• Bly@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I just feel like if all of the left wing voices abandon twitter, the right-wing and fascist voices will become more common in general as twitter is where most people are. You cannot just let them exist and thrive unchallenged until it’s just not possible I guess. This will alienate people becoming more leftist if the average person, who just browses twitter because it’s popular, constantly sees more and more unchallenged bad takes.

    • Marruk@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      twitter is where most people are

      Twitter is gone. There is only X.

      According to Musk, there are 556m monthly active “users”. A year ago Musk commissioned a study that found at least 11% of active users on Twitter were bot accounts. There’s plenty of reason to believe that that percentage has only gone up, especially in light of the fact that there’s been a significant exodus of users due to Musk’s handling of the platform, and that at the time of the study there were about 368m users. So either 200m people who were previously uninterested in Twitter were so impressed by how Musk systematically made X less functional and more expensive, or bot accounts became massively more prevalant.

      Regardless, with a global adult population of 8+ billion, in no world is 556m “most people”, even ignoring the bots. Facebook has 3b monthly active users. Tiktok 1b. Instagram 2b.

      As for the rest of the argument, the idea that the only way for extremist voices can be held in check is to politely engage them in rational discussion is sadly nonsense. They’re extremists. They aren’t interested in rational discussion. The only way to hold them in check is to deplatform them, whether literally or just by the old fashioned method of social ostracism.

      • Marruk@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Hats off to the downvoter who read this and apparently thought to themselves “hell no! 556 million is a lot more than 3 billion, and definitely more than half of 8 billion!!!”

    • gaylord_fartmaster@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      By this same logic we should all go post on truth social so there is more of a diversity of opinion there. If everyone just stopped using Twitter it would fade into obscurity even more than it has. People making excuses like this and continuing to use the site anyway are what keeps others on it and keeps the ad money rolling.

      • Bly@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Truth social was born as a right wing platform from the beginning. It never had and will never have any casual users who are not right-wing. Going there and adding a left voice will not be very helpful as you would talk to an already established hard opinionated community. Twitter is unlike that, there are a lot of people who do not care about politics currently or are more casual about it. Though if you keep seeing more and more right-wing stuff, such people get normalized to that. Instead if there’s a left-wing voice there, any non-politicized person will have a look at the other side as well w. This is how you win over more people to the left, by being active on places where the most people will hear you. If you leave this place you just surrender and have more casual twitter users lean to the right as the time passes.

        • gaylord_fartmaster@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          It doesn’t matter what Twitter started out as, it’s a company and can be bought and sold. It was bought by a fascist and is now a de facto fascist website. You posting on Twitter is not “fighting the Nazis”, it’s supporting one by giving him a better return on his investment. If everyone who actually had any kind of conviction in their beliefs left the site then the casual users would leave too because the only content left would be fascist content.

          If you actually want to make a difference you have two options:

          1. Buy the site from Elon Musk and ban them.

          2. Stop using the website so it stops making money and becomes non-viable to continue operating.

        • Lowlee Kun@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          No use talking in an echo chamber my friend. People in this thread have decided that they are superior for being here and that there are only two kinds of opinions: Wrong ones and their own.

          • gaylord_fartmaster@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Yeah, it couldn’t possibly be that you are actually wrong in this instance. Much more likely that everyone else other than you and that person are wrong, that makes sense.

          • slowwooderrunsdeep@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            The whole internet has devolved into a series of echo chambers now and everyone thinks their own chamber is superior.

            We never should’ve killed flash games…