The Moral Case for No Longer Engaging With Elon Musk’s X::The former Twitter is incentivizing violent content, which will only become worse to stand out to users.
Then stop already. Stop mentioning the name. Stop posting articles about it. Stop sharing articles about it on other social media.
You know what’s immoral? Posting ragebait articles about a platform because you know users will engage.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
“racism would be over if tou’d just shut up about it.”
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.
Acknowledging that black people and other minorities have had a hard time in the past that leads to present continued struggle IS NOT racism…
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.
and making assumptions about specific people you don’t know
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.
It is a sight to behold. There is a certain class of people that don’t know who they are without Twitter because they measure their worth in followers and whatever influence that brings them. They are definitely going through all the stages of grief. Many of those types work in the media, hence all the articles hemming and hawing about whether to stay on Twitter or not.
For those of us that don’t have our egos entangled with the site, the writing was on the wall pretty early on. Twitter, or X, is dead and not worth our time. I’m sure those of us on Lemmy are especially capable of sniffing out the moment a social network turns sour.
Ironically by you commenting on this, and further by me commenting on your comment, we have added to the metrics and it has now been deemed that it’s more popular because more people are talking about it. That’s the actuality.
Back before Apollo was killed I had the words “Elon” and “Trump” filtered out. I just never saw these rage posts in the first place. Man, I’d love to see that feature in a Lemmy client. Anyone know if it exists?
Posting ragebait articles about a platform because you know users will engage.
Lol irony.
This is your daily reminder to engage and boost Twitter alternatives such as Mastodon. It’s not enough to ignore Twitter. We must build communities to draw in users, show them social media can exist without Elon or Zuck. Only when good alternatives exist, with content and people sought after, do users feel safe to abandon old platforms.
I made a burner to see for myself after using it for work a few years ago. It’s a complete dumpster fire now, way worse than before. Bots and shitty animated gambling ads everywhere. Porn bots and scammers are trying to follow you every 2 seconds. Elon’s dipshit musings/ragebait are forced into your feed even when you block him. Any tweets you make get zero engagement. remaining accounts are either bots, racists, fascists, or creators and celebrities moaning and/or hemming and hawing about leaving all the time because muh ego. It’s not even worth witnessing the spectacle.
It’s also fucking straight up broken half the time. Mastodon is a breath of fresh air in comparison even pre-Elon. Wish more would use it.
The forced elon spam reeks of insecurity. I thought the whole reason behind being extremely rich was not giving a fuck about what the world thinks, yet here we are.
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I shorted Tesla stock options and made money off his loss.
Can we take a step back for a second and think about the human condition that led someone to need a moral argument to get off X? What kind of pathetic, fucked up mind do you have where you can’t just uninstall the app you have to appeal to morality.
I don’t think someone publishes an article to try to convince themselves to not use it. Of course it’s to convince other people why to not use it.
This 100%! I barely used Twitter to begin with, but as soon as he went off the deep end, I completely deleted my account.
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Can we all just boycott anything having to do with Musk/Twitter? I just want a browser extension that will automatically prevent me from going to a site that has any sort of links or anything related to twitter. Your blog also links to your Twitter account? Fuck you, I’m not reading it. Your news story references a tweet from somebody? Fuck you I’m not reading it. Your Lemmy post talks about Musk or Twitter? Fuck you, I’m not reading it. I just want all mention of Musk or Twitter or X completely erased from the internet. It may unfortunately impact any reference to anything else ‘X’ related, but that’s a small price to pay for a Musk-free life.
Devil’s advocate, it should be amplified as much as possible, because it reminds the public that billionaires are not inherently intelligent nor worthy of their money.
Problem is you’d also block all the older articles from when twitter was only a mudpit and not a hellhole
Oh no, all those articles from the Trump presidency where Trump posted something asinine and everybody freaked out about it, whatever shall I do?
I joined Twitter fairly recently as Machine Learning Twitter is/was a thing, and I wanted to stay abreast of news from people like Andrej Karpathy, Chris Olah, Andrew Ng etc., especially since r/MachineLearning went down the shitter.
But I can’t even - I log on and just instantly see ragebait posts from Daily Mail talking heads and bullshit.
Are there any better alternatives for this purpose?
Believe it or not, for tech deep cuts, Mastodon is better.
If you know of a better ML related instance than sigmoid.social let me know, but none of those influential figures I mentioned post there, and the discussion is pretty much non-existent.
If there are better alternatives entirely depends on how active those people are on Mastodon, Bluesky or even Threads. (Not sure on activity on Bluesky, as I haven’t got an invite yet…)
I’m a PHP developer, many people (but not all) in the community crosspost on Twitter and Mastodon, so Mastodon is a good alternative for me personally.
There is a Mastodon instance sigmoid.social for this ostensible purpose, but it’s pretty dead.
Lead by example. At least stop pretending that this news article/opinion piece belongs in a technology.
I love these websites posting, “It’s time to leave X” while also providing bait articles that just describe a Twitter conversation between two celebrities.
Ironically, there’s a “Share with Twitter” button on the left side of the article
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The fediverse provides an alternative for people who care about using ethical products. Haven’t tried threads/bluesky but they seem like more of the same. Unfortunately I don’t think people care about the ethics of their micro-blogging platform; their biggest priority is having the largest soap box to shout from.
Downvote Musk spam.
The billionaire doesn’t need your help ensuring him and his businesses stay in the headlines every day. Don’t be a useful idiot.
I know a lot of people relying on it for sharing research papers and finding them. It’s depressing to not have an alternative.
Maybe it’s time to slowly transition to Fediverse?
It would be nice. The major issue is the network that people created there. It takes years to build it, and you won’t have it back on the Fediverse.
Does anyone here actually use it? I literally never made an account
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I still use X for work and have noticed an increase in the amount of hate speech and racist content. Its started appearing on my feed.
Problem is legacy Twitter still has huge scale so it’s not so simple to switch to something else if you need a big audience. It will take time.
I just wish the artists would leave, but no other social media allows porn too.
Mastodon totally allows NSFW content. Maybe Threads doesn’t, but why trade one deranged billionaire tech overlord for another?
Mastodon has some problems. It’s slow, the “instances” concept is confusing, discoverability is poor, and the UI isn’t as nice as Threads.
Still worth making the jump for the sake of community governance.
Twitter was destroyed by the governance problem. It proves how we can’t ignore the governance structure of the places we invest our time anymore.
But yeah, I’m very disappointed how many people who hate Musk’s changes to twitter – even trans people – are staying there.
Mastodon totally allows NSFW content.
Just search on the #NSFW hashtag, can’t miss it.
