Twitter’s rightwing takeover is complete. Why are liberals still on it?
"Elon Musk has successfully turned Twitter into a site where extremists have free rein"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/03/twitter-conservative-media-elon-musk-ron-desantis
#elonmusk #birdsite
So why are news organisations still on it? Why is anyone who considers themselves to have liberal values still on it?
Ego is probably the main answer to that question. A lot of journalists have built up very large followings on Twitter. Nostalgia is another factor: Twitter used to be fun and useful and it’s difficult to leave it behind. It’s time to start trying, though: we can’t keep hand-wringing about Twitter turning into a cocktail party for Nazis while stubbornly refusing to leave the room.
@NicoleCRust @matrig The reasons I’ve heard (summarized):
“I can mute & block all the bad guys and then it looks like everything’s fine, so why should I leave?”
“it is better to stay and communicate with the bad guys to tell them they’re wrong otherwise they’ll just remain convinced of their bad ideas”Oh and also, of course:
“all my friends are here”😕
@elduvelle @NicoleCRust @matrig
To clarify a conversation we've had elsewhere - I think it's fine for people to leave twitter, especially people that are targeted by hate speech.
But I am not sure that - for people who are in a good enough place to stay without too much emotional damage - it is best to leave in the current circumstances where one is able to express dissent (to similar extent that could be done before; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Twitter and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_banning reviewing limitations to this).
In my opinion, if all people with liberal values were leaving, this could contribute to more segregation of people according to their political beliefs. I fear that the attempts to just isolate right-leaning people, both on separate media platforms and in other ways, has just led to their radicalization, not only in the USA but in many different countries.
@LaurelineLogiaco @elduvelle @NicoleCRust Mmh, idk. It seems to me that liberals leaving twitter en masse would send a much clearer message than staying, which on the other hand mostly validates the platform and the discourse that it's promoting. It might also help reduce polarization, to the extent that it's driven by toxic behavior promoted by the platform's design and algorithm.
@LaurelineLogiaco @elduvelle @NicoleCRust On the other hand, there are worse things than supporting Musk and producing content for him for the moderate cost of $8/month. So, by all means, if someone is having fun there they should stay and try to make the most out of it 🤷
@matrig @elduvelle @NicoleCRust
I don't think the phrasing of 'supporting Musk' is very useful, unless you want to think of any use of any privately owned company as a specific support of their main investor (ever used Amazon? Does that make you a Bezos die-hard?). Maybe you're able to, but in the current world I don't see how to practically live & make an impact without using privately-owned companies whose profits can go to people I (strongly) disagree with. I would prefer a society where single individuals would not have as much economical power as you know, but just boycotting them does not seem to be a practically useful strategy.
To me the question specific to twitter is: is isolation from people you disagree with the best answer? The assumption in this platform is that leaving will 'shrink' the population of people with opposite views. As for me, I'm afraid that segregation can lead to further radicalization. I think we've both seen the consequences of creating a social dynamics where a group of people is only surrounded by a certain demographics and a certain ideology is being broadcast to the group... This group was not disappearing over time, and I do think it would have been worse to not try to diversify this group.
In any case, I believe that there is no certainty about what the global effect of leaving or staying is, and I certainly support people who want to leave and will keep interacting with them.
@LaurelineLogiaco @elduvelle @NicoleCRust Yes, sorry for the choice of words, Laureline, I know you're not a Musk die-hard 😄
Or are you?... 🤔 😆
@matrig @elduvelle @NicoleCRust
You must have heard first hand how much I hate the man starting in 2016 - and Musk did not even look as bad then 😉. And, at the time, we were surrounded by Musk fans, so it made for 'interesting' discussions 😝 .
Long rant about twitter
@LaurelineLogiaco @NicoleCRust @matrig
Hi!
I'm glad we can have this very interesting conversation here with ... increased word count :)
Here are my thoughts:
if you agree that people who are targeted by hate speech should leave.. then does staying mean that we don't care about these people? That we are not affected by anti-trans, anti-LGBT, anti-jewish, racist, etc. views because we are not part of the targeted groups? I know that's not what you mean and I know you and I 100% empathize with the people targeted and do not want to support the bullies that target them. Leaving shows them that we will not contribute to the success of a platform that continuously attacks them.
I also feel personally targeted by the anti-science, misogynist, anti-abortion, anti-education, anti-worker rights etc. views that are broadcasted widely by the owner of the site and his goons. And I do not want to contribute to the success of these people or their website.
Also, it is really not our job to spend our emotional resources trying to educate them. I have tried to explain why musk is wrong on several of his neuroscience-related claims, many times, but his fans do not care, do not listen or get mean. I think they need to make the journey back to the real world on their own, and if anything, seeing Musk fail his projects will help them with that.
I am not saying that I don't want to talk at all to people with views that I disagree with like, say, capitalist views, or someone who thinks the amygdala is more important than the hippocampus. I am always happy to discuss. By the way: there are right-leaning people on Mastodon too. But I am saying that if a person sees someone else as inferior because of their race/gender/sexual orientation/ etc., then I don't have anything to say to them because that is just discriminatory garbage and I have other more interesting things to do; if they don't understand that all people are equal and should be given equal rights and opportunities, then I don't know how to convince them... and I especially do not want to give them my money.
Does this mean that I should not buy Amazon products? I actually am not aware of the political views of the owner.. but if he was like Musk then I would definitely avoid buying from Amazon, actually I am already trying to do that given how poorly they treat their workers. There are many examples of companies that were boycotted because they were proven to do bad stuff. So yes I think this applies to Musk-Twitter too.
You suggest that expressing dissent is useful, possibly better than leaving. This is playing exactly into the game of Musk: controversy and dissent bring more retweets, likes, answers, fights, interactions, which all increase views and website usage and motivate advertisers to keep using his website.
Or maybe just by being on twitter, and expressing our non-far-right views, the far-right people will see those and change their minds? But the problem is all of these views are probably now shadowbanned, either knowingly (if you don't pay for the blue tick) or not (shadow banning keywords, links to external websites, possibly people of specific political orientation as the twitter code was showing at some point).
This also addresses the question of should you try to argue with, say, nazis. I used to think that yes. But this also plays into their game. The goal of someone with extremists views is to get more and more people exposed to their views, because some proportion of those will get convinced. They are not arguing in good faith, while you are, which puts you at a disadvantage. They are broken and literally think that some people are worth more than others. They do not deserve an audience. Is Musk a nazi, probably not, but he holds many other discriminatory and dangerous views and his goal is to make money by any means necessary while spreading his genes as much as possible... just disgusting.
we haven't raised this point yet but Musk is also destroying the technical aspects of twitter bit by bit, while implementing more ways to control what is being said, leading to 1) bugs, 2) promotion of those paying for blue tick regardless of the value of their tweets 3) spam 4) possible data leaks 5) possible breach of confidentiality (e.g. 'Circles' not working) 6) shadow-banning of tweets or people 8) helping some governments control the discourse, e.g. during the Turkish elections. The more people stay on twitter, the more people are susceptible to these manipulations, probably without even being aware of it.
In conclusion: the owner of twitter has an enormous amount of power and, if misused, the ability to influence the opinions of many. The current owner has shown his true colors and has already taken steps to manipulate and harm people. We should take this power back by destroying twitter. It makes me sad, and that was probably his goal in the first place, but I see no other way.
Sorry about the giant post but let me know what you think!
Long rant about twitter
@elduvelle @NicoleCRust @matrig
So, first, I'd like to clarify one thing - I do very much care about the people that are being attacked on twitter. What I meant is that I understand why these people may feel more pressure to leave. I very much care about them not feeling excluded, and participating to building an inclusive community the primary reason why I joined - and advertized for - Mastodon.
The reason why I've linked wikipedia articles above about shadow banning and political censorship on twitter is to show that, from what I was able to gather, it is frankly unclear whether this type of influence has really increased under Musk. Not that I believe him, but it's interesting to note that Musk has actually promised more transparency. Actually, part of his popularity on the right comes from capitalizing on the idea that previously twitter was specifically shadow-banning right-leaning people because their owners used to be left-leaning. In my views, this shows that it'd be good if media were funded by a - smartly regulated - independent government agency, but people in this country would probably fear that political manipulation could actually increase in this model.
I respect and agree with your statement about not wanting to engage with people that do not argue in good faith and that do not listen to you in first place. In parallel to this however, I am not as confident as you are that twitter does not currently host some more reasonable people - whose views I may still strongly disagree with - and who may be at a higher risk of radicalization if it looks like we all the media is segregated by political belief.
A smaller point in this debate is how twitter will evolve (there will be a new CEO; the blue check thing is dying). The question - and I concede that I do not have a clear-cut answer here - is whether leaving the platform and making it some sort of a new fox news is really going to help in the bigger context of a growing extreme-right and political polarization all over the world.
