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.

  • TheMauveAvenger@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    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.

    • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      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.

      • Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

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

        • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

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

          • Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works
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            9 months ago

            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.

            • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              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.

              • Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works
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                9 months ago

                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.

                • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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                  9 months ago

                  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.

        • VikingHippie@lemmy.wtf
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          9 months ago

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

      • marswarrior@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        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.

      • alianne@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        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.

        • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          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.

      • RaincoatsGeorge@lemmy.zip
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        9 months ago

        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.

        • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          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.

      • Bogasse@lemmy.ml
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        9 months ago

        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.

        • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

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

      • lloram239@feddit.de
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        9 months ago

        “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.

        • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          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.

          • lloram239@feddit.de
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            9 months ago

            Acknowledging that black people and other minorities have had a hard time in the past that leads to present continued struggle IS NOT racism…

            That’s exactly what racism is. You ignore what actually happening to the individual and treat them all the same because of their skin color. White savior complex in action.

            • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              If you cannot understand the difference between recognizing the past hardships people in general have faced and continue to face and making assumptions about specific people you don’t know … you are literally too stupid to understand racism or privilege. Congratulations on being pathetically stupid.

              • lloram239@feddit.de
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                9 months ago

                and making assumptions about specific people you don’t know

                You are the one doing that if you haven’t realized. A person isn’t defined by their skin color and they don’t need a white savior telling them how oppressed their supposed to feel.

    • ubermeisters@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Ironically by you commenting on this, and further by me commenting on your comment, we have added to the metrics and it has now been deemed that it’s more popular because more people are talking about it. That’s the actuality.

    • phoneymouse@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      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.

        • Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works
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          9 months ago

          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.

  • Shazbot@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    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.

      • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

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

            • L3ft_F13ld!@links.hackliberty.org
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              9 months ago

              I get that. I feel it still needs a bit of polish. It’s amazing but has some rough edges to work out. Sadly it probably won’t catch up to Mastodon. Mastodon has too much of a head start. The nice thing about the fediverse is that it doesn’t matter though. I can use the less popular option and still connect with the popular one.

    • seitanic@lemmy.sdf.org
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      9 months ago

      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.

  • Chunk@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    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.

    • Tartas1995@discuss.tchncs.de
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      9 months ago

      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.

      • orrk@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        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.

          • orrk@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            because what makes Elon harmful for humanity is basically the same thing that makes Facebook harmful, massive uncontrolled influence on society

            • Tartas1995@discuss.tchncs.de
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              9 months ago

              Well it depends on what you see as an acceptable cost of the benefits of social Media. You could easily find differences between platform, in their function and in their moderation. These differences might be valid reasons to give it a different evaluation.

              But in case, you want to argue about whether or not Twitter is moral; and/or whether or not Facebook is as bad as Twitter, I am not interested in the discussion and my points weren’t made in support of the position that Twitter is harmful but only in “defense” of people voicing their moral evaluation of social Media.

    • zeppo@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      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.

    • SolNine@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

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

    • Numberone@startrek.website
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      9 months ago

      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.

      • oatscoop@midwest.social
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        9 months ago

        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?

  • phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    9 months ago

    That moral case was already there like a decade ago.

    When he called the Philippine men, risking their lives to save children stuck and about to die in an underground cave, pedophiles because they refused to consider musk’s retarded dive capsule idea… That was the moment that the moral case was there and it never left.

    Musk is a scammer, he is a dumbass, he is incompetent, got fired for being incompetent, he just got really lucky winning the company shares jackpot when that company got bought out. That’s all. He has a quality to make dumbass people listen to him and look up to him and make them somehow believe that he’s smart but every word out of his mouth is either a lie or just really really painfully dumb.

    • Sarcastik@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I worked for Musk for longer than I care to admit, well before the world caught on to what an evil snake oil salesman he is and I endorse this post.

      Let me just say after my time that the pedophile thing is probably nowhere near the worst thing that man has said or done to others he deems unworthy.

    • Adalast@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I had the idea of seeing if I could get an AI to draw a 10-point buck mounting him as a play on his name. No idea if that would be too far or not, but I would personally find it funny.

      • Hiccup@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        9 months ago

        A couple people I know dumped their teslas because they didn’t want to support the nazi.

    • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      9 months ago

      I’ve never used Twitter, but X has never been better—250+mg per pill, that’s three times what it was in the early 00s!

  • moitoi@feddit.de
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    9 months ago

    I know a lot of people relying on it for sharing research papers and finding them. It’s depressing to not have an alternative.

  • Mrkawfee@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I still use X for work and have noticed an increase in the amount of hate speech and racist content. Its started appearing on my feed.

    Problem is legacy Twitter still has huge scale so it’s not so simple to switch to something else if you need a big audience. It will take time.

  • orwellianlocksmith@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Damn, this is actually quite compelling. I knew X/Twitter was bad, but didn’t realize just how bad it has become. Thanks for posting.

  • Blapoo@lemmy.ml
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    9 months ago

    Does anyone here actually use it? I literally never made an account

    • loutr@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      I have an account that I use exclusively to DM companies for support. I found out that I can get help quicker and more easily than going through their website or call center hoops.

  • qwertyWarlord@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Lol, anyone who uses Twitter doesn’t do it for morality. The mouth breathers are addicted to the drama and that’s all there is to it

  • Gazumi@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Ditched just over a year ago. My world is still as it should be. It’s just a terrible app / organisation with gaming addiction

    • zeppo@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      What does that mean? The article says Twitter is “In this article” because it’s about Twitter, and he notes that writing about Twitter is part of his job, but he deleted the app from his phone because he’s revolted by the direction it’s gone, and the article is basically a screed about how much he hates it now.