Crossposting here as I consider X a threat to both privacy and freedom
Let me guess, you think Russia/China/etc. banning websites is bad (because obviously they are doing it due to being authoriatarian regimes and to not let people learn the truth), and EU (or generally any western country) banning websites is good (because obviously it would be done to protect democracy and people from consuming dangerous misinformation)?
Did I miss anything? :)
Yes, you missed how social media algorithms work, having captivated the attention of whole nations, and carefully control every bit of information that pass in front of your eyes, then some billionaire buying said mechanism and taking part in the government he helped elected, then threatening the nations that have banned him that they will lose the next elections. Did I miss anything?
Real democracies need to shield themselves from this kind of corporate interference, yet most people don’t even understand how it works, or why Cambridge Analytica was a big hit, or where are these experts now and how they are making a living.
Yeah, so just as I said - good guys banning social medias is good because they are the good guys protecting the democracy against bad people and so on, and bad guys banning social medias is bad because they are the bad guys censoring the truth from oppressed people or something.
No hypocrisy here :)
This is not a matter of opinion, rather than centralized control of information.
Musk can shadow ban you, for example, nobody granted him that power except he was able to by it.
This type of social media are a power structure that is despotic in nature, and it is deeply problematic for democracies.
It is not like a nation state banning a religious minority or an anarchist site. That would be censoring of opinions.
In the case of Xitter, it is Musk and a team of political advertising engineers doing the censorship. So they are worse than Nazi apologists for example. The latter we only anticipate they will impose censorhip (let alone murder) once they are in power.
Xitter has that power already at orders of magnitude above what traditional media outlets have. He controls the flow of information. (And he made it a fucking nazi bar right enough).
But I will grant you that we should not expect nation states to ban Xitter. We should aim for its destruction.
Pointing out their hypocrisy will not help anybody. The best you can do is sit down and watch this comedy from the sidelines.
Pointing out their hypocrisy will not help anybody.
I choose to, perhaps naively, think that some people might actually recognize how absurd this is, and hopefully change their opinion :)
The best you can do is sit down and watch this comedy from the sidelines.
Just “watching comedy from the sidelines” can result in one day waking up in a totalitarian hell :/
(Not that my shitposting will change much of course :/)
