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November 16, 2024 - 1:30pm
Millions of social media users have migrated from X to alternative platform Bluesky this year, resulting in an online subculture defined in opposition to Elon Musk’s platform.
Content moderation was significantly weakened after Musk took over X, formerly Twitter, and downsized the unit overseeing these efforts. Since then, content on the site has become considerably more profane, and the platform has seen a massive uptick in the use of slurs. One racist slur quickly saw its use on X triple. Meanwhile, online etiquette has become an obsession among Bluesky’s 16.7 million users.
Etiquette policing, according to some on Bluesky, has been an issue since the platform first launched. Users are also discouraged from reposting screenshots from X or even mentioning the site. However, “the other place” remains one of the most popular topics on Bluesky, with many posts complaining about hateful content on X and Musk’s potentially problematic relationship with Donald Trump. Former CNN anchor Don Lemon left X for Bluesky this week, and has since claimed he’s receiving more engagement on the new platform than “elsewhere, if you know what I mean”, despite having fewer followers.
Bluesky has official community guidelines against “promoting hate or extremist conduct that targets people or groups based on their race, gender, religion, ethnicity, nationality, disability, or sexual orientation”, and violating these can result in content being taken down. But the website’s etiquette code extends far beyond the official rules. Some users have created shareable mass block lists to automatically block, for instance, all users who so much as follow a certain account. The blocking function, which has been hampered on Musk’s X, is used liberally on Bluesky, with popular posts encouraging the blocking of specific accounts perceived as hateful.
In this environment, the type of Left-wing content that once flourished on pre-Musk Twitter, such as concerns that the New York Times has a pro-Trump bias, has found a home. Journalist Taylor Lorenz is on the app, encouraging her followers to wear Covid masks and contemplating whether the red heart emoji has become a MAGA symbol. The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin is on the site too, calling Tulsi Gabbard a “Putin stooge” and urging Democratic lawmakers to join the platform.
Bluesky gained one million new users in the week after Trump won the election, but some liberals who have remained on X warn that moving to the app will only exacerbate the perception of the Left as being alienated from working-class Americans. Past efforts to create Twitter and X alternatives have seen limited success. Mastodon, the app liberal Twitter users initially flocked to when Musk took over the platform, and Trump’s Truth Social both have small user bases compared to their main competitor. Since they’re respectively Left and Right-wing by design, they lack the engagement and conflict that made Twitter so successful. However, as content on X becomes increasingly Right-wing, and it becomes less popular, the once-dominant platform could face an identical problem.
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SubscribeHas content on X really become ‘increasingly right wing’? Or is it just that the left wing censor types are leaving?
Well Musk did allow back several far right types previously banned, so in that sense yes, but as you seem to be indicating it’s actually very much in the eye of the beholder. If you stick to viewing only the accounts you follow, and if they’re not right wing, then you’ll barely notice right Twitter/X.
They are leaving because a) they like censorship and b) Trump won convincingly and they are embarrassed.
To be honest, when people complain about seeing too much stuff they don’t like on X, I can only assume they don’t block people. I block anybody I find even slightly annoying or idiotic, and the algorithm has been pretty much bashed into shape that I only get what I am looking for in my “for you” feed.
I suspect the complainers actually like to be offended and then perform outrage about it. Therefore, they cannot bring themselves to exercise the block button. The real issue is not seeing stuff they disapprove of, it’s that the thrill of assembling a righteous mob with online torches to burn the identified heretic is gone.
I wonder how long they’ll last on a platform where they never get a hit of “well I never! what a dreadful thing to say! this person must be removed” I suspect that they’ll either get bored and quietly crawl back to X, or they’ll start to engage in the usual purity spirals with a new set of speech standards to get that good-good fix of social shaming. They are welcome to their own little hellhole.
Echo Chamber
Echo Chamber
Echo Ch…
The CCP couldn’t have come up with a better plan for ensuring conformity.
As the saying goes. Free speech is hate speech to those who hate free speech. The left, like their Islamist bedfellows, can’t cope with any criticism. It’s that beautiful alliance between the Marxist left and Islamofascist right. They are perfectly suited, as they both have the same goals, the total destruction of Western Civilisation. It worked so well for them during the Iranian revolution they can’t wait to apply it elsewhere.
BlueSky will remain a bit player in social media … anybody who truly believes in ‘free’ speech will remain with X
Noticeable, those moving to BlueSky are of the left and generally adopt a woke profile and deny people free speech.
X will continue to grow as it rolls out more benefits.
Why does the author use the word ‘weakened’ when describing content moderation. It was deliberately ‘reduced’, not ‘weakenedk. And thankfully so.
I think Twitter was a brilliant name for a platform dedicated to Bird Brains.
And twits too. Twitter for twits. A perfect name.
“Nah nah nah, I can’t hear you.”
Very adult.
Non legacy media was the main influence on the election and X played the biggest role in the US election results. The amount of data, news and organisation was absolutely fascinating to watch. The pollsters were completely wrong but Musk himself with his America PAC consistently called it correctly.
The content is not more right wing, the content is more representative of what the majority of centrists really believe and are now allowed express.
Elon Musk bought Twitter just over 2 years ago and what he has done with it is just amazing. He bought the company at $44 billion and took it private so we no longer know how much it is worth. But Fidelity invested in the deal and now values the company at about $12.5 billion. Some other investors have written off their investments completely.
If you accept Fidelity’s valuation that’s a 72% drop. I can’t think of any other case where so much value was vaporized in so little time. Truly amazing.
So free speech costs!
Yes, free speech costs, and people are not willing to pay the price. Elon Musk is selling something people are not buying.
Elon is the one who has paid the price. His critics at BlueSky have short arms, they have not shelled out one dime
Elon Musk is selling subscriptions to users and advertising to companies. He has cut costs drastically so he can get by on a lot less revenue, but even so he seems to be running at a loss.
X is a private company and it doesn’t make its financials public. But it does provide those figures to its private investors and lenders, and some of them have to publicly value their stake. Most of them value the company at a small fraction of what Elon Musk paid. Some value it at zero.
That’s not normal. In fact, I can’t think of another company so grossly mismanaged that it lost so much so quickly after being acquired. Usually companies that lose almost 3/4 of their value do it because of external factors, like a financial crisis or industry-wide weakness. This is all the fault of Elon Musk.
Elon Musk is a genius, but even geniuses make mistakes.
Was Musk’s goal in this case to make money ?
No, Elon Musk’s goal in buying Twitter was not to make money off the deal. But his goal was to make Twitter a more vibrant, thriving company that people would flock to and advertisers would fund. Instead he’s destroyed the company, making it essentially worthless.
Elon Musk can afford the loss and continue to keep the company going indefinitely. Maybe he pulls off a miracle and finds some way to get things on a more positive track. But I doubt it. He seems determined to kill it off. And his fellow investors are not at all happy about that.
He bought it as a platform for free speech not to make money. He knew it was grossly over-valued. It was chump change for him.
That’s not what Elon Musk told the people who bought Twitter with him. Or the financial institutions who gave him loans. He told those people he was going to unlock the value in Twitter and expand what Twitter offered, so that it was an app that people used for all kinds of things, not just tweeting.
Jack Dorsey, one of the founders of Twitter, invested a billion dollars in the company. He believed Elon Musk’s pitch. And he is not happy at all. Not many are. Twitter is a corporate basket case, with a heavy debt load and an owner who is not making things better but worse.