this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2023
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IMHO Musk and the 1% saw the collective power Twitter gave to the working class. It was able to usher in the #Metoo movement and finally bring justice to powerful people. The rich aren’t gonna leave a tool like that intact
You do realize that's a marketing line about Twitter, right? It's a private, for-profit corporation whose entire purpose is to inspire users to give away data about themselves for free. They don't care what you think, they care how to manipulate you into buying things from them. Go ahead, buy your justice deodorant to wear to the protest. They're very scared. After all, the government didn't learn anything about counterinsurgency since the 1960's, so it's not like they know how to use all this data and surveillance to keep an eye on us.
Trump was one of Twitter's biggest users and they didn't boot him until he tried to start a fascist insurrection and, again, made it impossible not to boot him. They're an advertising platform first and foremost, they pandered to the far right as much as to anyone else, and the right got plenty of use out of that platform even before Musk took it over.
The only way you could think otherwise was not actually having used Twitter since like, 2011.
Oh yes I completely understand how they work and harvesting data etc, but that does not discount the fact #Metoo brought down powerful people. Yes they advertise, what does that have to do with anything?
Yeah, but the fact it brought down some powerful people doesn't mean it threatened the system as a whole. Things like Me Too become threatening to the system when they become widespread and ubiquitous and there's a perception the ruling class isn't interested in fixing it up. Also, many upper class people, particularly of course women, are survivors and are not interested in being further endangered by rape culture, so there was support from within the upper echelons about Me Too.
I'm not saying that's a bad thing, I'm saying that's a little perpendicular to the whole question of whether or not Twitter was some kind of revolutionary working-class institution before Musk bought it. It was an influence marketplace. Everybody used it to buy and sell influence. Including progressive movements, and fascists. This had good, and bad, effects, and we shouldn't put it on a pedestal.
Musk bought it because he likes to very publicly fuck around with stock prices illegally, there's been years of back and forth between him and the SEC over this. This is the man who tried to manipulate the stock price of Tesla to $420.69 a few years ago because he thought it would be funny and got charged with fraud by the SEC, then proceeded to use SNL to do a crypto pump-n-dump in real time on national television.
His bluff just got called this very latest time, so he was forced to make the purchase, and he's an idiot fascist.
In reality, all the influence peddling and agitating is just moving to other platforms, and things will be more or less the same as they were after Twitter, sorry, "X" collapses.
It brought down some powerful people. Indisputable. Like nothing else was able to do. This was my point. I never used the service. With proper moderation, it could have turned into a valuable asset for the working class in which to hold powerful people accountable when the government is unable or unwilling. This is why INMYHUMBLEOPINION the 1% destroyed it.
Uhh, I think it was less about culture wars and more about the Saudis getting info on Arab Spring activists considering they bankrolled it.
That's a losing game for them. Whackamole at best. For every social media platform that dies, several more seek to replace it.
Yes, but now the audience is divided. Twitter had 368 million users globally. That takes years to accumulate.
Sure and each less relevant then the one before.