I started using Twitter in late 2007, at the urging of several friends, who felt that as a blogger it would be a good way to extend my reach. And it did. From 2012 to 2021 Twitter (Tweetbot) was one of my top three tools for learning. It dropped to fourth place after Musk bought the company and then it dropped completely off my list.
Over the years I have noted that the micro-blogging platform let me stay in loose touch with many people. I wrote that next to my blog, Twitter was my best learning tool and allowed me to stay connected to a diverse network [SEEK & SHARE]. For several years Twitter was the largest source of visitors to this blog. It even eclipsed Google search.
Beginning in 2022 it was becoming obvious that Twitter would no longer be the place where movements like Arab Spring or Black Lives Matter could grow. The move to becoming a fascist-promoting rage-inducing factory was quite obvious in 2022 and it is blindingly obvious now.
In 2022 I had about 20,000 followers and being connected to a network that diverse was a powerful incentive for me to stay on X. Now I have much better conversations and very few trolls on Mastodon — from platforms to covenants . I do not miss the constant doubt and outrage of Twitter either, even though I used to think I could get around that by carefully curating who I followed. That is impossible now and even blocking does not work on X because those you block can now read your feed, thanks to the new ownership.
My Friday’s Finds have come mostly from Mastodon over the past two years and now nothing will come from X. And that’s not a bad thing.
Farewell little bird. You were once a very important place for learning, sensemaking, and understanding others.
Harold, I followed you, red the blog and I think that your work is great, but I’m really concerned about what you posted here: “Beginning in 2022 it was becoming obvious that Twitter would no longer be the place where movements like Arab Spring or Black Lives Matter could grow”
I really don’t think that BLM and Arab Spring are good for any kind of society, and I don’t understand how you could view that these kind of groups could make us better.
Thanks for all.
Thank you for sharing your perspectives, Javier. I guess we can agree to disagree.
I will join you in agreeing to disagree.
I suppose twitter’s capabilities that brought progressive movements global reach will now be deployed in the service of fascist ones. I happen to think those are not going to make us better.
Hello Chris, we can agree on disagree but that does not fit with telling that anyone that does not believe progressive movements are good for this society, are always fascist ones. It is like you’re labelling a person and if his thought is other than a progressive one, then he must be a fascist.
Let me remind by the way, that fascism, nazism , comunism, are all birds of the same flock, with some minor differences but all of them put the collective over the individual, and all necesarely lead to authoritarian regimes. Whether you may like or not, but conservatives and right government lead to more free societies and more free individuals.
For me the issue is authoritarian versus democratic movements. It’s not even a question of right and left. Democratic conservatives are not a problem to me. The idea of a free market and minimal government regulation is not problematic in an of itself. It’s authoritarians and populists that are the problem. And those can be created around the cult of personality. There are authoartari regimes that are based on individuals like Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao, Pinochet, Kim Il Jung and others. and there are authoritarian regimes that are built around collectives, like the Burmese juntas. I know lots of people involved in Black Lives Matter and all kinds of levels and they don’t have anti-democractic ideologies. You might not like the policy solutions they advocate for, but they aren’t authoritarian. They contest police violence and racial injustice inside the democratic framework of dissent and protest.
Some conservatives, especially those that trend to libertarian side of things, sometimes conflate taxation with the theft of public property and regulation with dictatorship I don’t share this view even though I do share some ideas that libertarians value, such as the power of self-organization.
At the moment X is pushing legitimately facsist ideology that is rooted in a cult of personality centred on Donald Trump. It doesn’t have the public good at heart. This ideology is acting in the interest of billionaire oligarchs. True got elected by saying things that were true: people are suffering, working people have been forgotten, the economy has left them out. But look who he is installing in his administration. No working class folks. No poor folks. Nobody who was part of his movement. He is establishing and administration that is exactly the kinds of people he said was robbing people of their lives and livelihoods. And the first people his administration has gone after are the poor, and the disenfranchised. He’s not a conservative. He’s a right wing populist. He is enamoured with the cult of personality. He knows only cruelty and self-interest and that has been borne out in his policies and in his declarations.
And Musk is helping him through his properties including X.
So I’m not just calling anyone who disagrees with me a fascist. I am calling a fascist a fascist. He’s dangerous.
—Jeff Jarvis
Wondering if you have tried Bluesky yet? I dropped Twitter last month and have moved to BlueSky…and see many of my former Twitter friends there as well.
I know a lot of people are moving to Bluesky, Britt. It’s quite similar to Twitter. It’s owned by capitalists who may want to some day monetize the platform so that is a reason for me to stay away. For example, I noticed that Threads is now adding advertising to their feed. I have decided to put my time and effort into the open fediverse so I am on Mastodon — https://mastodon.social/@harold
In the words of Cory Doctorow — “I will never again devote my energies to building up an audience on a platform whose management can sever my relationship to that audience at will.”
It looks like this is a way to connect Mastodon with Bluesky — https://fed.brid.gy/
So my bridged account on Bluesky is https://bsky.app/profile/harold.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
I find bluesky to be just as mean.
What I don’t understand is why leaving X ? Is it because we don’t like it anymore? Because it is ruled by someone who thinks differently? So the solution is going elsewhere where we all agree and our ideas are all “beauty and the same” and we are all righteous and the other fellows who are still on X are the evil ones with all the wrong ideas? I personally suffered a few years ago with twitter because it shadow banned people and ideas because they where not the mainstream ones. Recently I read that saying now that “I’ll leave X” is like in the past saying “I don’t watch TV”.
I think that BLM has a profoundly hate speech, I think that what happened in the Ivy leage universities was really awfull but having said that, I don’t think that the solution is to silence or cancel those opinions but to confront them, and by doing that, letting the people decide.
About the troll issue, that is really a problem, but as Mastodon grows , I thing they too will come there…
To me, there is a difference between thinking differently and consciously sending disinformation and misinformation. Being on X is a choice…and I chose to leave.
Javier, X it is not about differences of opinion. You can find lots of place online to engage with folks different from you. No one is cancelling anybody and that’s a tired and immature reaction. People make deeply informed decisions to leave X and there are very good and well documented reasons for doing so.
Twitter/x is no longer safe. Its algorithms feed misinformation and stoke outrage, much of it generated by bots and malevolent actors. Facebook has a similar problem and it has enabled actually genocides.
Bluesky is vulnerable to these same technological tweaks to feed outrage and sell attention. It’s fun for now put it is not protected against enshittification. Especially now with so many people moving there it becomes vulnerable.
Mastodon is not. Structurally it isn’t. So it is a much better place to find real people you disagree with. Much like blog comment sections like this one.
Hello Chris, The amount of misinformation that we are seeing nowadays is huge, I agree with you on that. All major social networks were biased, and their algorithms used against some direction for sometime and in other direction later. I don’t thing bluesky or any socialnetwork will be free of this , just because ther will allways be humans behind the algorithms. Having said that. We can agree that NYTimes, ElPais of spain, and others big newspapers have also fall in this trap and misinformed their readers. What is my point? Now the misinformation has become more “democratic”, every one can post something and finally will be the reader the one who judges what is true or not.And what to believe or not. We are no longer irresponsible in our own information, we have to be educated in order to detect what is right from wrong. And we may fail, but this is better than having a few newspapers telling their biased “truth”
I also have bro doubt that Bluesky will fall to this. Mastodon not so much.
As for the big media I still trust reporters and journalists far more than I trust people who “do their own research” and arrive at their own conclusions about the truth. Of course all journalists are biased, and see the world in an incomplete way and so the trick is to read widely. But you are better off reading widely from sources that provide accountability through fact-checkers and who publish legally defensible material. Reporting is essential, and always incomplete. The fool confuses punditry and opinion with reporting. Everyone has an opinion, but I still place some trust in journalists to do their jobs, as I do in scientists and people who know A LOT more about things than I do. You and I are not educated enough to judge truth from lies on probably 98% of what we read and consume. We have to go on trust. We need to be careful to check our own biases and keep our curiosity alive and open.
Hello Chris, the problem that I have with the thing that you said is that there are enough cases to prove you wrong. I live in Uruguay, and I have not read anything good about Trump in all the information that comes here, and I just can not believe that there is not a great bias in the information that circulates out of USA and also in the USA. What you said about scientist, I ‘m sorry to say this, but scientist are the first to sell themselves, and I bring just 2 examples: scientist in Germany previous to 2nd world war, that justified “scientifically” that jews were untermench, and the other example , Obama got the nobel prize for Peace… please explain to me if that was not biased, or politically correct, why some people could award him with that prize.
I will respond also to you other comment because it wont let me reply there..
The fact that is impossible to be educated in all matters does not free yourself, trust is not enough, you have to know the facts. And when you say that BLM is not fascist, while trying to impose a radical way of thinking and using violence to do it, I cannot believe such a level of blindness.
I don’t like the cult of personality, in that I agree with you, but I also don’t think that the ones to rule have to be the same than me, in fact I expect them to be better than me.
The pendulum has gone too far to the left and now is leaning to the right, do I believe this is good? Yes, because the far left has gone to the point of thinking that there are many humans in this world, that men could become women and viceversa, that childs can decide to cut some parts of their body, that is more important to legislate around abortion than to legislate and help poor families to sustain and educate their children. Also because their “opressor, victim” policy, that resolves every problem in this world is fundamentally wrong. Not every wrong in this world is caused by someone else, it is always the easiest way of resolving things blaming other for your own problems, but that only hurts us more as a society. And that goes to BLM, to Hamas supporters, to mexicans that think they are like that because of the spanish colonialism.
In the methods that “scientist” say things, and journalist make their opinions you just know what has the appearence of truth and what is just wrong.
In the first years of the XX century everyone was leaving to USA to prosper, you have to understand what was that they were running from, to understand that the promise USA gave in that moment was not equality, health insurance or education, (altough that became reality) it was just freedom and justice.
Javier, please note that my website is not your opinion pulpit. Please take this conversation elsewhere, such as to your own website, or I will start deleting comments. Here, the pendulum is also swinging to the right and I will exercise my dictatorial powers as the administrator.
Harold, it is just fine. I tryed to add other points of view, and since I was replied I didn’t want to let that discussion die. But if you feel that there is no place for my opinion here, then I leave happily knowing that you are also swinging to the right :P .
Thanks for your response Javier. You can certainly find all kinds of information that fawns over Donald Trump and paints him in the best light possible. P{politically aligned media organizations like Newsmax and Fox News and Turning Point and other right wing news sites will talk all day about how great Trump is. If there is a consistent negative picture of Trump being painted by actual journalists and reporters though, it might be worth considering that there is a reason for that. He might actual be a terrible president. This week’s fall out from his executive order to freeze federal grants is one such example.
You and I see BLM differently, and I’m not going to change your mind. I know people who have been involved in that movement. I know that it contains a multitude of opinions and ideas, because it contains people. But describing it as fascist and violent is factually incorrect. Of course you may continue to believe it and I’m not going to argue with you. It doesn’t really matter what either of us think on this topic.
The pendulum in northern North America has never gone to the far left. Not even close. Not since the 1930s anyway and certainly not since the 1980 US and 1984 Canadian elections. The US and Canada have been run by centre and centre right governments during that time. The only moment when there was a Democratic supermajority in the US was during the first two year of Obama’s first term and he used it to try to build bridges across the aisle, not impose radical left wing policies. As you say Obama was no radical leftist. I agree that he shouldn’t have won the Peace Prize.
But he was a pivotal Democratic president. He was far to the right of the only actual democratic soloist in Congress, Bernie Sanders. Sanders even ran to succeed him and the party routed him out. So no, the US has never even flirted with moderate doses of socialism let alone radical socialism, except when it comes to funding the private sector of course. Democrats tend to keep capital happy while doing their best to look after the public good. Republicans tend to keep capital happy while outsourcing the public good to the market.
What has changed on the Republican side is the increase in populism that has been founded on a cruel bullying that punches down on people. It has denied women and transgendered people of their right to health care (and your uninformed and ignorant opinions on trans care and dignity are examples of the kinds of nonsense that are fed to people who don;t know any better. Sorry, but I have to call that out.) This kind of cruelty, xenophobia, racism and hatred of the other is what drives right wing populism now in much of the world and it will lead to cruelty and death. It already has. I guarantee you 100% that trans health care doesn’t not affect your life in anyway. But the cruel exclusion and acts of violence against trans people affects THEIR lives. Tragically. I can safely tell that you know no child who has ever “cut off their body parts” in the way you describe. You are making things up and using them to try to make a point. So I would say, stop that.
To your other points, scientists have a process for clarifying the scientific consensus. Yes crackpot science exists. In Alberta a panel of unreliable doctors issued a bunch of misinformed recommendations about COVID and vaccines and their peers resoundingly called them out for it. So I trust the scientific process. Which is why “doing my own research” is ridiculous. I have no way to evaluate papers and findings. I have to trust peer reviews. That isn’t say that things don’t change over time, because science is about learning, not getting stuck on the same piece of knowledge for all time. But still. Bias is pretty clearly weeded out as far as I can tell. But I am no immunologist, so I have to trust someone. I don’t just choose to trust people that feed my preconceived ideas.
Finally, on immigration to the US, the story just isn’t that simple it? You believe the myth of the Statue of Liberty, that all can come to a country of justice and freedom. But the US is a country founded on slavery, remnants of which still exist embedded in the actual Contistutional amendment that abolished it. It is a country founded on genocide of the Indigenous population and the wholesale theft of land. No wonder their economy grew so quickly eh? Free land and labour for hundreds of years and a government that enabled both. For many immigrants arriving to the US in the 20th century it was not a land of freedom and liberty. It might have been better for a while than the places they left, but for everyone from Jews, Asians, Irish, Italians to modern day Muslims and Latinos, the country is a hard place to settle and make a living becasue it is individualistic, racist and exclusionary unless you come with wealth and power. I worked for an immigrant and refugee organization for a while and many refugees fleeing places like South Sudan and Liberia told me that they missed to community and camaraderie of the refugee camps they lived in in Ghana and Kenya. Some wanted to return becasue th epriozise they had been sold about the USA was a lie.
I understand what people from to come to the US, but now the USA has vilified all of these people and is stopping them from coming. So right now – TODAY – it is a country that has closed it’s borders to people fleeing those conditions and the current administration is trying to figure out ways to deport 5% of the country’s population.
So I don’t know WHAT you are talking about. And on this point, it seems clear that you might not as well.
Hello Chris, thanks for your response, I’d love to answer some of the things you said, but not here, if you like, please tell me other blog or other place where I can interact with you. Just for closing it here, I love the passion you defend your ideas, and remember always that is more difficult to learn something new, than to discover that you have been lied to.
Thanks!