Your reasons are fair for someone who’s professionally involved in the discourse and wants to persuade people.
But for many of us normies it was a fun platform where we could argue about sports and politics with irl and internet friends. I had deleted and redownloaded Twitter many times (like people do with Instagram or TikTok) even pre-Elon just as a way to reduce distractions.
For most non pros it’s still the right move to get off there.
You make a good argument but have left out what, I believe, are two critical issues which may undermine it somewhat:
The first issue concerns the X algorithm, which Musk now controls. He uses this algorithm to manipulate the availability of what X publishes, to suit his own ambition. He attenuates the availability of content which undermines his motives. It's censorship.
The second issue concerns the ownership of all content which is published on X. Agreeing to X terms of use involves forfeiting the copyright to everything you post, in exchange for a limited license to use your own work. Musk invokes his copyrights easily, whenever it suits him — such as during the attempted sale of InfoWars to The Onion a few months ago. The sale was prohibited because Musk proved that he was the copyright holder of everything InfoWars ever published on Twitter (X), per the imposed user agreement, and subsequently refused to sell HIS tweets (posts) to The Onion, by effectively rejecting their offer to buy. A judge agreed.
…
The best thing to do is to leave X, and build your network in a place where its very existence won't be subject to the whims of a fickle, unaccountable, untrustworthy, individualistic narcissist with absolute authority… despite the legitimate temptation of exposure there, which you rightly bring up.
I think if people want to post on twitter and build audiences elsewhere they should definitely do that -- in fact that is part of the goal of this publication! But I do think abandoning the platform at this moment when it still has so much power is a bad idea.
I haven’t been on Twitter in a while, but isn’t the algorithm systemically suppressing left of center accounts and pushing far right accounts? If that’s the case, are liberal tweets even reaching potentially persuadable people?
I would love to see evidence of this, some of the right-of-center people I know who acknowledge the rise in Nazism feel like their feeds are more "balanced" now (w/r/t the average American's views) than they were pre-Elon. So it's hard to go off of vibes alone.
I also think that from Twitter's perspective, if they fully destroy the user experience of any lib on the website, that's unlikely to be good for their bottom line.
I would analogize this to any out-of-power movement in decades past trying to get published in popular newspapers. Were the editors biased against them? Yes. Were the readers more likely to view their arguments unfairly? Yes. But also, you gotta go where the action is to make your case, no matter how unfair it is.
I think there is a big difference between checking Twitter once a day and being a big user here. Musk wants to create a boiling frog situation here and not obvious propaganda. This doesn't matter much if you are checking it once a day but matters a lot of you're boiling yourself in it/using it more than alternatives like bsky.
The way this will work on people is less turning libs into Republicans than with rat**"*ing that creates a bunch of lib infighting.
Yeah, the active promotion of far-left fringe stuff (either sincere, or manufactured), to create infighting that undermines center-left Dem candidates, is definitely part of what he's doing.
This may be the best advice. It's the advice I wound up following myself, after mothballing my X account during months of indecision.
Building on a platform where all content and audiences are property of a publisher (X), which is motivated significantly by non-pecuniary goals, and which could (and might!) erase everything you've posted — along with your whole network, which you've cultivated — because of ideology (or even because of a whim), during such a fickle time in politics and media, is like building a Tower of Babel from mud… during a thunderstorm. It's treacherous.
I've kept my X account, but use it now for auditing and commentary only. I won't rely on the permanence of any audience gathered there, or any network cultivated there.
I won't rely on it, because… it's simply not mine.
Also X downranks anything with a link which kills news media.
With bluesky you can control the algorithms used for your feed. Just going off of the default following feed is great because it's chronological making it more objective and less addictive. Which is great for anyone with a day job off of social media.
I really hope you will do another debate similar to the Piper/Bruenig one on this. With someone who is really knowledgeable on the tech/algorithm side in regards to bluesky vs X.
The second claim is untrue. Under X's terms of service, you retain copyright and X gets a license, not vice versa. X's filing in the Infowars bankruptcy asserted ownership over X accounts themselves (i.e., they claim they can disallow you from giving your account to someone else), not the content posted on them. And while I think the bankruptcy judge was wrong to disallow The Onion from buying Infowars (for reasons Matt Levine has explained), his stated reasoning was that Infowars' other creditors would be stiffed; X's filing played no role.
X asserts copyright ownership of X accounts, which are media collections authored by users from content which has been licensed by X. These collections are the result of much labor — often *years* of commitment — by users, for a construction which they do not own.
In addition to being media collections, X accounts are also nodes (and hubs) of network relationships within X. These relationships are valuable, of course, and are also the result of much cultivation — often years of commitment — by users, to build and nurture an architecture which they also do not own…
Because these X-copyrighted collections (and their associated network relationships) are comprised of media which as been licensed by X, rather than of media under X's own copyright, does not contradict Musk's demonstrated willingness to invoke his ownership of these collections (and networks) easily, whenever it suits him — such as during the attempted sale of InfoWars to The Onion, late last year.
Musk had also, separately, "taken over the previously dormant @america handle to advertise his pro-Donald Trump super political action committee during the presidential election." [ ibid. ]
It's still treacherous to build a collection and a network (i.e. an "account"), on a platform which subjects its existence to the whims of a fickle, unaccountable, untrustworthy, individualistic narcissist with absolute authority…
"…X showed up for Jones, arguing that the accounts belonging to X Corp. cannot be considered property of the estate and cannot be transferred or sold without X's consent."
Alex Jones lost 2 lawsuits, one to Connecticut plaintiffs, the other to Texas plaintiffs. Due to Texas' limitations on damages in civil suits, Jones ended up owing the CT plaintiffs much, much more than the TX plaintiffs, meaning that when InfoWars was sold and the proceeds distributed to the plaintiffs, the TX plaintiffs were going to get pennies on the dollar.
There were 2 bidders: The Onion and a front group for Alex Jones. The front group offered cash. The Onion offered some cash, but not as much as the front group. But, the CT plaintiffs wanted InfoWars to go to The Onion rather than essentially going right back to Jones. So they worked with the Onion to sweeten their offer. In addition to cash, the Onion's bid included the CT plaintiffs agreeing to forego proceeds from the sale that they were entitled to receive, meaning that the TX plaintiffs, who were basically going to get nothing out of the sale, would get more money. The Onion also was going to give both sets of plaintiffs a cut of its profits from running the InfoWars brand. Thus, the Texas plaintiffs were going to come out ahead from the Onion's offer.
The problem was that the Onion's offer was presented as a sliding scale, with a fixed amount of cash plus an amount of foregone proceeds from the CT plaintiffs that was based on the front group's offer. As I recall, based on the formula, the Onion's offer would beat the front goup up to a front group offer of $7 million. But if the front group offered less, the CT plaintiffs would forego less.
The deal fell through because the bakruptucy judge would not accept the Onion's offer due to the multiple contingencies and sliding scale. Had the Onion and the CT plaitniffs worked out a way to make a simplified offer, they might have won.
While Elon Musk did involve himself in the lawsuit as you noted, that was not the reason the sale fell through.
"The losing bidder, a business connected to Jones called First United American Companies, offered $3.5 million for Infowars. The Onion, in partnership with the Connecticut families, offered $1.75 million in cash, plus a novel sweetener they said raised the bid’s value to at least $7 million. The families agreed to forgo some of the money they’re entitled to, in order to raise the amount that other creditors, including the Texas families, could collect."
I agree with the general thrust of the article; there are still plenty of reasons (esp. for politicos/commentariat) to stay on Twitter.
That said, burning natural gas doesn’t produce the electrons which cool your home. The electrons already exist in the copper wiring and electronics that do the cooling. Rather (for AC power) the natural gas provides the energy to “wiggle” those electrons while they remain mostly in place. It’s these wiggles which power your electronics, not a constant stream of electrons produced at the power station. However, I understand that “If I use the wiggles produced by natural gas to cool my home in the summer, am I lending legitimacy to fossil fuel production?” is perhaps a less rhetorically powerful sentence.
You briefly touched on it, but the most important aspect to posting is the humble lurker. For every Twitter Nazi posting The Worst stuff, there’s 100 or even 1000 regular people who like looking at Twitter on the toilet or on the train but never post. Having a counter argument appear to “all black people are savages” reminds those lurkers that there are opinions other than right wing opinions and can stop people from going down that rabbit hole.
When you argue on Twitter you’ll never win over your foil, but you just might win over some lurkers.
Interesting and I think a attorney argument for staying. I’ve been pondering the bot issue a lot lately. How many of these are real true people versus bots or troll farm employees just stirring up stuff?
A recent Facebook post by a feminist account had a bunch of trolls commenting underneath. I clicked through at least 15 of the accounts that made the incel-like comments. All of them had little to no friends and appeared, to my untrained eye, that they were spam accounts. How much are we replying to real people versus bots. Does it matter?
Not sure I have more of a point but I think there’s a question there to be discussed.
You missed the most important point of all which is sad because I'm a big admirer of yours (and willing to be pay even if I disagree at times). I know that it wasn't done intentionally. I've seen MANY people's brains being cooked by the Twitter algorithm that normalizes vile stuff that was the realm of 4chan and I'm worried you have as well. You seem to be OK with normalizing the use the "N" word but I'm not. I'm also completely unconvinced that your twitter account has any influence whatsoever to people who matter. If you want to influence things, join TikTok.
Agreed. And the reasoning is the same as The Good Place: no one can do all the right things (get to heaven) bc everything is so complex and mixed together that there are no good decisions. So make your own decision that you can live with and move forward.
One of my most unpopular opinions is I’m very glad Musk bought Twitter. He’s made it into a cesspool and given platforms to all kinds of bad people but I’d much rather that site be a rightwing fever swamp than a leftwing one. Before he took it over that’s what it was. It was on that site where the worst leftwing ideas of the last decade gained a footing. I really believe if it weren’t for twitter woke would never have amounted to much. Remember the 2020 primary where one Democrat after another took crazy leftist positions? You can thank Twitter for that. Remember how crazy the summer of 2020 was? Leftwing Twitter played a big role in that. Without Twitter there would never have been a defund the police movement.
Now it’s the right that’s addicted to Twitter and the crazy ideas are coming from that side. It’s unhealthy for either of our parties to be hooked on that site, but if it must happen I’d rather it be Republicans. Twitter isn’t real life and Democrats learned that the hard way. I’m glad that’s over and now it’s Republicans’ turn to learn that. Thank you Elon for making it happen and rescuing Democrats from their coalition’s worst people.
But didn't the liberals all just move to Bluesky and now that's the new echo chamber? I think social media in general has an issue of elevating controversial voices for the clicks even if those opinions are not widely held, thus giving the illusion that they are widely held and all of a sudden we have to have extended conversations as to whether sidney sweeney is promoting nazism by being in a sexy jeans commercial.
They moved to Bluesky and that’s ok. It doesn’t have anywhere near as big of an audience as Twitter. Their being on it just means they’re talking to themselves. It’s a cesspool of its own, but it’s a small one and it keeps the worst people on the left away from everyone else.
The Nazi bar analogy is imperfect because in this case the Nazi decides who is boosted, who is suppressed, and who is kicked out. Also, social media's value is from scale. Collective action can move the scale to another platform.
I think it makes sense to continue usage for those whose purpose it is to reach eyeballs and if you think there's bad epistemology/propaganda going on that you find it your mission to fight fight fight. I think the more banal reason is it's an addictive habit and has a decent user base.
My preference is people collectively act and destroy the network effects twitter still has bc Elon owns the company and in the basis of the choices he has made within and outside. Collective action is hard so I understand why this doesn't occur.
My mental health doesn’t feel in a good place on Twitter. It didn’t feel good pre-Elon either. The culture of it is just bad and I think it’s more like a magazine than a public square and I keep trying to tell it I want normal boring stories and pop culture and it can’t turn down the conflict and politics.
My TikTok doesn’t behave this way it serves me teaching jokes and concert footage. My YouTube: how a lot more videogames and cooking? My Reddit: you want memes? Instagram: dogs and jeans.
I agree with this analysis, I think the best strategy for liberalism is to try to build a foothold in each social media platform and every part of the media landscape.
But we have to continue to pay attention to the role of algorithmic feed and AI bots. Imagine it gets really bad and right-wing control means that you don't get much exposure for your best takes, that bots constantly slander with you, and everyone you engage with is either a bot or a troll, than liberal "influence" won't mean much. In that world, much better to put your time into something else than get addicted to the illusion.
But as long as I can still click on someone's name and get a chronological feed, and as long as people are still able to funnel Twitter users to their offsite content, than we have to show up and play the game to win.
Sometimes I feel like I'm in an alternate Twitter universe. If you guys don't follow "Nazis" on Twitter then you don't have to look at "Nazi" tweets. For me as a software engineer there is a lot of professional discussion on Twitter that is interesting and useful and isn't anywhere else.
It's like getting angry at email because Nazis use email.
I’m glad you have that experience. I absolutely do not follow white supremacists, and I still see them replying under everyone I follow. I probably have the biggest block list on Twitter. Doesn’t matter.
It feels to me at least that there’s just also been a huge increase in garbage posts. I mostly follow policy accounts that have under 100k followers. And maybe this is false nostalgia, but I felt like their replies were mostly civil. Now half the replies are along the lines of 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 or “whatever, faqqot.”
Now that I think on it more, I/P has probably been a big factor. Everyone I follow who hasn’t taken a maximalist position for Palestine also gets half a dozen genocide accusations on every post, regardless of topic.
I really liked this piece. I think an adjacent point would be- certainly it’s everyone’s personal choice to decide that they don’t want to be in the culture war. Completely understandable. But I think you need to recognize that if you make that choice, don’t be surprised if your enemies win it. And sure, there may very well be more effective ways of fighting the culture war. But “I’m leaving Twitter so I can spend more time in person with people who don’t already think like me in the hopes of changing their views” is very different from “I’m leaving Twitter so I can hang out in the BlueSky hugbox”
'But there's open Nazis on there!' is just such a weak argument – for me anyways – because no one gives a shit about open socialists and communists and IT IS A MASSIVE BLIND SPOT of liberals (and maybe 'progressives' too) that they're NOT almost as scared of them as they are of 'fascists'.
But one of MY heroes is Daryl Davis – a man not only NOT afraid to talk to Nazis, and in person, but, because of that courage, is someone that's ACTUALLY changed those people's minds, in a way that attempts to ostracize them never quite seems to ever really achieve.
Your reasons are fair for someone who’s professionally involved in the discourse and wants to persuade people.
But for many of us normies it was a fun platform where we could argue about sports and politics with irl and internet friends. I had deleted and redownloaded Twitter many times (like people do with Instagram or TikTok) even pre-Elon just as a way to reduce distractions.
For most non pros it’s still the right move to get off there.
You make a good argument but have left out what, I believe, are two critical issues which may undermine it somewhat:
The first issue concerns the X algorithm, which Musk now controls. He uses this algorithm to manipulate the availability of what X publishes, to suit his own ambition. He attenuates the availability of content which undermines his motives. It's censorship.
The second issue concerns the ownership of all content which is published on X. Agreeing to X terms of use involves forfeiting the copyright to everything you post, in exchange for a limited license to use your own work. Musk invokes his copyrights easily, whenever it suits him — such as during the attempted sale of InfoWars to The Onion a few months ago. The sale was prohibited because Musk proved that he was the copyright holder of everything InfoWars ever published on Twitter (X), per the imposed user agreement, and subsequently refused to sell HIS tweets (posts) to The Onion, by effectively rejecting their offer to buy. A judge agreed.
…
The best thing to do is to leave X, and build your network in a place where its very existence won't be subject to the whims of a fickle, unaccountable, untrustworthy, individualistic narcissist with absolute authority… despite the legitimate temptation of exposure there, which you rightly bring up.
I think if people want to post on twitter and build audiences elsewhere they should definitely do that -- in fact that is part of the goal of this publication! But I do think abandoning the platform at this moment when it still has so much power is a bad idea.
I haven’t been on Twitter in a while, but isn’t the algorithm systemically suppressing left of center accounts and pushing far right accounts? If that’s the case, are liberal tweets even reaching potentially persuadable people?
I would love to see evidence of this, some of the right-of-center people I know who acknowledge the rise in Nazism feel like their feeds are more "balanced" now (w/r/t the average American's views) than they were pre-Elon. So it's hard to go off of vibes alone.
I also think that from Twitter's perspective, if they fully destroy the user experience of any lib on the website, that's unlikely to be good for their bottom line.
I would analogize this to any out-of-power movement in decades past trying to get published in popular newspapers. Were the editors biased against them? Yes. Were the readers more likely to view their arguments unfairly? Yes. But also, you gotta go where the action is to make your case, no matter how unfair it is.
I think there is a big difference between checking Twitter once a day and being a big user here. Musk wants to create a boiling frog situation here and not obvious propaganda. This doesn't matter much if you are checking it once a day but matters a lot of you're boiling yourself in it/using it more than alternatives like bsky.
The way this will work on people is less turning libs into Republicans than with rat**"*ing that creates a bunch of lib infighting.
Yeah, the active promotion of far-left fringe stuff (either sincere, or manufactured), to create infighting that undermines center-left Dem candidates, is definitely part of what he's doing.
This may be the best advice. It's the advice I wound up following myself, after mothballing my X account during months of indecision.
Building on a platform where all content and audiences are property of a publisher (X), which is motivated significantly by non-pecuniary goals, and which could (and might!) erase everything you've posted — along with your whole network, which you've cultivated — because of ideology (or even because of a whim), during such a fickle time in politics and media, is like building a Tower of Babel from mud… during a thunderstorm. It's treacherous.
I've kept my X account, but use it now for auditing and commentary only. I won't rely on the permanence of any audience gathered there, or any network cultivated there.
I won't rely on it, because… it's simply not mine.
Yes this this this.
Also X downranks anything with a link which kills news media.
With bluesky you can control the algorithms used for your feed. Just going off of the default following feed is great because it's chronological making it more objective and less addictive. Which is great for anyone with a day job off of social media.
I really hope you will do another debate similar to the Piper/Bruenig one on this. With someone who is really knowledgeable on the tech/algorithm side in regards to bluesky vs X.
The second claim is untrue. Under X's terms of service, you retain copyright and X gets a license, not vice versa. X's filing in the Infowars bankruptcy asserted ownership over X accounts themselves (i.e., they claim they can disallow you from giving your account to someone else), not the content posted on them. And while I think the bankruptcy judge was wrong to disallow The Onion from buying Infowars (for reasons Matt Levine has explained), his stated reasoning was that Infowars' other creditors would be stiffed; X's filing played no role.
X asserts copyright ownership of X accounts, which are media collections authored by users from content which has been licensed by X. These collections are the result of much labor — often *years* of commitment — by users, for a construction which they do not own.
In addition to being media collections, X accounts are also nodes (and hubs) of network relationships within X. These relationships are valuable, of course, and are also the result of much cultivation — often years of commitment — by users, to build and nurture an architecture which they also do not own…
Because these X-copyrighted collections (and their associated network relationships) are comprised of media which as been licensed by X, rather than of media under X's own copyright, does not contradict Musk's demonstrated willingness to invoke his ownership of these collections (and networks) easily, whenever it suits him — such as during the attempted sale of InfoWars to The Onion, late last year.
He really did this [ https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/nov/27/x-twitter-trying-to-block-transfer-of-platforms-infowars-accounts-to-the-onion ].
Musk had also, separately, "taken over the previously dormant @america handle to advertise his pro-Donald Trump super political action committee during the presidential election." [ ibid. ]
It's still treacherous to build a collection and a network (i.e. an "account"), on a platform which subjects its existence to the whims of a fickle, unaccountable, untrustworthy, individualistic narcissist with absolute authority…
This is very well articulated.
TY, Brian! 😀
That is NOT the reason why The Onion's bid to buy InforWars was disallowed.
"…X showed up for Jones, arguing that the accounts belonging to X Corp. cannot be considered property of the estate and cannot be transferred or sold without X's consent."
"The trustee and X announced on Monday they'd struck a deal that would allow Infowars' buyer to acquire the content from Infowars' X accounts, but not the accounts themselves." [ https://www.npr.org/2024/12/10/nx-s1-5224170/infowars-alex-jones-the-onion-bankruptcy-judge ]
The Onion's bid to buy the InfoWars X account *was* disallowed, based on a valid X copyright. User-created accounts on X belong to X.
Alex Jones lost 2 lawsuits, one to Connecticut plaintiffs, the other to Texas plaintiffs. Due to Texas' limitations on damages in civil suits, Jones ended up owing the CT plaintiffs much, much more than the TX plaintiffs, meaning that when InfoWars was sold and the proceeds distributed to the plaintiffs, the TX plaintiffs were going to get pennies on the dollar.
There were 2 bidders: The Onion and a front group for Alex Jones. The front group offered cash. The Onion offered some cash, but not as much as the front group. But, the CT plaintiffs wanted InfoWars to go to The Onion rather than essentially going right back to Jones. So they worked with the Onion to sweeten their offer. In addition to cash, the Onion's bid included the CT plaintiffs agreeing to forego proceeds from the sale that they were entitled to receive, meaning that the TX plaintiffs, who were basically going to get nothing out of the sale, would get more money. The Onion also was going to give both sets of plaintiffs a cut of its profits from running the InfoWars brand. Thus, the Texas plaintiffs were going to come out ahead from the Onion's offer.
The problem was that the Onion's offer was presented as a sliding scale, with a fixed amount of cash plus an amount of foregone proceeds from the CT plaintiffs that was based on the front group's offer. As I recall, based on the formula, the Onion's offer would beat the front goup up to a front group offer of $7 million. But if the front group offered less, the CT plaintiffs would forego less.
The deal fell through because the bakruptucy judge would not accept the Onion's offer due to the multiple contingencies and sliding scale. Had the Onion and the CT plaitniffs worked out a way to make a simplified offer, they might have won.
While Elon Musk did involve himself in the lawsuit as you noted, that was not the reason the sale fell through.
https://www.wgbh.org/news/2024-12-10/bankruptcy-judge-rejects-the-onions-bid-for-infowars
"The losing bidder, a business connected to Jones called First United American Companies, offered $3.5 million for Infowars. The Onion, in partnership with the Connecticut families, offered $1.75 million in cash, plus a novel sweetener they said raised the bid’s value to at least $7 million. The families agreed to forgo some of the money they’re entitled to, in order to raise the amount that other creditors, including the Texas families, could collect."
I agree with the general thrust of the article; there are still plenty of reasons (esp. for politicos/commentariat) to stay on Twitter.
That said, burning natural gas doesn’t produce the electrons which cool your home. The electrons already exist in the copper wiring and electronics that do the cooling. Rather (for AC power) the natural gas provides the energy to “wiggle” those electrons while they remain mostly in place. It’s these wiggles which power your electronics, not a constant stream of electrons produced at the power station. However, I understand that “If I use the wiggles produced by natural gas to cool my home in the summer, am I lending legitimacy to fossil fuel production?” is perhaps a less rhetorically powerful sentence.
perfect username for this amazing comment. thank you!
You briefly touched on it, but the most important aspect to posting is the humble lurker. For every Twitter Nazi posting The Worst stuff, there’s 100 or even 1000 regular people who like looking at Twitter on the toilet or on the train but never post. Having a counter argument appear to “all black people are savages” reminds those lurkers that there are opinions other than right wing opinions and can stop people from going down that rabbit hole.
When you argue on Twitter you’ll never win over your foil, but you just might win over some lurkers.
Interesting and I think a attorney argument for staying. I’ve been pondering the bot issue a lot lately. How many of these are real true people versus bots or troll farm employees just stirring up stuff?
A recent Facebook post by a feminist account had a bunch of trolls commenting underneath. I clicked through at least 15 of the accounts that made the incel-like comments. All of them had little to no friends and appeared, to my untrained eye, that they were spam accounts. How much are we replying to real people versus bots. Does it matter?
Not sure I have more of a point but I think there’s a question there to be discussed.
Not an attorney argument. Stupid auto correct. A good argument.
In the age of LLMs, I wonder how autocorrect is still so bad!
FYI, you can edit your posts. Click the three little dots.
You missed the most important point of all which is sad because I'm a big admirer of yours (and willing to be pay even if I disagree at times). I know that it wasn't done intentionally. I've seen MANY people's brains being cooked by the Twitter algorithm that normalizes vile stuff that was the realm of 4chan and I'm worried you have as well. You seem to be OK with normalizing the use the "N" word but I'm not. I'm also completely unconvinced that your twitter account has any influence whatsoever to people who matter. If you want to influence things, join TikTok.
Agreed. And the reasoning is the same as The Good Place: no one can do all the right things (get to heaven) bc everything is so complex and mixed together that there are no good decisions. So make your own decision that you can live with and move forward.
One of my most unpopular opinions is I’m very glad Musk bought Twitter. He’s made it into a cesspool and given platforms to all kinds of bad people but I’d much rather that site be a rightwing fever swamp than a leftwing one. Before he took it over that’s what it was. It was on that site where the worst leftwing ideas of the last decade gained a footing. I really believe if it weren’t for twitter woke would never have amounted to much. Remember the 2020 primary where one Democrat after another took crazy leftist positions? You can thank Twitter for that. Remember how crazy the summer of 2020 was? Leftwing Twitter played a big role in that. Without Twitter there would never have been a defund the police movement.
Now it’s the right that’s addicted to Twitter and the crazy ideas are coming from that side. It’s unhealthy for either of our parties to be hooked on that site, but if it must happen I’d rather it be Republicans. Twitter isn’t real life and Democrats learned that the hard way. I’m glad that’s over and now it’s Republicans’ turn to learn that. Thank you Elon for making it happen and rescuing Democrats from their coalition’s worst people.
But didn't the liberals all just move to Bluesky and now that's the new echo chamber? I think social media in general has an issue of elevating controversial voices for the clicks even if those opinions are not widely held, thus giving the illusion that they are widely held and all of a sudden we have to have extended conversations as to whether sidney sweeney is promoting nazism by being in a sexy jeans commercial.
They moved to Bluesky and that’s ok. It doesn’t have anywhere near as big of an audience as Twitter. Their being on it just means they’re talking to themselves. It’s a cesspool of its own, but it’s a small one and it keeps the worst people on the left away from everyone else.
The Nazi bar analogy is imperfect because in this case the Nazi decides who is boosted, who is suppressed, and who is kicked out. Also, social media's value is from scale. Collective action can move the scale to another platform.
I see little about Liberalism here. I'm gone.
Threads doesn’t ban news and politics anymore. Get in there, Jerusalem!
I think it makes sense to continue usage for those whose purpose it is to reach eyeballs and if you think there's bad epistemology/propaganda going on that you find it your mission to fight fight fight. I think the more banal reason is it's an addictive habit and has a decent user base.
My preference is people collectively act and destroy the network effects twitter still has bc Elon owns the company and in the basis of the choices he has made within and outside. Collective action is hard so I understand why this doesn't occur.
My mental health doesn’t feel in a good place on Twitter. It didn’t feel good pre-Elon either. The culture of it is just bad and I think it’s more like a magazine than a public square and I keep trying to tell it I want normal boring stories and pop culture and it can’t turn down the conflict and politics.
My TikTok doesn’t behave this way it serves me teaching jokes and concert footage. My YouTube: how a lot more videogames and cooking? My Reddit: you want memes? Instagram: dogs and jeans.
Twitter always drags me back to politics.
I agree with this analysis, I think the best strategy for liberalism is to try to build a foothold in each social media platform and every part of the media landscape.
But we have to continue to pay attention to the role of algorithmic feed and AI bots. Imagine it gets really bad and right-wing control means that you don't get much exposure for your best takes, that bots constantly slander with you, and everyone you engage with is either a bot or a troll, than liberal "influence" won't mean much. In that world, much better to put your time into something else than get addicted to the illusion.
But as long as I can still click on someone's name and get a chronological feed, and as long as people are still able to funnel Twitter users to their offsite content, than we have to show up and play the game to win.
Sometimes I feel like I'm in an alternate Twitter universe. If you guys don't follow "Nazis" on Twitter then you don't have to look at "Nazi" tweets. For me as a software engineer there is a lot of professional discussion on Twitter that is interesting and useful and isn't anywhere else.
It's like getting angry at email because Nazis use email.
I’m glad you have that experience. I absolutely do not follow white supremacists, and I still see them replying under everyone I follow. I probably have the biggest block list on Twitter. Doesn’t matter.
It feels to me at least that there’s just also been a huge increase in garbage posts. I mostly follow policy accounts that have under 100k followers. And maybe this is false nostalgia, but I felt like their replies were mostly civil. Now half the replies are along the lines of 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 or “whatever, faqqot.”
Now that I think on it more, I/P has probably been a big factor. Everyone I follow who hasn’t taken a maximalist position for Palestine also gets half a dozen genocide accusations on every post, regardless of topic.
I have an account that’s literally a private account for sharing screenshots of videogames and they recommend all kinds of propaganda on it.
I really liked this piece. I think an adjacent point would be- certainly it’s everyone’s personal choice to decide that they don’t want to be in the culture war. Completely understandable. But I think you need to recognize that if you make that choice, don’t be surprised if your enemies win it. And sure, there may very well be more effective ways of fighting the culture war. But “I’m leaving Twitter so I can spend more time in person with people who don’t already think like me in the hopes of changing their views” is very different from “I’m leaving Twitter so I can hang out in the BlueSky hugbox”
'But there's open Nazis on there!' is just such a weak argument – for me anyways – because no one gives a shit about open socialists and communists and IT IS A MASSIVE BLIND SPOT of liberals (and maybe 'progressives' too) that they're NOT almost as scared of them as they are of 'fascists'.
But one of MY heroes is Daryl Davis – a man not only NOT afraid to talk to Nazis, and in person, but, because of that courage, is someone that's ACTUALLY changed those people's minds, in a way that attempts to ostracize them never quite seems to ever really achieve.