Twitter

Twitter is not a space that rewards deep dives and careful examination of evidence. You have 280 characters. People just want the right vibes. Does a story sound good? Does it fit with what you want to hear? Does it support your worldview? You have five seconds before your mind moves on, so smash that like button, give a knowing nod, then check out that neat duck video just below on your feed. https://tracingwoodgrains.substack.com/p/viral-racism-in-academia-story

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  • Stay niche

    It is worth keeping in mind, however, that when it comes to Mastodon (federated alternative to Twitter) - federation blocklists adopted by instance admins – and enforced unilaterally on their users – beats the spirit of it all, because many popular instances that adopt IdPol-fested policies end up clustering, and blocking other (non-IdPol adopting) instances en masse. See jointhefedi.com for a list of servers. The problem here is that moderation and censorship is still done by centralized parties (ie. instance admins) rather than voluntarily by the individual people themselves. Any centralized and unilateral enforcing of speech online is likely to become corrupt no matter the intention. Mastodon instances are also more likely to suffer from activist pressure than Twitter.

    The core problem here is the monolithic nature of these social networks, not their size per se. The solution is decentralization,* making it impossible for there to be a large monolithic network thus discouraging any form of universal group-think, for there will be no such universal group.

  • Cynical non-pioneers

    Chalk it down to MDS - Musk Derangement Syndrome. There is something in Elon Musk which triggers people to start acting irrationally just like there is something in e.g. Donald Trump which does the same. It is probably related to the way they - Musk and Trump and others like them - act like they are not bound by the laws which keep others from attempting the types of ventures these often undertake as well as their lack of humility about them. Some are awed by their boldness and become fanboys, others are disgusted by their lack of humility and failure to abide by the standards and fall victim to some form of ‘derangement syndrome’. When Musk started gaining successes with SpaceX and Tesla there were many articles posted by the ‘fanboy’ section of the crowd while those who started to suffer from DS were just waiting for him or his companies to trip somewhere, somehow so they could torch the man. His purchase of Twitter as well as the underwhelming performance (compared to the claimed capabilities) of Tesla’s ‘fully self driving’ system have given them ample fuel just waiting for someone to put a match to.
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