Monday open thread: About Twitter

Look. I do not judge. Whether or not you stay on Twitter is your personal choice, influenced by myriad consideration.

But what I'm getting tired of is the farcical notion that if you leave the site you're "giving in to the fascists." No, you're not.

Twitter is a private, for-profit corporation. Its goal is to extract money from you. Yes, it's free, but its users are the product, not the customers. One owes as much loyalty to Twitter as one does to McDonald's. It cares not a whit for your emotional or mental wellbeing, as it uses your posts to push its algorithm to you. 

Staying or going is your individual choice. It should be influenced only by what you are willing to tolerate. Just this weekend, the site's new owner was pushing a conspiracy theory that the attack on Paul Pelosi was a gay lovers' quarrel. When the owner is doing this, how can one trust anything on that site? (The owner deleted that tweet, probably because he was slapped with the realization that corporations will pull their ads, and he'll have blown $44 billion to own the libs.)

I have been mostly off of Twitter since April of this year, and have decamped to Counter Social. But that's neither here nor there. Do what you think is right for you. But know that it's going to get worse from here on out, and that the site probably doesn't have a long shelf life in its future. As this article from The Verge states, Elon Musk is in a no-win position. If he sticks to his absolutist "free speech" dogma, he will bankrupt the company. And if he tries to moderate content, he'll anger his fanbois. But even if he does moderate content, the damage has already been done, and he'll still lose his shirt. Again $44 billion to own the libs. And the fact that Saudi Arabia is the second largest stockholder in Twitter won't win friends.

What is clear, with Twitter, and with Meta's stock cratering, is that the age of social media dinosaurs bestriding the earth is on its way out. What will take its place? I don't know. But people are tired of being manipulated by algorithms. They want honest, personal contact. That's not something that the likes of Twitter can provide.

Buckle up, kids. I love it when schadenfreude takes its inevitable course.

This is your open thread.

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