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this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2026
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Consumer activism and absenteeism will get you nowhere. Same argument applies to Meta platforms, YouTube, Reddit and whatnot. Merely existing socially in capitalist platforms does not equate to supporting the ideology of those platforms. There are a myriad reasons why one would remain on twitter despite the current state of the platform (academia, for exampl, still relies a lot on it), and this high minded moralism won't change that.
If you have the time could you expand on the ways academia depends on Twitter? I'm asking genuinely because the 'artist engagement' angle never seemed very convincing to me, but I had never heard of how academia is linked into it.
Twitter was adopted pretty quickly by academics all over the world as a good platform to effortlessly share articles, pre-prints and small results and discussions, as it was much better than Facebook or old Reddit for that. After years being a hub they're now a captive audience.
It's become a good habit for many scientists to include a "check twitter" task on their routine to stay up to date on the goings on of the scientific community. And back when I used it there were lots of cool trends for science communication whose history would be lost on migration, like the #ArachnoThreads listing cool facts about specific spider genera.
Had no idea. Now that you've described it makes a lot of sense, especially because science and academia are always the more active branches of federated social media. Federated social media is almost always trying to imitate the preexisting communities that dominate Twitter, etc. Thanks for the time.
So, to argue against using a platform supported by Nazis is "high minded moralism"? Convenience and mass usage is an excuse for that support? You are correct in the use of Meta, Alphabet, Reddit, and Microsoft products are the same.
Yes. Not much to add here, it's a moral argument not a practical one. And trying to make it a practical argument will yield very poor results.
Usage does not equate to support, most people aren't even paid users. Besides that, it's not just a matter of convenience, it's often a necessity. Try being a Latam journalist without an Instagram, a tech workers wiwithout linkedin, a communicator without YouTube. Absenteeism's only effect is giving you a warm fuzzy feeling of moral superiority. For serious militants, if you want to have an effect on society you will unfortunately have to engage with it.
Besides, this discussion started from arguing that a guy being beaten up by the police due to being doxxed by either Zionists or Banderites is somehow justified because he... Uses twitter? If you can't see the frankly absurd implications of that, imagine if the same happened to Richard Wolff, Vijay Prashad or any other communist who has an account there. Or any other random person with an audience, in fact. Imagine if Jenny Nicholson, NileRed or any other non-left non-politics influencer randomly decided to oppose Zionism and Banderites online and got physically attacked, since you agree YouTube is just as bad. Not even getting into MS Windows users. Are they all Nazi collaborators?
I truly hope you simply haven't thought this through. Sorry to tell you, but hiding away in a commie forum with 200 users and belittling anybody out of it is not praxis.