The Moral Case for No Longer Engaging With Elon Musk’s X

Technology@lemmy.world – 764 points – 9 months ago

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.

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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.

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.

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

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

I don't think so. Racism being self perpetuating means it will exist even if we stop talking about it and will probably just be worse because even well meaning folk can be racist if they're not aware of it.

X on the other hand stops existing if we stop sending it traffic and just let it die.

Nah, self-perpetuating is not the same as spontaneously inevitable. Just like species can go extinct despite all life self-perpetuating in some way.

The people on Lemmy are likely to agree not to use it, and that just makes it more stupid to say, "don't talk about it.", since it won't further its demise at all.

Well, it seems like racism has unfortunately failed to go extinct so I'm not quite sure what you're getting at there but I'm probably missing something.

I don't think everyone has agreed not to use it? The more it gets talked about and spread the more people are drawn to the platform. Why do you think Musk has successfully made sure the site has been in the headlines constantly? I'm not saying we have to all stop talking about it and pretend it doesn't exist. But maybe we don't need multiple articles every day posted across multiple communities.

Anyway, doesn't really matter what I think. It keeps getting posted and upvoted so I guess we'll just have to live with it.

People are not drawn to the platform in a positive way by talking about it negatively on Lemmy...

It's like you idiots take basic expressions like, "any attention is good attention" and turn it in to a fucking axiom for life. It IS NOT TRUE in all contexts. Fucking grow up and realize generalities are SPECIFICALLY NOT TRUE in all cases. Ever. Generalities are always fucking stupid to use to judge specific occurrences unless it is a quintessential example. Which very VERY few things are quintessential examples of, "any attention is good attention.".

Something that's self-perpetuating doesn't extinguish without being actively stamped out. Noticing it's still around is the most basic observation that means nothing about it except that it's still an existant problem.

I mean sure, people aren't drawn to it in a positive way but advertiser's don't really care how you're drawn as long as you're drawn.

As for the rest of your comment I'm not really sure how to respond to be honest. Doesn't seem to relate to our conversation but good to get off your chest I guess.

Unlike systemic racism though this conversation isn't self perpetuating so I'm going to peace out and let it die like I wish everyone would do with X.

Have a good one and might catch you around in the next post about X. We're overdue for a new one by now I'm sure.

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

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.

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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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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

It’s a corrupted service, therefore it’s a service, therefore it’s an institution, therefore it’s institutionalized injustice….

Feeling a little loose after all that stretching? I guess the policies of every website company in the world now constitute institutionalized injustice. I’ll use that phrase next time I’m appealing the Facebook modbot.

I wouldn’t say we should never talk about Twitter and it’s impact on our world. I will say it is a media circus which is paraded about far, far too often to its corrupt owners benefit. And it needs to have less attention than it is getting like a fire needs less air.

Way to treat an association as an exact replica... I'm trying to put bread crumbs down, not rope them together. Stop pretending you do not know what an alegory is.

If you understand the general topic should not be shunned ... why are you speaking on behalf of shunning it?

I answered that. Last paragraph. Stop spinning wild extrapolations out of your ass for a second and just read some hard text.

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

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

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.

Lol. What?

[CITATION NEEDED]

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

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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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?