Sorry, the sabotage of Twitter is not a “disaster for democracy”—it’s the logical and inevitable endpoint of surveillance capitalist control of our communications infrastructure.
Those who control a message’s delivery system control the message.
Twitter was always owned by surveillance capitalists—it NEVER served democracy.
@mike@atomicpoet but didn't it basically start as just messaging, back in the beginning? They've just been TRYING to make it an advertising platform, to much failure, basically. But yeah it's always been a walled off system, sure.
@atomicpoet Twitter was never perfect, but its previous owners knew it had problems and were putting in some effort to work on those problems. Twitter was also a functional communication hub for charities, activists, marginalized groups and more (and yes, there were always awful people there too).
As time passes, it’s becoming more obvious to me that Musk bought Twitter purely to disrupt it. To squash whatever good it might possibly generate.
@atomicpoet what worries this days is the fact most of the hardware networks are practically monopolized sinkholes with fewer and fewer choices AT&T practically runs most of Americas communication networks in Kenya Safaricom in now a bank with a telecoms branch in every town.
@atomicpoet It's a disaster if there isn't something to replace its function in a timely manner.
It's not clear if any of the alternatives are ready to scale to replace it. They're all doing magnificent jobs of trying to get there, but there are still a lot of Twitter users.
@atomicpoet Absolutely. Still, Dorsey’s decision to sell to a more ruthless thug might be an indication that the use of the platform was leaning toward the more liberal. After all, one of the first things Musk did was to can all of the ethics people and give the reins to actual Nazis. You are absolutely right; or the deal would not have been made.
@atomicpoet it did provide me with the most effective source of expert information I have ever had. I was able to glean experts with integrity and insight pretty quickly, starting with climate change, but then legal political and a free 2/24/22 military info
@atomicpoet after Jan 6 riots/insurrection there was all yes clamor against Parler which had single digit percentage of communications while FB messenger, Twitter, Apple messenger, and SMS carried the bulk of the messages between the 700-800 people who interrupted the government procedure (legal definition of a insurrection), weird that FB, Twitter, Apple and the cell phone carriers weren't the target of the Establishment's ire, just the least influential company.
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