The Moral Case for No Longer Engaging With Elon Musk’s X::The former Twitter is incentivizing violent content, which will only become worse to stand out to users.

241 points

Then stop already. Stop mentioning the name. Stop posting articles about it. Stop sharing articles about it on other social media.

You know what’s immoral? Posting ragebait articles about a platform because you know users will engage.

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118 points
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I dunno’, kinda’ sounds similar to, “racism would be over if you’d just shut up about it.”

X and Elon don’t magically disappear because you choose to ignore them.

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71 points

And it would be similar to that if racism was a business that survived based on engagement.

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4 points

I mean… Isn’t it? Racism is very self-perpetuating. Especially when it’s allowed over other forms of distasteful speech.

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1 point

If you think it isn’t, you clearly haven’t been paying attention to all of racism in general and hypercapitalist neofascism in particular.

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45 points

If everyone shuts up about racism, then racism will be worse. If everyone stopped talking about twitter, then twitter will die. It’s not the same thing at all. Not even close.

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7 points

You are mixing “talking about Twitter” with “being on Twitter”. If nobody on Lemmy or Mastodon said a single word about Twitter ever again… it would still outnumber them by hundreds of millions users. I don’t like it, but that’s still how it is. But consequently, ragging on it is not going to recruit people who left for the Fediverse.

But if you mean making everyone on Twitter to shut up in general, well, easier said than done.

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11 points
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10 points

The difference is that racists are usually racist due to a moral stance, not because it makes them money; ignoring them means we’ll hear about it less but it won’t actually go away. Clickbait/ragebait, on the other hand, isn’t a moral viewpoint - it’s meant to bring a person money via exposure/engagement, so less engagement leads to less money which leads to less bait because it’s no longer working.

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1 point

I dunno’, you’d find plenty of economic justification if you go back and read why the confederacy got started. Or why Germany went a little crazy in early 1900’s…

While it is correct to logically dismiss the actual arguments of rage bait, it is purely foolish to pretend that it has no tangible effects worth counteracting all the same.

To say these things aren’t even worth talking about in general is akin stepping aside for bad actors to take over.

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8 points

It’s not “x” it’s called Twitter.
This is a good case for deadnaming.

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2 points

Corporate deadnaming is the only good deadnaming.

Facebook also only deserves to be called Meta as a reminder that they rebranded into a failed trend and lost billions because of it.

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1 point

That’ll show’em lol.

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5 points

I dunno. Racism isn’t entirely manifested by one man. He’s just one more bucket of piss in a sea of piss. Fuck him. We can at any time choose to ignore him. Choose to ignore his shit app. He doesn’t matter to any equation, he’s just an annoying rich person struggling with their addiction to child pornography. Wups did I say the silent part out loud. Shit.

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1 point

What you say is completely correct for engaging with his platform.

Not about not talking about the rise of bigoted morons in general. That is sticking your head in the sand.

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2 points
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Well kinda, except for these articles that pop now and then in my timeline, I haven’t heard of XformerlyTwitter for a while.

It was fun for a few weeks, joking about what bulls**t idea Musk had during the weekend with colleagues, but after a while the joke was a bit repetitive.

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1 point

It’s not news because he joked about it. It’s news because he’s flippantly doing it with production.

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1 point
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1 point
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While some of the same words appear in these two things, they are nothing alike.

The debate over whether recognizing racism can help us eliminate it has nothing to do with an unhinged billionaire who uses shock tactics to generate PR, and the bottom-feeding publications who give it to him by stoking our disgust.

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0 points
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No, it’s very much similar. You’re saying don’t even talk about it, when the article is about how it is a corrupted service. A service that at least used to have global reach. If a service is a globally used resource, it’s kinda’ institutionalized.

Since when did ignoring institutionalized injustice ever fix it? Never. It never gets fixed in the dark.

I understand the concept of not feeding trolls, but do not misjudge and accidentally ask people to ignore villains.

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-15 points
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“racism would be over if tou’d just shut up about it.”

Well, that’s way more true than it is false. The way the left hyped up race as the single most important and defining feature of people wasn’t exactly helpful. The idea of racial realism should be deconstructed, not actively supported. I have literally never seen as much racism in my life as what the left has been doing in the last 10-15 years.

And as for Elon, ignoring him would go a long way as well. The only reason why he is relevant, is because news media hypes up everything he says, no matter how false or irrelevant it is. Simply sticking to the important news, instead of clickbait and hype, would go a long way to quiet things down.

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1 point
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What the hell are you talking about? Acknowledging that black people and other minorities have had a hard time in the past that leads to present continued struggle IS NOT racism… It’s acknowledging reality.

What IS racist is saying the behavior is innate to the race, not that minorities have consequently received the short end of the economic stick.

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13 points

I’m sure if we just ignore rich and powerful people, they’ll go away.

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1 point

They won’t. But complaining about them on Lemmy and Bloomberg is empowering them.

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3 points

I get your point that major media outlets constantly talking about them is empowering them, but pretending that Lemmy talking about it has any effect whatsoever is vastly overestimating how consequential this place is.

I know a lot of people here are just sick to hear of the matter but lets not pretend that not talking about it is a moral stance.

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0 points

Lol. What?

[CITATION NEEDED]

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12 points

Twitter has millions of users. Not talking about its issues clearly won’t solve the problem.

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8 points
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It is a sight to behold. There is a certain class of people that don’t know who they are without Twitter because they measure their worth in followers and whatever influence that brings them. They are definitely going through all the stages of grief. Many of those types work in the media, hence all the articles hemming and hawing about whether to stay on Twitter or not.

For those of us that don’t have our egos entangled with the site, the writing was on the wall pretty early on. Twitter, or X, is dead and not worth our time. I’m sure those of us on Lemmy are especially capable of sniffing out the moment a social network turns sour.

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6 points
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2 points
4 points

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

Stop posting about Amongus! (loud warning)

bonus

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2 points

Back before Apollo was killed I had the words “Elon” and “Trump” filtered out. I just never saw these rage posts in the first place. Man, I’d love to see that feature in a Lemmy client. Anyone know if it exists?

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1 point

I’m new to Lemmy but I believe Boost for Lemmy allows you to filter on keywords.

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1 point

Thanks I’ll check it out

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1 point

Posting ragebait articles about a platform because you know users will engage.

Lol irony.

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0 points

The moral case for just shutting the hell up about X finally for fucks sake.

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2 points

I’ll shut up about it when it quits being relevant.

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1 point

Is it relevant? Maybe I’m just being a grumpy old man but literally the only time I ever think about it is when it’s posted about on here.

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-1 points
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-1 points

Tell that to OP. Oh, wait…

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77 points

This is your daily reminder to engage and boost Twitter alternatives such as Mastodon. It’s not enough to ignore Twitter. We must build communities to draw in users, show them social media can exist without Elon or Zuck. Only when good alternatives exist, with content and people sought after, do users feel safe to abandon old platforms.

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16 points

Mastodon, Firefish, Misskey, Sharkey. There really are a lot of interesting options. Mastodon seems to be the most popular though.

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3 points

Firefish is my favourite, the design is fantastic, and I can read all of Mastodon on it. Very enjoyable and everyone is quite welcoming.

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3 points

I made an account on Firefish as well. A bit of an adjustment after Mastodon. But my Mastodon account has been untouched since.

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3 points

Mastodon is never going to be as addictive without that algorithm. You can’t just replace one with the other when what you’re hooked on is the outage. What we really need here is regulation.

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43 points

Can we all just boycott anything having to do with Musk/Twitter? I just want a browser extension that will automatically prevent me from going to a site that has any sort of links or anything related to twitter. Your blog also links to your Twitter account? Fuck you, I’m not reading it. Your news story references a tweet from somebody? Fuck you I’m not reading it. Your Lemmy post talks about Musk or Twitter? Fuck you, I’m not reading it. I just want all mention of Musk or Twitter or X completely erased from the internet. It may unfortunately impact any reference to anything else ‘X’ related, but that’s a small price to pay for a Musk-free life.

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8 points

Devil’s advocate, it should be amplified as much as possible, because it reminds the public that billionaires are not inherently intelligent nor worthy of their money.

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3 points
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Is there any app for Lemmy that can filter by keyword? I don’t want to read about Elon and Trump multiple times a day. With some Kanye, Zuckerberg and Tate sprinkled in.

I already know they suck and 99% of the time they are mentioned it isn’t even relevant or is about social media platforms I don’t use.

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3 points

Problem is you’d also block all the older articles from when twitter was only a mudpit and not a hellhole

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3 points

Oh no, all those articles from the Trump presidency where Trump posted something asinine and everybody freaked out about it, whatever shall I do?

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2 points
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There are lots of browser extensions that can block any site you want to block. I use Block Site on Firefox but there’s plenty to choose from, just have a search.

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2 points

Even better idea, everyone order a starlink then do a return. Will temp cost you $300 but free return shipping at spacex expense

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1 point

SpaceX is an amazing company. I don’t want to punish SpaceX.

It’s less than a quarter the cost to get to space now, because of SpaceX

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-30 points

So, basically you want to stick your head in the sand and pretend things aren’t happening.

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19 points

No, I’d rather read about the important things that are happening. Twitter is not important and the only thing that will finally get all these other companies to finally drop twitter is if it starts hurting their bottom line and reduces clicks and reads. If there’s a coordinated campaign to block Twitter, it could finally just remove it from the internet.

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12 points

you’re not saving the world complaining online about twitter bro.

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3 points

But… Maybe… 🤔

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40 points

I made a burner to see for myself after using it for work a few years ago. It’s a complete dumpster fire now, way worse than before. Bots and shitty animated gambling ads everywhere. Porn bots and scammers are trying to follow you every 2 seconds. Elon’s dipshit musings/ragebait are forced into your feed even when you block him. Any tweets you make get zero engagement. remaining accounts are either bots, racists, fascists, or creators and celebrities moaning and/or hemming and hawing about leaving all the time because muh ego. It’s not even worth witnessing the spectacle.

It’s also fucking straight up broken half the time. Mastodon is a breath of fresh air in comparison even pre-Elon. Wish more would use it.

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14 points

You forgot one major thing: the porn has left in droves.

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2 points

Truth. Total ghost town now.

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8 points

The forced elon spam reeks of insecurity. I thought the whole reason behind being extremely rich was not giving a fuck about what the world thinks, yet here we are.

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38 points

Can we take a step back for a second and think about the human condition that led someone to need a moral argument to get off X? What kind of pathetic, fucked up mind do you have where you can’t just uninstall the app you have to appeal to morality.

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20 points

Well there is a difference between disliking something and believing it is actively harmful. If you believe it is actively harmful for humans and society, it makes sense that you want to appeal to the society as a whole. Then you need to reason for why you feel the way you do. And there we go.

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1 point

Facebook causes genocides in every 3ed world nation they push into.

social media is, as it is now, designed to push the worst. most racist, most murderous rhetoric because it garners more engagement.

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1 point

I am not saying you are wrong, nor right, but I am wondering why you tell me/us that now, here.

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5 points

My assumption would be the purpose is to shame people.

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2 points

I don’t think someone publishes an article to try to convince themselves to not use it. Of course it’s to convince other people why to not use it.

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1 point

This 100%! I barely used Twitter to begin with, but as soon as he went off the deep end, I completely deleted my account.

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-10 points

This whole twitter thing is like some lib version of a moral panic. Who cares, just get off it if you don’t like the experience. But no, they all need to tell everyone how this makes them so morally pure.

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2 points
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Moral panics are over things that don’t have negative real world consequences.

We’ve repeatedly seen what happens when disinformation and violent, extremist speech is given a place to flourish on social media. The crazies get even more radicalized, organized, and emboldened. They start taking actual action.

Qanon, the proud boys, unite the right, patriot front, January 6th – where do you think those ideas gestated and grew to critical mass?

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1 point

4chan?

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-10 points
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Removed by mod
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