739
submitted 1 year ago by gsa4555@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Intralexical@lemmy.world 33 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Twitter helped create ISIL, and also POTUS45. When actual autocracies see people even trying to organize on Twitter, they simply ban the whole site anyway. And it also played a major role in the Arab Spring, which while originally talking about high ideals like democracy, liberalisation, and human rights, is these days mostly notable for having ruined several countries for a generation.

In fact, that seems to be the trend: Twitter is very good at making its users feel like they're organizing and making changes in the world, when in reality all that is being accomplished is/was inflating their own stock price and throwing outrage around with neither factual context nor a long-term plan to turn it into meaningful positive change. People were able to effect social change before Twitter, but they didn't do it because they saw somebody's sarky hot take for five seconds right before getting their dopamine hit with the "Like" button and then scrolling past it; they did it because they got sick of the way things were. The public-facing data should be kept around for historians and the rest of the curious, but Twitter was always primarily a predatory ad marketplace that gained relevance by being useful for propaganda, and we'll all be better off with it gone.

EDIT: Musk, surely, did buy Twitter for the power and attention he thought it would give him. But he's done it as a petulant, self-destructive manchild, not as some scheme to stifle public discussion— Twitter was already stifling public discussion, just because of what it is.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Musk, surely, did buy Twitter for the power and attention he thought it would give him.

DIsagree. He was trying to do one of his many pump-and-dumps and he fucked around and got found out.

[-] Intralexical@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Fair. He talked about buying Twitter for the power and attention he meant to get from talking about it, both from the cryptobro fans and also any shady financial shenanigans. But he didn't actually mean to go through with paying for it.

this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
739 points (91.8% liked)

Technology

59414 readers
1152 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS