X Purges Prominent Journalists, Leftists With No Explanation
https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d948x/x-purges-prominent-journalists-leftists-with-no-explanationOpen linkView original on programming.dev1111
Comments240https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d948x/x-purges-prominent-journalists-leftists-with-no-explanationOpen linkView original on programming.dev
Remember back when Elon kept calling himself a Free Speech Absolutist? That just gets funnier every day.
Right-wingers only seem to care about free speech when it applies to themselves. Anyone else and they'll get talking of "defeating the woke mind virus" or whatever ridiculous way they decide to demonize others.
Reminds me of that Sartre quote
My speech or the highway!
Which one?
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7870768-never-believe-that-anti-semites-are-completely-unaware-of-the-absurdity
tldr they know what they're doing.
The_donald was the only lesson I needed to learn what conservatives thought of free speech.
It would be interesting to know what conservatives actually believe. By this point we've broken down each and everyone of their professed beliefs and found nothing of substance.
Here is a list of things I remember conservatives use to say their ideology was based on:
*Christian morals - You can even look back at their warped version of Christian morality from 1970s forward and still say today that Trump has fully exposed them to be baseless
*Small government - Trump and Co are actively trying to expand government authority and have successfully taken away the rights of woman all over the US
*Democracy - Trump told democracy to go fuck itself Jan. 6 2021
*Capitalism - Capitilism for the serfs socialism for the capitilists
*American Exceptionalism - At some point America was great but I'm not going to say when.
*No Child Left Behind - jk jk we knew that was bullshit from the get go
*Free speech - ahem I mean free 'hate' speech. all other speech is negotiable.
The list goes on my dudes. Would love to know what these people really believe. My guess is nothing. They are just mad and acting out. We've all seen it growing up. The people who just refuse to help themselves no matter what you do and you're constantly picking up the pieces for them.
"Conservatives don't care about free speech. Conservatives cares about power. Faithfulness, old-time values, homemade bread, that’s the just means to the end. It’s a distraction. I thought you would have figured that out by now."
Winning as the means for obtaining power. No interest in governance
They believe in winningThey believe in RulingCopied this from another post I made.. things make more sense when you realize what their true core principle is.
There is a good Adam Conover podcast episode where he interviews Corey Robin. In the episode Robin states the main premise of his book, which is that the central underlying ideology of the right is the belief that some people are better than others and deserve to be in power. A lot of the rights' beliefs and ideas evolve over time but they evolve in service of that core idea. It's the one thing that stays consistent over time going back to the french revolutions.
Multiracial, multiethnic, international cooperation, helping the homeless, helping the poor. No matter how you spin it by trying to convince them of the benefits ect, the right will never be on board. They don't believe those groups deserve help or should be helped. They fundamentally believe it is morally good to depower certain groups and empower other groups.
That one idea explains so much of the rights blatant hypocrisy. Welfare disproportionality going to red states is good because it's going to the good people. Rich people getting richer is good because it's going to the good people. Hurting minorities is good because they are the bad people, helping them is bad. Some people are innately worthy and some people are not. Anything the good people do is good, anything the bad people do is bad. The same action can be good or bad depending on who is doing it.
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episode
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Why do you/the book propose they need to look down on someone else?
"Need" probably isn't the best word. It's not a "need" so much as it is a belief. They "believe" themselves to be better and more deserving. Everything else follows from that. Start plugging it into what you know about conservatives and you will immediately see that it's by far the best and simplest explanation.
Also bear in mind that people are often, and in fact quite usually, unaware of why they hold certain opinions and far from using reason to arrive at their opinions, tend to arrive at an opinion and then use reason to rationalize why it's correct.
The SCOTUS is a great example; we already know how the justices will rule because we already know their underlying opinions about the world. What we don't know is how they will justify their rulings. If this weren't true, then neither party would care about SCOTUS nominations. The fact that we care very much tells you that we all privately know that I am right.
You and I do it too. We all do. Some of us are more aware of it than others.
Conservatism is an excuse for your instant, emotional reactions.
If you formed your beliefs in schools over many years, that's why you're probably a liberal now.
They literally want to shoot people for simple larceny or for blocking the sidewalk in protest. It's an ideology for people whose lizard brains make all their "decisions." You know these people, how they just go through life reacting to things. You can trick them into believing anything. I'm not saying that if you're a conservative you're going to kill someone for blocking your sidewalk, I'm saying that if you lean into the ideology enough is literally deforms your amygdala and you lose touch with your ability to be rational.
One thing I enjoy is to get conservatives going about protests and police use of force especially with regard to public protests, civil disobedience, rioting, theft or destruction of private property.
Get them all fired up. You know, tell them the protesters threw snowballs and maybe ice at the cops first, and that they came into a private shipping yard, broke into private storage, stole whatever they could carry, and set a bunch of it on fire. You know, get them talking about how they'd empty the clip. Then you can reveal casually that you were talking about the Boston Massacre and Boston Tea Party. They remember from grade school how they are supposed to feel about these events, and they are unable to reconcile with their repressed and curious inner children. There defense mechanisms literally cannot process why they are advocating for the British in the revolutionary war.
You know, "what if these thieves and vandals burned your country's flags from all government buildings, shot all the police, and said they were forming their own government with a new Constitution and to fuck off?" I like to say they are just dumb but really they are just emotionally immature and regressing.
No, conservatism is ultimately about some people being naturally more deserving than others. It really is that simple. Everything else follows from that proposition. There's no reason to further complicate it by looking for more proximate explanations.
The Donald? Where you from you don't know:
I'm sure I'm forgetting twenty other things conservative literally tried to ban me from doing in my lifetime. Conservatives have zero credibility on free speech.
In Russia it's illegal to talk about it's invasion of Ukraine. It's called an anti-sedition law. Despite the First Amendment, anti sedition laws and seditious libel were illegal and punishable by long terms of imprisonment until lefty Supreme Court Justices decides so in 1964.
These Justices on there now will flip us right back to prosecuting people for saying Israel is doing a genocide, or for saying "fuck the draft," or for saying "fuck Donald Trump," but not for saying "fuck Joe Biden." Conservatives right now in America want laws that ban Americans from participating or even talking about "BDS." Our Supreme Court in America just recently upheld such laws, without really reaching the issue, but keeping the laws alive. They also push ag-gag laws. They have zero credibility on free speech.
It's not just conservatives pushing BDS laws though. Democrats are just as complicit.
A few.
If you classify all the established democrats actually leading the DNC as "a few" I guess.
It is abundantly clear that they do not believe in anything and operate on the basis of reacting in spite to anything they are told to. It’s basically one whole hemisphere of the political spectrum hijacked by propaganda. We genx folk thought that the free access to information on the internet would set people free but this what we got instead.
Care to elaborate that bit about capitalism?
As a non-American, I’ve been struggling to understand how Americans use these terms. Sure, I’ve seen plenty of “capitalism good, socialism bad” rhetoric, but what do people actually mean when they use them? Your example was particularly interesting, because it sounds like you’re implying that Trump promised capitalism, but failed to deliver.
Free speech absolutist means "I am absolutely free from the consequences of my speech"
I also remember a bunch of people saying Elon will preserve free speech. It looked like a cult.
No explanation other than Elon is a thin-skinned little bitch baby who’s carrying water for fascists.
He’s not carrying water for the facists, he IS a fascist and they’re trying to spill that water on everyone in an attempt to undermine people’s freedoms. Fuck him and fuck his kind
And SpaceX. Sorry pretend space nerds, Musk's company is actually not that great, and none of his rockets will ever go to Mars, due to financing problems, cost overruns, and an insane approach to rocket design.
Dude thinks he can iterative design rockets like theyre computer programs that can just be deleted and rewritten with the only cost being paying someone to write new code.
Real, actual engineering does not work this way.
Not that his approach works for self driving either.
EDIT: lol, apparently this is a controversial post. Can't let the Muskrats not have their Space dreams.
I suggest anymore more interested check out Common Sense Skeptic on YouTube for more details on how SpaceX and Musk should not be taken seriously.
Are you stupid? Falcon 9 is the single most used rocket in the world, and it’s not even close.
Don’t let your hatred force you to ignore facts. Musk is the most colossal asshole on the planet, but that does not invalidate the excellent work done by Shotwell and her team of engineers.
The rocket that's supposed to go to Mars is Starship.
I'm no expert, but apparently the design is very controversial, with some saying it's an extremely risky design.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship
Pennomi:
Please, no need for that:
Firstly, I admit it’s wrong to be so rude, and you’re right to call me out on that.
As you said, Starship is far from proven. It can almost certainly get to orbit in its current state but who even knows if reusability (and propellant transfer) will pan out.
I’m simply sick of people projecting their hatred of Musk on to all the engineers. They assume that because they dislike the man that he must be stupid, and that because he must be stupid, everything he owns must also be stupid. It shows a tribalistic, shallow understanding of the engineering process, when we should instead all be cheering for every success in spaceflight.
No it can't, they've tried twice where it failed very shortly after takeoff. The last attempt was only a month ago, pretty much like some people expected pre launch, because that would be very hard to avoid the way it's designed. Also Musk himself acknowledged it was high risk, with a good chance it wouldn't make it. NASA would NEVER have launched with a high probability of failure, the way the Starship program has been going, it would be very unlikely to be allowed to continue. Musk justified the launch with the value of the telemetry in case of failure. Problem is that they lost contact 8 minutes before it visibly exploded in the sky. So they got no valuable telemetry either!!!
That's not what I see, it seems like Musk has become increasingly irate, and he is calling the shots. The engineers are AFAIK almost never blamed.
Yep, its widely used, and its mission profile can be replaced with other existing rockets for around the same cost, and you've always got Blue Origin you know, mastering the basics /before/ tackling more advanced problems.
Musk and Shotwell are still pretty far from delivering on the level of cost savings per launch that Musk has been touting for over a decade at this point.
Off by about a factor of ten.
Shotwell and her /brilliant/ engineers will never build a point to point rocket system, much less one that is economically viable.
Turns out refurbishing a rocket and reusing it is really time consuming and that process basically cannot be significantly sped up without cutting corners that will lead to losing rockets, or by some totally new rocket design philosophy that has yet to be designed.
SpaceX is the company that recently did not even realize that their orbiter module had disassembled itself until 3 minutes after this occurred, then claimed that they had intentionally triggered the abort system.
Shotwell is a joke, as is Starship. At their current rate of development, at best they are looking st something like a promised human rated moon landing capable craft in a decade plus, after some serious redesigns.
Problem is NASA will have picked a different contractor by then, and SpaceX's financials are so bad they will likely go bankrupt, or, at best, just stick with the Falcon 9 and maybe try to actually come somewhere close to the launch costs they originally targeted.
I think you’re intentionally cherry picking some tiny quibbles and ignoring the enormous body of evidence that proves their success. For instance, the vast majority of your complaints are about things they haven’t done (despite saying they would). This is normal in an engineering/marketing dynamic.
This is also why I only focus on actual flight hardware when comparing launch vehicles.
Having competition is great and does not invalidate success in the slightest. I’m looking forward to more competition in the industry. I have my eye on Blue Origin this year.
You could not have chosen a more appropriate topic. This is something we have hard data on, and it turns out that you can in fact refurbish a Falcon 9 without issues in a very short time. The current record is 9 days. I’m pretty sure they’ve done a couple hundred refurbishments by now.
I don’t agree with you about Shotwell, but Starship is certainly a gamble. I have no doubt they’ll get to orbit, but the reuse architecture is harrowing at best. And I agree that Artemis is unlikely to use Starship as a lander.
I suspect using an expendable second stage for Starship (just like Falcon) is the better architecture, but I guess we’ll see if they can pull it off very soon.
What if - hear me out - all the employees at SpaceX are working together to intentionally drive up costs by using it as a playground for wacky off-the-wall ideas that wouldn't get funding elsewhere, but because they are all in it together, management has no idea because everyone is backing and vetting everyone else? And so people keep pumping money into the company, so the staff just keep on with the status quo. For example, wouldn't you want to see if a spaceship with a rocket attached suspiciously similarly to a foreskin can make it to orbit - and should it retract in stages, or as one swift break-away movement? Need I remind you that this project isn't on your dime? Mmmhm, that's what I thought. Now let's build the cock rocket.
Maybe the smartest people in the room are the ones we least expect.
I mean, they are a bunch of rocket scientists. That's the group everyone has expected to be the smartest people in the room for about a century. 😁
I thought that was AI people.
Turns out ... thats not working out so well.
In everything other than the /lets literally build SkyNet/ department.
But the idiom isn't "it's not AI" it's "it's not rocket science." 😉😁
This is not impossible, but the problem is that Blue Origin has already created the most phallic possible rocket that actually works.
So at best SpaceX goes bankrupt in pursuit of sloppy seconds.
Elon is a hopeless retard but your take is even dumber
That’s why I love asking, “Who groomed you to believe ______ as a truth?”
I don't get why people still use that platform. It's so hostile to the users. This is an election year and we're just going to give him all this influence? Society is a big dumb animal.
I have never seen the appeal to Twitter. It's never seemed like a useful part on social media. I have never heard a change and go "well now I will check it out."
It was extremely useful in sports for quick in-game updates, especially from third-party groups (like the news beat reporters, versus getting info from the team).
It's really entrenched, though: Even with all of the chaos and controversy, it's hard to find articles that reference something that happened in a game that don't embed some tweets (or whatever they hell they're called now) for the video. It's extremely frustrating. I think, in part, that's why the hockey community here on lemmy isn't taking off - no one wants to link to Twitter, and there are basically no other sources.
ESPN's app seems to do my updates and I don't have everyone's opinion on it either. I mean I guess I can see the meme angle. But I think that would find it's way anyways.
ESPN's app doesn't note when a player is missing off the bench or something like that. The reporters at the game notice it and X it out.
It always felt like a big void to shout into, unless you have some sort of following that listens.
I tried Mastodon recently... It rules. Would recommend.
It is the only platform where I can follow specific people without a algorithm getting in the way. They all need to choose a new one to move to.
Anyone who follows the alt-right, did Joe or anyone else go ape shit over this yet? I'm assuming that because they were going crazy over the previous Twitter about certain infractions under the old guard ... so this new shit must be driving them crazy. Being free speech activists and all that.
Cant wait for the Jordan peterson video
https://youtu.be/4kHZREDrbJY?si=FzjSXw_C8kKEiiur
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This was always going to happen.
Muskrat bought twitter specifically to make it Parler, GAB, and Truth Social all rolled into one.
Banning, shadow-banning, or purging any and all dissenting views or content that differs from the Far Right narrative on the sites is the norm.
The Saudis helped him buy it to try to stop future Color Revolutions
That too.
All the Far Right Authoritarians are just giddy about it all.
I can see several motives for him buying twitter.
Get trump elected, Because:
a) less taxes for the musky chodelet
b) less pesky safety and labour regulation for tesla/spacex/neuralink
c) drop support for Ukraine so he gets a shot at the rare minerals underneath it when russia has full control.
He's a useful idiot for trump and putin. Still not sure what the saudi angle is, though.
He's a cheap lay for the Saudis
FreEdOm oF spEAcH!
Free speech absolutist,okay?
It means absolutely no free speech to anyone criticizing him
The liberal media gets this all screwed up. He said:
Free speech?! Absolutionist!
They were obviously saying the wrong type of free speech.
I don't understand why people don't collectively quit Twitter and flock to Mastodon. It's very simple, it's better for everyone
Because for the previous 15ish years before Musky got a hold of it it was actually decently regarded. Many people turned to it for up to date news and trusted it. It was a place where brands could interact with customers, celebrities with fans, etc. It had built up trust. People are having a hard time letting that go.
FOMO is a very powerful drug.
What? Twitter mob harassed game developer in 2019 into suicide. 3 years before american version of Rogozin bought this dumpster fire.
They are both big idiots
ew. just ew
All those things that made twitter "useful" were terrible, even if it was good at it.
Even today there are top posts on Lemmy that are screen caps of Twitter. Not even Lemmy users can stop reading Twitter and upvoting. I down vote them on principle but it's 100 to 1.
Reddit and by extension Lemmy were designed to enable content aggregation. I dislike people having so few principles in general but the system is working as intended by users posting things they find interesting happening elsewhere.
Here's easy way to stop reading Twitter: not register there.
Twitter itself hepled me to stop reading it when it regwalled all the posts.
Because they don't care
Why are you booing me I'm right
Who the fuck is still on Xitter? Jesus people, get the hell out of there!
i keep wondering this myself, so many places are still prominently presenting the xitter button to follow them on,like it's a totally normal thing to do. it's fucking bizzare imo.
Lots and lots of people, apparently. And lots of those really really should know better.
Stop supporting that shithole, people.
As opposed to what? It's where the people they follow post. Why would they leave for somewhere that doesn't have any content they care about? It's like asking who the fuck is still on reddit. The answer is the enormous shitload of people who just want a steady feed of the same content they've always consumed.
I've always liked the term "institutional inertia."
A lot of researchers whose built a network on it. It's not as easy as it seems for them to switch to another social media. Each connection is important to know about new articles when they come out.
Too fucking bad. Also that's like .002% of the people there, at most.
So only fascists allowed now.
So basicaly no change? /s
that's a bingo!
Elon "Free speech absolutist" Musk.
The Nazi bar is open for business
Someone needs to hack the mainframe of xitter and put this as the default logo.
Wait, do we pronounce xitter and "zitter" or "shitter"?
I pronounce it 'Twitter.' Because since he's decided to remove the rule on Twitter against deadnaming trans people, I'm going to deadname his precious website.
Why do i get the feeling he cares more about that than about deadnaming trans people...
Shitter
Censorship for thee, not for me.
I hate this little thought terminating cliche. It's trying to make everything into hypocrisy which it isn't. Say he banned everyone who ever said anything pro Israel...you can fairly apply that rule across all people, and have disparate impacts.
The problem isn't that he's censoring others but not himself, it's that the rule itself is bad on its face.
This is hypocrisy. He called himself a "free speech absolutist" after he bought Twitter. He called it the "digital town square." Ever since then, he's banned anyone who says things he doesn't like and keeps the Nazis. He's absolutely a hypocrite and he should be called out on it.
Man calls himself as a free speech absolutist
Same man buys social media platform
Same man then mass bans people and removes comments when he doesn't like their political leaning or they criticise him/his companies too much
How is that not hypocrisy?
If that is what they said, it would be hypocrisy. The cliche is "X for thee and not for me" so the claimed hypocrisy is that he is censoring others and not himself for saying the same things. That isn't the issue, as you point out the issue is that he is censoring when he said he wouldn't.
Anyone who expects the bourgeoisie to platform those whose politics are a threat to capitalist interests is a fool.
it's funny because even Elon's ego is a threat to capitalist interests, look how much he's tanked their company value! Honestly I'm cheering for his self-destructive downward spiral to continue - tw*tter was always a cesspool, decent people should have left years ago.
Any day a venture capitalist fails spectacularly at screwing people over is a good day.
No official, public explanation. We know why...
They'll claim it was an accident or outage, but those accounts weren't struck at random.
Internally, is someone curating a list of prominent accounts by political leaning? Are those accounts the target or right wing report bombing? I want to know exactly how those accounts were landed on.
Sounds just like old Twitter. Ban someone who you don't like politically. If it's causing to much uproar, day it was an accident/glitch. If it works, repeat. If not, repeat in a few weeks.
For example? Can you actually name 3 accounts this happened to?
No, no, there's an explanation. The owner.
"Self-described free speech advocate censors dissenting views"
More news at 11.
More like 𝕏 is our generations swastika
As a wayland user I agree.
I found this unnecessarily funny
Are you sure? Here's real modern swastika:
Although this is not current generation swastika, this is 1970-ies generation swastika.
The Russia today is the same Russia as yesterday and all days before that.
America, like Germany, will elect their new Fascist regime. Enabled by people like Musk, who makes a good modern stand in for Goebels.
History doesn't repeat, but it sure does rhyme.
When I was young I literally couldn't comprehend a world where someone like Hitler was elected.. by a majority, in a democracy!! It boggled my mind.. now, now I get it.
He wasn't. November 32 the NSDAP was down to 33.1% from their previous 37.4% in Juli the same year. Even in the March 33 elections which generally are considered to have been unfree the NSDAP only got 43.9% (widespread voter intimidation). Zentrum (catholic conservatives) offered themselves as stirrup holders, but they still didn't have the necessary 2/3rd majority to pass the enabling act. So they arrested and intimidated people, the whole KPD (Stalinists) was either in prison or fleeing, 26 out of 120 SPD parliamentarians (Socdems), all other MPs fell in line under threat of violence (and/or the party whip), leaving only 94 SPD MPs to vote against, giving them 68.6%. Just before that vote they changed procedure (with simple majority) so that imprisoned etc. MPs would be counted as present as otherwise the vote would not have passed the quorum.
You can say the whole thing was technically legal. It certainly was not morally legal. Letter vs. spirit of the law and everything. Be that as it may it's the reason why the current constitution is written way better, the only way in which something like an enabling act could happen nowadays if there was a free referendum -- actually free, without voter intimidation and everything, replacing the whole constitution.
What's also notable is that the Nazis even bothered with that charade. Similarly to other authoritarian regimes they swing about legalities like a thurible to give the impression of legitimacy. Just in case you're wondering why Russia is going to have presidential elections soon: What they're saying with that is "we have the power to bend law as we please, thus we're in charge, deal with it". In Putin's case in particular it's showing that he has enough power over the state apparatus to have the ballots stuffed.
Dude, that was awesome. Thx
Hitler seized power by forcing the German legislature to pass a series of enabling acts literally at gunpoint. Like armed men locked the doors and said "we can do this the easy way or the hard way." It was absolutely not a democratic process.
Yeah. In my childhood we did not get the subtleties of this. It was not taught. We just learned "he was elected". Another comment set me straight. Can easily see this happening in the states though
Dumb people gonna dumb
Now we just need the Twitter X with the Russian Z overlaid.
⧖
That logo really makes me feel like the site is basically Twitter under neo-Nazi occupation
Yeah, props to the Vice design team.
I don't like that, "leftist", has become a word used outside conservative circles. It sounds shitty and is as meaningless as, "rightist".
From a casual outside (the US) observer it just seems like it’s the price that gets paid in a two party state where there are apparently no centrists. Americans give me the impression that it’s either team Red or team Blue. Does anybody ever say: “I like a bit of this… but I also like a bit of that.”?
Yes, there are some who say that. They get agreed with in person, ignored at the local party/voting level, scoffed at by media, screamed at in general on the internet, and scolded on places like lemmy or reddit (if not screamed at). There are policies that I like that for some reason have to be lumped in with policies I detest no matter which party I look at. One party (fucking GOP) is way worse than the other, but try to have a rational discussion with anonymous or outside-of-your-social-circle people, and any criticisms of a party are like blaspheming their god.
That's because of the nature of anonymous communication. It is literally pointless to try to convince individual people online. They rarely tell you their underlying motivations, and many times reveal that they know nothing about the subject.
Yeah. Succinctly put. I hope things improve, or at least change, at some stage; but as I said in another reply I don’t think the short term prognosis looks too healthy. Best of luck to you.
Also doesn't help that the USA political spectrum consists of "right" and "far right" so while they may call it "left" it's only left compared to the far right.
This is something I wish that more people understood. In almost any other democracy in the world, Bernie Sanders is only slightly left of center. On a global scale, US Democrats are a center-right party and US Republicans are a far-right party. There are no successful left-wing politicians in the United States.
Good point. The idea that Bernie Sanders (?) is seen as ultra left wing is incredible to me. Americans would probably spontaneously combust if they got to read some of the left of centre manifestos from relatively normal European parties.
No, the RiNOs were intentionally and specifically hunted to extinction through shame and exclusion. That's why the name, "Republican in Name Only," is applied those who don't embrace the party's wildest platforms.
Damn. I knew about elephants and donkeys but now I’ve got to read up on rhinos… all jokes aside it looks like polarisation is the problem - which is the two party problem. It must be so frustrating to have views you can’t sensibly talk about objectively with the majority of your peers.
It is wildly annoying. If you want to get the details, check out the book “What’s the matter with Kansas” for a quick history.
Thanks, my friend. I shall take a look at that.
Does that mean Log Cabin Republicans are RiNOs? Or just idiots?
There are plenty of us. The problem is the two party state. Any independent or centrist candidate is going to get drowned out.
For as long as people like you exist there’s some hope… but I do fear ‘24 won’t be a year of political reconciliation. Perhaps things must get even worse before they improve? Good luck whatever happens.
I think the cops are useless at best and evil at worst and im pro gun/pro CC, I find that our model of capitalism has failed but I'd rather we revert to the political economic ideas of Henry George rather than Karl Marx. Not that either is possible without violent overhaul most likely. Even just a reframing of capitalism to correct for John Adams era economic fallacies would face nigh impossible resistance from those who have already taken most of the pie.
So yeah, we exist. It's just that we tend to get crowded out due to not falling in line with either ideology. I've been called everything from RINO to fascist.
I understand someone’s economic views would necessarily push them to one side or the other but what I’ve never understood is why gun ownership is so political in the US. From where I am it just seems sad that there’s people in a first world democracy that “need” to be armed just to go out and buy an ice cream. It blows my mind that more isn’t done by all sides (political, manufacturing and citizens) to lower the body count. Any society where members of the public are indiscriminately gunning each other down surely has a big problem. I have zero problems with fire arms - just their application in the US seems a bit fucked. But, like you said about the police, if your biggest gun-toting gang are that trigger happy and indiscriminate then I can’t really blame everyone else packing as a result. Kind of a chicken and egg situation. Hope it works out for you all one day.
Would you call yourself an Enlightened Centrist?
No, Im not some "hurr durr both sides are equal" moron. Both sides do have issues, but they're not equal. The left is on the correct side socially but they often have an incredibly naive view of how the world functions, often operating on "why can't we all just get along and be rich together?" Levels of fantasy.
However, the US right is socially authoritarian and wants to oppress anyone who doesn't fit a christo-fascist perspective, and their economic viewpoint is messed up due to conflation of where wages are derived from. So they fail both sides of the coin whereas progressives only fail on economics.
If I HAD to take one of two sides I'm going left, because I refuse to abide by people who hate those that are different, and I have a lot of gay and trans friends. However I don't agree with the lemming philosophy of Auth-Left being the solution to our problems.
Sounds like Socialist Libertarianism.
Is it really "socialism" if I think the tax burden should fall on the land owners exclusively and the laborers should derive the larger portion of their labor value than the capitalist that simply made their work more efficient with their capital? Due to wages driving from labor value increasing capital?
We likely wouldn't even need social safety nets if the capitalists weren't taking the largest cut on the pretense that wages derive from capital, and the market wasn't being driven by those with excess wealth.
They used to use liberal like it was something to be ashamed of. And I think they thought we were ashamed of it too. They finally figured out we don't have a problem with calling ourselves liberal, so they came up with a new word.
Leftist is an appropriate description. What word do you prefer?
Are we allowed to say he's gone mask off yet?
musk on, mask off
What were journalists and leftists doing hanging out in a Nazi bar anyway?
I mean, some of them were presumably watching the Nazis.
Must be a joke in there?
It's the nazi bar analogy. If the owner is a Nazi, leftists shouldn't stay there in the first place.
"You let a couple Nazis drink at your bar without throwing them out and tomorrow you'll have a Nazi bar."
This is a terrible analogy, and really should be a dead idea. We absolutely need leftist dissent on X because the platform is that important and has that much reach.
This isn't a fair system, we can't disappear from the world's largest social media company over a principled stance, we need to be present and visible.
It's delusiona to think you can beat the nazis on their own terrain. Say anything uncomfortable and suddenly you're banned.
Twitter has removed efficient moderation and practically given carte blanche to bots and trolls.
Do you see ay infosec people on Twitter anymore? No, they all moved to Mastodon. In fact they were the first to move. Orgs are starting to move. So did Mozilla. So did LibreOffice.
Money can buy influence, but if you gather enough people and move away, the platform will sowly fall into irrelevancy. The only thing you accomplish by staying there is giving them legitimacy.
My apologies that you're wrong.
Needless to say, just like if r/conservative/conspiracy bans you you're probably doing something Right, X is just the new, louder, conservative/conspiracy echo chamber, although i still don't get why everyone senseable hasn't abandoned the platform yet.
Musk can do whatever he wants, keeping Twitter (sorry, X, yuck) alive with billions that are peanuts to him. This news isn’t a surprise to me. He talked big about free speech, but it was just talk.
Musk's "free speech" is a lot like the Lost Cause's "states rights": a fig leaf that intentionally tries to distract from the fact that the only speech/right of concern was that of the most repugnant behavior.
You can call it Xitter.
Elon says preferred names and pronouns are dumb.
Thus I will only refer to twttr by twttr's original name.
Pronounced "shitter"
Or Xitler.
Don't care. The only people that can get kicked off of shitter are people still on shitter propping up it's waning credibility. There are no respectable people left on shitter because you can no longer simultaneously be there and be respectable.
Xitter* it’s poppin’!
Remember when Musk painted himself as a free speech absolutist who would bring freedom to Twitter, and all of his fanboys believed him, and when he never delivered none of them did ever fucking care?
"Free speech is me telling you what to believe."
I don't know who said this, probably someone famous.
It's not free speech unless you mute people telling you you're wrong when you speak.
It's still free for them. In their mind, that's all that counts.
If people would just use Mastodon instead of Xwitter this sort of thing would not happen.
We want ALL people using Mastodon, and not Xwitter.
But most people suck
No human being is perfect.
Yes. Obviously, unquestionably, clearly, yes.
Yes it is, Mastodon isnt a single instance, its a many many instances. If you're not happy with the moderating/quality on one, move to another instance.
I think it's fine as long as their's no central corporate interest controlling the show. Which is a strength of FOSS, at least those projects with a robust and diverse community.
What a coincidence. People critical of israel got banned
Can people see now that when people clamour for controls on things like hate speech and disinformation, the question of "who defines what is/is not disinformation" isn't just sea-lioning?
It's a fundamentally critical argument against such controls. Sooner or later, people you agree with will be at the receiving end of them.
Yes, they could limit their reach even further by only using the fediverse.
I mean... Many anti Israel folks are borderline abusive. Denying rapes happened, trying to call Hamas freedom fighters, praising the Oct 7th attack etc. This is the exact shit (and worse) platforms have been demonetizing or removing people for except this time it's the "other side" doing it.
This is a journalist, not some guy who argues with random people.
What are you even talking about? There is** zero evidence** for any rapes that is a straight up IDF Zionist story. Most of the rape "testimonies" have been completely debunked and proven to be falsified. Here is an article completely debunking it
I don't understand how you are so confidently repeated straight up conspiracy theories as if they are cold hard undeniable facts.
The fact that you think it's okay to ban people for people to questioning an extremely shoddy story full of inconsistencies and many straight up lies is very weird to me.
Weird that I haven't seen any of that on lemmy
Oh look, a propaganda mouthpiece
I really do wish there was a viable popular alternative to Twitter. Phony Starks has been awful.
While it's not 1 to 1, mastodon seems to always be getting mentioned with businesses abandoning Twitter and moving there. I use it but it's just not the same experience
I've checked it out, but was never a twitter user anyways, so I'm not the right audience. I think the lack of an algorithm really hurts the experience for many users. Seems like you have to put work in to get your feed right. Also, the network effect Twitter has is strong. Mastodon is probably the least toxic social media I've seen though.
You say that like its a bad thing. Every twitter user Ive talked to wont shut up about how shit the twitter experience is.
He's not Stark, he's Justin Hammer. Always has been.
"I would like to point out that the social media network survived..." -Elon Hammer
Night of the Long Bans.
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Dead platform!
time to follow them on mastodon I guess.
"But... my followers!"
Get out of here Richers!
Where is the "vote" to reinstate their accounts that closes like 58 minutes after going up?
There's an explanation, we're just not allowed to say it because for some reason in "ThE lAnD oF tHe FrEe" we're not allowed to say the thing because the faschie right's feelings might get hurt.
The platform whose CEO openly endorses antisemitic "Hitler was right" Tweets would censor left-wing views? What a shocker!
I mean... it was no secret that xitter was a rightwing shithole, for quite a while now...
I’be taken to nicknaming him “Xitler”
I've been considering calling the platform FascX. Not sure how well it works though.
It's to entrench the far right audience so that Elon Musk can monetize and enrich right wing extremists. He knows that one reason they struggle to bring Apartheid to America again is that many of the hillbillies who support them are broke. Well now, if you're attractive, you can go on Twitter and if you spew enough unchecked, reactionary bullshit, you can get yourself a condo. They might even make you a fucking Senator.
That was the risk of remaining on the platform the moment musk took over. And if not then, when he started stripping it down and making it less reliable. And if not then, maybe when he started pursuing shadow banning again.
No government or news business has any business anymore being on Twitter. They should use the fedpub protocol and push out their messages there.
This will allow their readers/citizens to use a broad scala of apps to read them, allows more 3rd party apps to integrate them.
Governments and newspapers must hold the reigns over their own infra or risk this happening.
You know what, great! While they're pretty fucking stupid for staying on the platform for this long, it's good that they have finally been forced off of it. Perhaps now they will find their way to something more
federatedfriendly.I'd purge the leftists who lacked an explanation as well. #commasCount
Musk is showing his other rich kid friends that he is got access to some buttons
Elon is psychologically compromised. Not sure if it's rampant drug abuse, mental illness unrelated to drugs, a brain tumour, or what. But the man is not on planet earth, and not in the way he would prefer. If he weren't a billionaire, he'd be sectioned/committed. Same with Kanye; that dude would be in care in no time flat if he were a regular Joe. This is one of the few ways that being rich and famous is a net negative; when you need help the most, you get enablers and yes men instead fermenting your insanity for their own purposes or out of fear for their own livelihoods.
My money's on kompromat.
Given his general dumbassery that's been on display for years, or is it decades now, it is not hard to see at all that he'd be easy to compromise.
I mean, I think everyone has "that uncle" who they have to put up with for the holidays, and those guys are all walking around existing in non-sectioned/committed society. He'd just be another crank who is drinking the Kool-Aid instead of this rich fuck who everyone listens to despite their being whack-a-doo.
Man I am so glad I ditched Twitter, now stupidly known as X, right when Musky took over. To be fair it's lasted way longer than I thought it would. Any bets on whether it survives 2024?
It's shedding advertisers and losing money so it's only a matter of time before the people Musk got to invest start making noise. It's in a downward spiral and there's no fixing it while Musk is in charge. I think it will survive another few years, but it's not going to be pretty.
"Don't think of it as dying. Think of it as... getting out before the rush. "
I think I know why. Elon doesn't agree.
Hopefully all serious media members follow them.
These people need to get off Twitter anyways. This is a nonstory to me
Purging specific ideologies from a massively popular social media platform should probably be a story to you, regardless your opinion of the platform
Yeah i dont know why i click into twitter stories anymore.
The situation is perfectly self-explanatory, however.
Any explanation they'd try to give would be an obvious lie anyway. It's already clear what the real explanation is.
He may have some success promoting that social network as "the social network for people who want to be like me".
Quite sh(x)ittery
I know they are asking for an explanation, but they already know why their accounts were suspended.
"X" permanently banned me when I posted a comment saying that education and progress are good for people. Now I'm banned for life. That was just wayyyyyyy to "leftist" a thing for me to say I guess. Which is why I see my ban from X as a big accomplishment - you know you've told the truth when it makes people angry enough to ban you.
It's vice, people are too smart to click.
I don't trust any of them, all of them seem opposed to federation. Useful idiots.
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They're all back online now. I mean I dislike the ultra wealthy as much as the next guy but y'all got hate boners
They're all back online now because of articles like this.
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If a couple of years ago "by chance" prominent people on the right were temporarily banned, what do you think the reading would be?
TBF they complain about being censored even if they haven't been banned, so they'd simply keep complaining about being censored. No change at all.
Are you kidding me? IME it’s the right that’s constantly pissing and moaning about being censored. That’s like Alex Jones’ biggest claim to fame.
Considering people ACTUALLY WERE banned here, if even for a short time, can you show even one example of this happening to a right wing journalist on X, with similarly no explanation? No pretending this isn’t a real issue because they were unbanned, really try here.
You seem to have misread my comment.
Ooh, that I have. Whoops!
Sorry, I’m currently on a cruise and near perpetually drunk.
The comments from when that happened a few years ago? Is that was you're referring to?
Because I'm referring to most of the commenters in this thread having a big 'ol hate circ jerk.
In my head, being on the left used to mean compassion and tolerance, but it's clearly the same spitefulness as the right. I'm beginning it think this is just how tribalism in general works, doesn't matter what team you're on
I’ve seen right wingers, in person, call for the absolute removal of trans folk from public spaces. When one side is doing THAT, I think it’s reasonable for the other side to get a tad combative.
Bear in mind, whacky right wingers are pictured all the fucking time open carrying large firearms. Couple that with the pervasive thought that every LGBT person is a pedophile (another VERY common right wing talking point), and suddenly it’s a little scary to be gay or trans in a red state.
This shit is so fucked. People take no accountability for the shit that their party says, no matter what side they’re on, and then get all confused when opponents have issues with the heinous shit they hear constantly.
Nazis are bad. Homophobes are bad. Motherfuckers who want to control the bodily autonomy of every woman are bad. How hard is that?
(Update at the top of the article)