Long overdue
this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2024
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Yeah it’s a shame that everyone is only pulling out after the US election. They should have done it a year or even two ago.
It was not super clear at the outset that X was becoming a platform for fascists. We knew Musk was a shit heel capitalist, but this alone is not a reason to leave a platform. Most social media is run by selfish capitalists, it is simply the way of the world. It was becoming more apparent over the course of this year that Musk was playing with the algorithm to boost himself and people that paid him money, and we knew Musk was reinstating banned accounts in the name of "free speech". But it wasn't until election day (week?) when the platform explicitly endorsed Donald Trump that we knew the platform had been completely transformed into a pro-fascism platform. Remember that to most people, conservative and fascist don't mean the same thing. My personal opinion is that the modern conservative movement has completely shifted into fascism, and anyone who says they are conservative is endorsing fascism. But this is not how the majority sees things.
Musk literally told everyone he was bringing back all the fash assholes that were banned, and to do everything to amplify their voices.
Did nobody believe him when he literally told everyone it was the plan?
I've been picking fights on reddit about this. My feeling is that X has become a neo-nazi platform, and anyone who stays on there is implicitly endorsing fascism. The popular sentiment seems to be that, even if you accept this as true, it doesn't extend to music artists because they need to promote their music to make money. My personal feeling is that music artists do not get a pass. I don't care if you are trying to make money. Preventing fascism is more important than making money. There are many non-fascist platforms that you could promote your music on.
Am I off base with this? I mean, I hate corporations and capitalism and view them as the main evils of our modern world, yet I work for an evil corporation at my day job. I think I get a pass because I need to make money to live. Am I a hypocrite?
Most people aren’t going to put their livelihood at risk because it’s morally right. If they all hopped ship overnight it would be a different story, but until the dominos start to fall they’re too ingrained to make it likely.
I do agree with you, everyone has interest dropping the platform, but at best I can see some mirroring accounts just in case.
They're always welcome to get a regular job. They're not choosing what they have to do to survive, they're choosing what they want.
Nobody said anything about surviving? These are people who worked for years building a career that means something to them.
What you said wasn’t incorrect, but it is about as useful as telling someone “just learn to code!” with an added layer of moral superiority
It’s also worth noting that most jobs you work are going to be for a corporation of some kind that ultimately has some kind of negative impact on the world in some way. Should they quit making music and go work for Amazon instead? What if that’s the only job they can get? Maybe they don’t work for Amazon but they work somewhere, contribute to pollution every day, and work for an employer that lobbies for billionaire interests or uses materials that were sourced from horrible working conditions or flat out slave labor. On that note, is your phone ethically sourced? Your shoes? All your clothes? You’re sure you haven’t contributed to sweat shops by buying from the wrong sources?
It’s difficult to exist in this world and make money while having zero negative impact, and not making money isn’t an option for the vast majority of people. I think when you really think about it you’ll see that you almost certainly engage and support in ideas you don’t support, just by accident as a consequence of living, and leaving x isn’t a solution for everything that you think it is.
Of course it's real easy to make this statement when it's someone else making the sacrifice.
Musicians also need money to live so why don't they get the pass?
Yeah that's kind of where my mind is changing. However, I do think the conversation is different depending on whether it's an unsigned indie artist vs. Billie Eilish. Billie is gonna sell her records and tickets whether she's on X or not, and besides, she's probably made enough by now to never need to work again.
You’re right, and those with a following are the important accounts that would help get the others to leave
My feed doesn't have any neo nazy stuff. Maybe I use it differently or it is because of my country, but here leftists are on twitter and killing it would be very troublesome. Right wing only has some bot accounts.
what's stopping leftists in your country from using an alternate platform? i mean, i'm not going to tell you what the left in your country should do, but twitter is now an explicitly pro-Donald Trump platform and likely contributed to him winning the US election. I think leftists elsewhere in the world care about whether the US descends into full-blown fascism, because that would be generally bad for the entire world? But I could be wrong about that, I could also see people feeling like that could be a good thing for them because it would mean the US meddles less in other nations' affairs.
If you do think Trump winning the US election is a bad thing for your personal political aims, you should probably be looking for a way to get off twitter, because twitter is now a part of his machine.
It's cool to watch Twitter dying. Specially as its death is so tied to how it works - once the key actors of a blogging platform leave, the others simply follow fashion.
Does anyone want some popcorn?
Does anyone want some popcorn?
Yes, always.
To go to Mastodon?
...
To go to Mastodon, right??
No, but hopefully THIS leopard won't eat their face.
It's like people don't learn.
stop embedding and referencing tweets in articles too.
Pleeeease! Twitter is broken and embeds have stopped working half the time.
Closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.
A bit late but still, better late than never
And please don't say they're moving to bluesky. That's just jumping out of the pot and into the flames.
I don't think blueskys that bad. At least not yet. I'd prefer a fully featured federated thing but the fact is mastodon just doesn't appeal to most people.
Blueskys moderation capabilities at least are quite nice atm
But Bluesky is not FOSS so it's literally the devil here.
isn't it literally foss though lol?
Yep, the moment you have to explain it, you've already lost; the normies will check out. That's the thing, these sites depend on having a huge userbase and people just aren't going to go to a site with "nobody on it". I maintain an account on both Mastodon and Bluesky... they're both pretty neat in their own way. But Mastodon isn't ever going to be the virtual town square. I kinda like it quiet there, tbh.
i follow and interact with plenty of people on mastodon through my bsky account. :)
But isn't the aim for their blocking to be so good they can serve Nazis and antifa on the same platform without them conflicting?
Is that really much better than twitter the nazi bar?
bsky nukes fascist accounts pretty quickly; the blocking tools were created as anti harassment tools since sex workers and trans people were early adopters and had lots of input toward it
I did just hear libsoftiktok joined and got banned pdq too.
Great news honestly, I thought they were dumping all this on custom Blocklist but if they're also moderating themselves it really makes me consider making an account.
Conflicted if this is actually good.
On one hand, Twitter has become a real neo-nazi platform that openly spreads misinformation/propaganda/rage-bait in the guise of 'free speech' with the owner also abusing their powers by stealing handles and censoring and whatnot. The world would be better off without it if it were to die.
On the other, Twitter is still quite a big name with a lot of influence, with alternatives being much more niche. If every decent person was to leave the platform and all that's left are neo-nazis and "good-faith-neither-left-nor-right-people-who-always-strangely-support-the-right", it's just going to make recruitment much easier.
I don't think so. If people leave and the only reputation you'd hear about the platform is that it's full of shit like that, you won't have any reason to start an account in the first place, since there's no "normal" content with which they'd first hook you in, before they can slowly start changing your views.
If the serious content remains, you'll get people signing up for that content, only to be slowly manipulated into whatever The Algorithm feels will drive the engagement (which is probably fascism). If there's nothing in the first place, you don't have that hook.
Let it die.
Shaming the platform is a great way to make fence sitters leave, even those that are "good-faith-neither-left-nor-right-people-who-always-strangely-support-the-right”" that don't want to come of as that kind of person will leave if staying there makes you look bad. KKK fell apart partially because of a shaming campaign if I remember correctly.