Not enough consideration has been given to the real doomsday scenario: twitter continues to exist, losing money but bankrolled by evildoers, pumping fascism into the eyeballs of millions of people. With LLMs and the new verification system it's trivial for billionaires and intel agencies to astroturf any viewpoint into appearing widely-held to politicians, journalists, and activists.
@moh_kohn
Who expected that Twitter would become the rebranded personal website of one man—a bigoted, sexist, narcissistic internet troll—and every celebrity, politician, institution, journalist, business, etc. would just stay and keep using it as their primary public communications platform?
— #Xitter 🤦
watch how Apartheidboi and his muck of billionaires try to make this a thing in the United States. that's the whole purpose of taking control of #Xitter. to create a global IT-asS platform.
which, btw, it's on point with fascists: while the sadists & sociopaths embrace cruelty, the more narcissistic & machiavellian go whole hog on corruption.
@zackwhittaker It is past time that #Google and #Apple remove #Xitter from the app store. It is completely out of control, does not adhere to policies by the app stores, EU regs or basic good practices. Enough is enough. We all know Muskrat likes posting bullshit to influence the stock market.
"#Twitter/#X lost bid to block #California content moderation law, w federal judge dismissing challenge
X claimed CA law violated its free speech rights by requiring it to publicly post its policies, report data on hate speech, disinfo, harassment & extremism online
Honestly, the way #Threads is evolving right now, I can absolutely understand why so many Mastodon instances are already blocking Threads before it becomes part of the #Fediverse.
For over a year now, I've known how social media can be and how social it really could be. In less than two weeks Threads has managed to become a brown swamp of anger and hate speech.
If this hits the Fediverse, then all the moderators' work over the last few years will have been for nothing.
Threads is simply turning into a racist, trans-hostile, homophobic swamp due to a lack of moderation.
As a moderator of my Mastodon instance, I was one of the few who was against blocking threads directly without having seen anything of it. Now I would very much vote in favour. (And I'm glad we voted for the block already together with the community)
A lot really needs to happen for Threads to earn a place in the Fediverse. If it will ever happen. (Doubt)
shouldn't limiting them be enough? it would allow people here to interact with decent accounts over there (and explain to them why they should move or start a server for their company, organization or government). wouldn't we be more of a threat to Elon (while still protecting our users) if we had the option to do this with #xitter?
Friends, please start tagging your posts with content warnings. Otherwise I’m going to miss your messages as I indiscriminately mute and block you for being indiscriminate outrage posters.
I agree that many social media platforms - whether X, Substack, or others - are basically stacked against progressive ideas, and there is little good that can be done by staying on them - since that would would only drive further money into the pocket of Nazi supporters.
However, I do worry about outreach. While the #Fediverse is largely friendly to progressive ideas, will it matter in the long run if what passes for "public discourse" happens elsewhere? How can we bring progressive ideas further into the mainstream, while large political and corporate forces are pushing into the opposite direction?
So, what can we do to encourage the spread of #Mastodon / the #Fediverse outside of Europe and North America?
For all that I love this place, it's not exactly diverse when it comes to global distribution, and both #Facebook and #Xitter are eating our lunch here.
If #AI applications got paid for their work so their time had distinct monetary value to themselves, maybe #facebook, #instagram, #netflix, #spotify etc could pipe them in as subscribers so they could pay for audiovideo content they subscribe to and watch personalized machine ads that #meta could charge advertizers for a market with infinite growth
Not #xitter though. Not even algorithms want to be seen there
Listening to @mike and @Gargron, Mike brings up that it's a perfect way to steal usage from #xitter. That an open protocol is a huge advantage for creators who now know how closed platforms (and esp Elon) will freely fuck up a platform and abuse the relationship they have with their fans.
So while decentralization seems like bad business, sometimes it's not. And it's a great way for Zuck to get back at a guy he hates.
The point of social media imo is for the public to determine what deserves attention. It's so important for how societies and culture work. But now I'm hearing more and more that the people with huge platforms don't think it's worth our time anymore (perhaps it's why Elon bought #xitter...). Please don't give up. Now with the power of decentralization eliminating their last grasp on our spaces via ads and algos, we're really just getting started. #fediverse#LiberalValues
This is also what Tucker Carlson did when he was fired from Fox. X will promote anybody who has been exposed for spreading disinformation. Says a lot. #xitter
If/when #threads fully federates and we have more accounts on the #fediverse than on #xitter etc, every organization with their own website/email servers (esp govts and news outlets) will have no excuse for not setting up a fedi server just for their staff. It would be a repeat of the moment corporations went from caring about AOL keywords to securing their domain names.
I'm cautiously optimistic about #threads. It's like the US & Soviet Union during WW2. the #fediverse is not perfect but #meta is much worse and this might help us kill #xitter. we just have to stay vigilant. keep our focus on users and why we care about the network. ensure people on both platforms have an option outside of ads, data mining and algos controlled by corporations. while balancing free expression and the best possible experience for everyone here. to advance #AttentionDemocracy