MEDIAWATCH: There are too many echo chambers, why I’m stay on Twitter and avoiding Bluesky and Threads
I think it’s important for the openly woke to leave Facebook and Twitter and go to Bluesky or threads or Masterdoon, because those platforms are padded echo chambers and the woke can scream their herts out on platforms that don’t generate ‘proxification’.
Because social media is now so ubiquitous, everyone has seen flameouts and vicious knife fights on contentious issues in their timelines and that activist screaming you are a Transphobic, Racist, Sexist, Vaccine-peddling, Satanic pedophile is enough for you to personally hate and be hurt and align yourself against that activist regardless of policy.
That’s ‘proxification’.
It wasn’t Trump saying outrageous things that attracted angry reactionary white working class vote, it was the intense reaction by middle class woke activists to Trump whom they had been insulted by that made the election so febrile.
Voters cut their noses off to spite their face because it angered people they despised.
We need to be on social media platforms that aren’t just padded echo chambers.
Threads and Bluesky allow you to curate your feed so much so that you never have to feel challenged or threatened by a different opinion.
I don’t think that helps anyone.
Sure, Social Media Hate Algorithms have filled Elon’s Town Square with Neo-Nazis and Brownshirts and Troll Bot Farms that swarm to curry favour and shape opinion alongside manufactured disinformation and misinformation, but I won’t lock myself away in a padded echo chamber because you don’t win debates in echo chambers and you don’t change anyones mind in an echo chamber.
I’m staying on Twitter.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
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Why don’t you just join Truth Social. To say that Titter, now X, isn’t an echo chamber is just fallacy. And staying on it just gives more support to Musk. Everyone should leave it.
These closed box, echo chambers are great for those who feel the compulsive need to spout controversial, derisive or inane drivel.
Great if you need to vent the speen but have bills to pay and not having those in the real world finding out.
All within a caring sharing environment of like minds and fellow travellers.
I’m…
Proud to be “woke”.
Proud to support socialist agendas.
Proud not to be on Xitter, FB, Tic Toc, Blue Sky etc [- particularly proud not to be on X(sh)itter.]
Nevertheless, I’m sure being “allow[ed] to curate your feed so much so that you never have to feel challenged or threatened by a different opinion” is far preferable to having it curated and manipulated by propaganda EXPERTS in the service of sociopaths such as Elon Musk.
I much prefer the Woke on Twitter.
They can scream their racist , sexist, ageist opinions against the working class and condemn the left to another 3 years out of power
It’s worth remembering those leaving X aren’t doing so because they weren’t allowed to express their opinions, it’s because others get to express theirs.
“Voters cut their noses off to spite their face because it angered people they despised.”
Now, in the current age, isn’t that the vicissitudes of democracy. And what does it tell us about the choices made by a good many folk. And about what choices they feel they have.
You know you can do both right Bomber? You can stay on Xitter, exposing yourself to Elon’s brainworms and contributing to the network effects that give his platform power. You can do that *and* you can invest in the one not-for-profit replacement that isn’t and can’t be controlled by any one corporation or private individual.
I’m not talking about Chains (I refuse to call it “Threads”). Which is just a front for InstaGrim, which in turn in just a front for Meta, which is turn is just ZuckerBorg’s FarceBook by another name.
Neither am I talking about BlueSky, which is not (yet) owned by a DataFarming corporation, and is based on a quasi-open protocol, but still mostly dominated by one company (BlueSky Inc.);
https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/
No, I’m talking about the fediverse, of which Mastodon is the largest set of islands, but it’s much more than that. And believe me, it’s far from an echo chamber dominated by the “woke”. It has a dizzyingly diverse population, from all across the political spectrum, and including lots of people who are just there for the memes and shitposting.
Trying to figure out how many people are actively using a genuinely decentralised network is about as easy as trying to figure out the total number of people who use email. But it’s fair to say that the total population is smaller than the legacy DataFarming “social” platforms for now. But as with choosing which political party to support, current levels of support are not the most important criteria.
Remember, network effects are a thing. When you communicate using only this or that digital tool, people who want to communicate with you are obliged to to use it too. Whether they trust its operators and want to contribute to growing their platform or not. When start posting in a digital social space, you create the opportunity for people who want to see your stuff to stuff using it too. Something to keep in mind when you consider the relative merits of posting on X or TeleGrim vs. posting in the fediverse. Or the merits of communicating with FarceBook Messenger or WhatsApp vs. using open networks like email, Jabber or Matrix.