this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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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.

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[–] TheMauveAvenger 241 points 9 months ago (16 children)

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 117 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (20 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 71 points 9 months ago (7 children)

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

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[–] marswarrior 45 points 9 months ago (5 children)

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.

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[–] alianne 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It’s not “x” it’s called Twitter.
This is a good case for deadnaming.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I'm sure if we just ignore rich and powerful people, they'll go away.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago

Twitter has millions of users. Not talking about its issues clearly won’t solve the problem.

[–] phoneymouse 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 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.

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[–] Shazbot 78 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Mastodon, Firefish, Misskey, Sharkey. There really are a lot of interesting options. Mastodon seems to be the most popular though.

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[–] paddirn 43 points 9 months ago (11 children)

Can we all just boycott anything having to do with Musk/Twitter? I just want a browser extension that will automatically prevent me from going to a site that has any sort of links or anything related to twitter. Your blog also links to your Twitter account? Fuck you, I'm not reading it. Your news story references a tweet from somebody? Fuck you I'm not reading it. Your Lemmy post talks about Musk or Twitter? Fuck you, I'm not reading it. I just want all mention of Musk or Twitter or X completely erased from the internet. It may unfortunately impact any reference to anything else 'X' related, but that's a small price to pay for a Musk-free life.

[–] assassin_aragorn 9 points 9 months ago

Devil's advocate, it should be amplified as much as possible, because it reminds the public that billionaires are not inherently intelligent nor worthy of their money.

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[–] sleepmode 40 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I made a burner to see for myself after using it for work a few years ago. It’s a complete dumpster fire now, way worse than before. Bots and shitty animated gambling ads everywhere. Porn bots and scammers are trying to follow you every 2 seconds. Elon’s dipshit musings/ragebait are forced into your feed even when you block him. Any tweets you make get zero engagement. remaining accounts are either bots, racists, fascists, or creators and celebrities moaning and/or hemming and hawing about leaving all the time because muh ego. It’s not even worth witnessing the spectacle.

It’s also fucking straight up broken half the time. Mastodon is a breath of fresh air in comparison even pre-Elon. Wish more would use it.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You forgot one major thing: the porn has left in droves.

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[–] havokdj 8 points 9 months ago

The forced elon spam reeks of insecurity. I thought the whole reason behind being extremely rich was not giving a fuck about what the world thinks, yet here we are.

[–] Chunk 38 points 9 months ago (8 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

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 8 points 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.

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[–] Barack_Embalmer 30 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I joined Twitter fairly recently as Machine Learning Twitter is/was a thing, and I wanted to stay abreast of news from people like Andrej Karpathy, Chris Olah, Andrew Ng etc., especially since r/MachineLearning went down the shitter.

But I can't even - I log on and just instantly see ragebait posts from Daily Mail talking heads and bullshit.

Are there any better alternatives for this purpose?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Believe it or not, for tech deep cuts, Mastodon is better.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

If there are better alternatives entirely depends on how active those people are on Mastodon, Bluesky or even Threads. (Not sure on activity on Bluesky, as I haven't got an invite yet...)

I'm a PHP developer, many people (but not all) in the community crosspost on Twitter and Mastodon, so Mastodon is a good alternative for me personally.

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[–] 5BC2E7 29 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Lead by example. At least stop pretending that this news article/opinion piece belongs in a technology.

[–] CluckN 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I love these websites posting, “It’s time to leave X” while also providing bait articles that just describe a Twitter conversation between two celebrities.

[–] killeronthecorner 11 points 9 months ago

Ironically, there's a "Share with Twitter" button on the left side of the article

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago (8 children)

TIL we need convincing about that on Lemmy

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[–] steeznson 22 points 9 months ago (9 children)

The fediverse provides an alternative for people who care about using ethical products. Haven't tried threads/bluesky but they seem like more of the same. Unfortunately I don't think people care about the ethics of their micro-blogging platform; their biggest priority is having the largest soap box to shout from.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago (3 children)

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

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[–] Dkarma 12 points 9 months ago (3 children)

If torturing primates isn't enough for u what is,????

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago

I deleted that shit months ago.

[–] alienanimals 11 points 9 months ago

Downvote Musk spam.

The billionaire doesn’t need your help ensuring him and his businesses stay in the headlines every day. Don’t be a useful idiot.

[–] orwellianlocksmith 10 points 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.

[–] Mrkawfee 9 points 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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

I don't need a moral reason, I just think it's shit as it was before it rebranded

[–] Zithero 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Deleted my X recently - not looking back.

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