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this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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Technology
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Anyone who is still on Twitter has, in my opinion, fewer issues with being a corporate puppet and being associated with all the hatred there than they have with losing views.
I have (had?) plenty of friends on Twitter who loudly proudly boycotted the Harry Potter game due to JKR's comments about trans people.
But they’ve stayed on Twitter despite its horrible owner and how he runs things.
I’m willing to give a pass to creators who make a living off their online audience. If the audience went off Twitter, so would they.
Everyone else, though? I don’t ever care to hear about what they're boycotting again if they can’t pull themselves off Twitter.
I don't agree with that logic because that means whenever horrible people buy off a platform, even if you do not pay for it, you are obligated to leave rather than push back. There are people who spent decades cultivating their community before Elon Musk had any interest in it. There are people who are right now pushing back against the rise of hate in it. It seems like a Catch-22 where the person either gives up their platform or they are discredited. The end result either way is that Musk's crowd wins.
Elon Musk owns Twitter. Every single time a person tweets some kind of "push back," it's just more activity on the platform that Elon Musk owns.
Question for you: Would you say all the pushback has been working? Because it seems like every comment out of Elon Musk's mouth is worse.
Well, given how saddled with debt the place was it wouldn't be hard to argue that more activity in fact only burdens him more. It's not a sustainable or profitable place. I also don't think advertisers will be to thrilled by the activity of shit constantly being flung everywhere.
But more than that, it is a social media platform, not a shop. I think there is inherent value in the people who stay there and highlight the issues going on regarding hate speech and political manipulation, rather than they all leave. That would allow hateful people to mold the platform around a whole lot of clueless people who don't realize what is going on, and might just go along with it because they are immersed in this environment. Twitter is not made exclusively of bigots, but it could become more like that over time.
Sure there is no amount of tweets that will stop Elon Musk's mad spiral. But his reputation definitely took some hits.
As far as it compares with JK Rowling, I also think it's not the same. Say, if we were to compare, as far as engagement and community goes, I wouldn't expect anyone to drop all their friends and groups they make through their shared love of Harry Potter just because the author is awful.
If anything I'm a bit suspicious from where first came this call for complete disengagement. Because if there are no voices calling for inclusivity and respect in social media platforms and fandoms, they just become breeding grounds for hate.
lol, seriously? Musk wants to disable blocking on Twitter, while continuing to ratchet up the transphobia.
You're truly suspicious about people not wanting to wallow in a cesspool of hate?
I'm also on Kbin so you can guess what's my stance on remaining in bad platforms.
But these are two different arguments: Whether it's sensible for people to leave, or whether they are obligated out of moral consistency to leave.
Absolutely people have plenty of reasons not want to wallow there and I wouldn't in a million years say anything bad to anyone who wants to leave. But I also wouldn't shame those who want to push back against hate, who want to protect the following they gathered, or who want to support the creators who didn't find an adequate place to rebuild their online presence yet.
What I am suspicious of is from whoever came up with this argument "if you are so opposed to bigots, how about you leave this platform" when the end result is that many of these same marginalized people targeted by hate speech might have less reach because of it.
I think you're overthinking this. Twitter used to be a place where I could keep up with my friends. Now, it's a place filled with many forms of hate. Because of this, I no longer wish to use it, so I left.
I personally have no care in the world for what happens with Twitter. Why should I? It becomes overrun with bigots? So what?
Remaining on a platform filled with hate is an indicator that you're ok with that. I am not, so I left. end of story.
This is not someone randomly joining Parler. Not only minorities don't always have the luxury to only exist where they are welcomed, they had been accepted and that was taken away from them. They already had built their following and that's being ruined. To say that trying to hold onto what they've built and resist is "being okay with hate" doesn't sound right to me.
Twitter as a place does not matter to me, but I still have friends and creators that I like that use it, and especially for artists, they need a platform with wide reach for their careers. I can preach the Fediverse and Mastodon as much as I want, but until it's widely adopted, it's not going to help them.
To what end? What do they really hope to accomplish?
It's owned by a bigot who is making both social and corporate changes to explicitly signal to and allow other bigots to take over the platform. They're pulling back on moderation and firing all of the people who prevented it from becoming even more of a cesspool. What chance to a bunch of people tweeting about how things should change have against the person who literally runs the platform and his toxic fanatic horde?
I understand that a lot of people have spent a lot of time on there and so it may feel hard to let go, but at this point it's it's beyond a lost cause and any further effort is just a sunk cost fallacy. You have to know when to realize that everything around you is on fire and that bucket of water you're holding isn't going to be enough.
This is why decentralized and federated platforms like Mastodon and Lemmy are the only real answer. Otherwise you're just swimming in someone else's pool and hoping they don't shit in it.
This is to my eyes the core problem with centralized corporate social networks. Ultimately, where you intend it or not, your presence is in support to the core mission of the corporate entity holding the platform. Twitter has 16 years of history at this point, and I think can be viewed in three periods. First was the tech experiment to bring online interactions more into the real world. This was Twitter's shortest period. It lasted a month or so at most. In this phase, the mission was to create a bridge between online interactions and real world experiences using cell phone technology. Second was the venture capital chasing profits period. This was the longest and least successful period of Twitters history. In this phase, the mission was to make some money. I don't think Twitter had a mission beyond that, and that ultimately they tried to curate an environment that would appease advertisers and drive engagement (even if it was mostly through outrage). In this phase, I don't hold all that much against anyone who engaged with the platform. I don't think Twitter was doing anything egregiously unethical (beyond the usual bullshit every tech company does). I lost interest in Twitter in this timeframe because the outrage engagement model bummed me out. All this brings us to now...
At this point. Twitter is Elon Musk's personal messaging platform. Its purpose is to inflate and normalize Elon Musk's world view, and those of his cronies. Anyone who remains on the platform his helping him and his shift right mission, preferring to respect the requests of authoritarian right wing governments vs common sense consumer protections requested by more free governments. There are people on Twitter who disagree with this, but their presence still supports Musk in his mission. Whether you were there before Musk or not is immaterial. Its his personal platform, and it's for his mission
Yeah, I'm still there. I'm not letting the right-wing trolls win. I'm there until it implodes.
Much like Reddit, if you curate your feed, stay away from the big accounts and avoid the Trending Topics and don't talk politics then it's still a decent place to be.
This is to my eyes the core problem with centralized corporate social networks. Ultimately, where you intend it or not, your presence is in support to the core mission of the corporate entity holding the platform. Twitter has 16 years of history at this point, and I think can be viewed in three periods. First was the tech experiment to bring online interactions more into the real world. This was Twitter's shortest period. It lasted a month or so at most. In this phase, the mission was to create a bridge between online interactions and real world experiences using cell phone technology. Second was the venture capital chasing profits period. This was the longest and least successful period of Twitters history. In this phase, the mission was to make some money. I don't think Twitter had a mission beyond that, and that ultimately they tried to curate an environment that would appease advertisers and drive engagement (even if it was mostly through outrage). In this phase, I don't hold all that much against anyone who engaged with the platform. I don't think Twitter was doing anything egregiously unethical (beyond the usual bullshit every tech company does). I lost interest in Twitter in this timeframe because the outrage engagement model bummed me out. All this brings us to now...
At this point. Twitter is Elon Musk's personal messaging platform. Its purpose is to inflate and normalize Elon Musk's world view, and those of his cronies. Anyone who remains on the platform his helping him and his shift right mission, preferring to respect the requests of authoritarian right wing governments vs common sense consumer protections requested by more free governments. There are people on Twitter who disagree with this, but their presence still supports Musk in his mission. Whether you were there before Musk or not is immaterial. Its his personal platform, and it's for his mission
Yeah, I do still have my twitter account but I try to avoid going on it and only still have it because there are a few niche times where it's still unfortunately the best place to get current information on local issues (last Sunday for example there was a power outage in my area and the power company's twitter is a bit better at giving updates than their official site so I was checking both).
I really wish I could just delete my account and maybe I still will (and just create an empty dummy account for those rare cases so twitter doesn't harass me to log in). But to be honest I'm less stressed about social media in general ever since I left twitter and I suspect over time a similar thing will happen with being off Reddit.