I’d like to think even some of the right wing’ers don’t like the way X is going. I’ve seen a few join, some just for spite mind but some for debate
I came off twitter last month and, won't be signing up to anything in its place. I'm A Political and can't understand why people entrench themselves in either side. This new platform will go the same way as X . Social media just reflects humans .. we aren't very nice and it exposes the inner being ,which is normally hidden in face to face situations..
I definitely think that's true. I read an article about a study that had been conducted on people's conduct on social media a while back. I've just tried looking for it but can't find it. It said that people tend to post more extreme versions of their views on social. People want a reaction and get a high when people respond either positively or negatively. To maintain that high, they have to continue to post increasingly more extreme things and get further away from how they really feel. I also read something that said that although some people enjoy being unpleasant online it has the effect of making them interact more aggressively with people in real life. I do think there has been a gradual change in how people behave in public since the rise of social media, and its not for the better.
Agreed you just have to look at RTG and, its decline from the early days when it was all good banter and, a great laugh .
I think that is true of social media in general, but it misses the primary reason why Musk's Twitter is something different. He took over promising free speech and bot reduction. In actual fact he has delivered the exact opposite. He has actively boosted right wing perspectives, has deliberately amplified some pretty terrible views and, via his desperate attempts to prop up his failures over ad revenue, has unleashed a bot plague that has made X virtually unusable. Old Twitter was painful at times - and BlueSky will probably end up there - but there was at least a fleeting ability to have some form of discourse on there. Musk pretty much destroyed that.
While I agree that Musk's takeover of Twitter has done the platform no good, I don't think that, beyond the first couple of years perhaps, there has ever been room for sensible discourse on it. Not in terms of politics at least. It has always been a fairly polarised platform with quite extreme views which were mostly kept apart by the algorithm, occasionally degenerating into a slanging match when the two sides met. For that reason, I've completely avoided politics on there for years and other subject areas seem mostly unaffected by Musk and continue as usual. Especially if you just view the posts of accounts that you follow. I can't say I view the exodus to Bluesky as a good thing. Seemingly every third account on there has the term 'socialist' in its bio which suggests that it will be an equally unbalanced platform as a Musk controlled Twitter. Instead of two echo chambers on one platform, you'll have two separate and distinct echo chambers. People need to hear views that challenge their own but social media in general doesn't allow that to happen. Either platform remains fine if you use it carefully and don't base your view of the world on what you see on there.
Agreed . It was no different before Musk people were claiming it was far left controlled .. in reality there is a distinct inability for people to debate without getting personal , angry or threatening ..
That's demonstably untrue. The algorithm is boosting and suppressing info based on the whims of the owner. And engagement via a chosen few (plus a significant number of controlled bots) is being pushed to the top. This isn't the other side of the coin from what went before. This is genuinely something different and more malign. It is active manipulation.
It’s a reflection of what we are doing to the planet … … relentlessly destroying everything that’s good and creating endless pollution. The worst offenders know what they’re doing but their self interest is more important.
I joined Twitter early on because an old work colleague was setting himself up to be an influencer. I noticed message boards like RTG filling up with topics cut and pasted from trending topics on Twitter and other social media. I then realised Twitter was going to be a big problem. There were no brakes on this train, nobody knew when or how to stop the flow of hysteria. I don't think Elon Musk saw a profit in Twitter, more an opportunity to control and manipulate huge swarms of angry people. The only hope is he's acted too quickly. Twitter has turned toxic extremely quickly and is unreadable in its current state.
