corrupted service, therefore it’s a service, therefore it’s an institution, therefore it’s institutionalized injustice….
Feeling a little loose after all that stretching? I guess the policies of every website company in the world now constitute institutionalized injustice. I’ll use that phrase next time I’m appealing the Facebook modbot.
I wouldn’t say we should never talk about Twitter and it’s impact on our world. I will say it is a media circus which is paraded about far, far too often to its corrupt owners benefit. And it needs to have less attention than it is getting like a fire needs less air.
Way to treat an association as an exact replica... I'm trying to put bread crumbs down, not rope them together. Stop pretending you do not know what an alegory is.
If you understand the general topic should not be shunned ... why are you speaking on behalf of shunning it?
I answered that. Last paragraph. Stop spinning wild extrapolations out of your ass for a second and just read some hard text.
Well, that's way more true than it is false. The way the left hyped up race as the single most important and defining feature of people wasn't exactly helpful. The idea of racial realism should be deconstructed, not actively supported. I have literally never seen as much racism in my life as what the left has been doing in the last 10-15 years.
And as for Elon, ignoring him would go a long way as well. The only reason why he is relevant, is because news media hypes up everything he says, no matter how false or irrelevant it is. Simply sticking to the important news, instead of clickbait and hype, would go a long way to quiet things down.
What the hell are you talking about? Acknowledging that black people and other minorities have had a hard time in the past that leads to present continued struggle IS NOT racism... It's acknowledging reality.
What IS racist is saying the behavior is innate to the race, not that minorities have consequently received the short end of the economic stick.
That's exactly what racism is. You ignore what actually happening to the individual and treat them all the same because of their skin color. White savior complex in action.
If you cannot understand the difference between recognizing the past hardships people in general have faced and continue to face and making assumptions about specific people you don't know ... you are literally too stupid to understand racism or privilege. Congratulations on being pathetically stupid.
You are the one doing that if you haven't realized. A person isn't defined by their skin color and they don't need a white savior telling them how oppressed their supposed to feel.