November 24, 2024 - 7:15pm
Shortly after Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter in April 2022, he wrote that for the platform to maintain the public’s trust, “it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally.” More than two years down the line, it would be fair to say that the Left is a lot more upset than the Right. So is Musk turning Twitter, now X, into a Right-wing echo chamber?
When the Tesla CEO took over the platform in October 2022, there was clearly a problem of censorship and Left-wing bias, as exemplified by the banning of President Donald Trump’s account just before he left office. In fact, the incident that may have prompted Musk to buy the platform was the banning of The Babylon Bee, a satirical news site, for posting an article awarding “Man of the Year” to transgender health official Rachel Levine.
Yet many on the Left, who were sceptical of Musk’s takeover to begin with, now feel that any semblance of political neutrality has been thrown completely out the window. While Musk allowed X to be suspended in Brazil because he refused to comply with requests to ban certain accounts, supposedly on free speech grounds, he has agreed to similar requests in countries with non-Leftist governments, such as India and Turkey.
More significantly, Musk became an outspoken supporter and funder of Trump’s presidential campaign. Two Australian researchers have even suggested that, after his endorsement of the Republican candidate on 13 July, Musk tweaked the algorithm to boost his own posts and those of other large pro-Trump accounts. Regardless of whether this is true (the researchers admit “it is impossible to know for sure”), openly favouring one candidate over another obviously undermines the platform’s neutrality.
Musk has made several other partisan comments which have predictably enraged his critics. In December 2022, he posted: “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci”. And in August this year, he replied to a post blaming the UK riots on the “effects of mass migration” by saying: “Civil war is inevitable.” On top of all this, previously censored posts — including racist memes and snuff videos — now circulate freely on the platform. Leftists complain that their feeds are full of “white supremacy, anti-semitic and fanatical pro-Israel content”.
It’s hardly surprising, then, that many users no longer feel welcome on X. And they are voting with their feet. In Britain and the US, user growth on Bluesky is literally vertical, with the platform having recently overtaken Threads in America. Meanwhile, the number of X deactivations is about twice as high as before the US election — and this understates the exodus because some users who switch do not delete their accounts.
Academics, in particular, are quitting X in droves, which isn’t surprising given their broadly Left-wing views. A paper published last month found that academics’ engagement with Twitter fell sharply around the time of Musk’s takeover. And a recent analysis covered by the journal Science found that the number of influential scientists on Bluesky doubled between August and November.
The number of users on Bluesky may soon reach a critical mass, at which point most of the Leftists remaining on X migrate over. Brits and Americans will then be divided across two rival platforms: a Right-leaning one and a Left-leaning one. While partisans on both sides might be inclined to say “good riddance”, this would be a disastrous outcome.
That’s because it would increase polarisation by encouraging even more extreme tribal signalling. It would make both the Left and the Right dumber by reducing each side’s exposure to the other’s arguments. And it would make the user experience less enjoyable. After all, where’s the fun in arguing with people with whom you already agree? Something will have to change before this bifurcation takes place.
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SubscribeThe two cultures certainly cannot share the same social media platform in the US. Twitter needed to exclude conservatives and now X is unsuitable for liberals. Both rational positions- if a shaky liberal opinion is now offered on X then it will be quickly rounded upon by conservative critics.
I am very happy to say that I left Twitter the day that Musk took over, a decision which has been vindicated a thousand times over.
Musk is a deeply weird person and no-one should be surprised that he has turned the platform into a far right cesspool. You people are welcome to it and each other. On the other hand, I am really looking forward to the Musk-Trump breakup which I predict will happen very soon an will be spectacular. Two very strange individuals with massive egos, incredibly thin skins and virtually unlimited resources at their disposal – how could it not be hilarious!?!?
I’m sure Elon will be grieving to have lost you.
He’s probably still grieving over the $44 billion he spaffed just to “own the libs”!
Why do you guys pick such weirdoes as your cult leaders?
I suspect Musk thinks $44 billion was a bargain
It’s a shame he didn’t get it for the $20b it should have cost – but well worth it to support his free-speech principles.
He has said so on numerous occasions. He is not driven by money but by values, ideas, targets and success.
Musk resurrected free speech. He is the saint of public discourse, in the league with MLK, Ghandi, Mandela, Lincoln, or Jefferson.
Musk is a deeply weird person
Musk built Tesla, SpaceX, Zip2, PayPal, Starlink, Neuralink, and The Boring Company.
Weird indeed. We need many, many more weird people like this.
You’re so predictable!
I know, I’m always right!
As a they/them, shouldn’t your 1st person pronoun be “we/we”?
I have seen alarming content on Bluesky. Eager welcoming of minor attracted people. Very progressive.
How many rapists has Trump nominated for his cabinet so far? Plus himself of course.
Maybe you just need to settle down a bit, Karen.
You haven’t said you strongly disagree with paedos on Bluesky. Second chance below…
Why do you support rapists?
Please, show your disgust for paedos…very simple…everyone is waiting
Looks like I have a new groupie!
Welcome about, sport!
“Welcome about, sport”
So perturbed by reality, you can’t even type straight now.
#chumpagne
Hello our kid! Reduced to playing the typo police now? Probably for the best – you weren’t getting very far otherwise! Maybe I’ll throw in some deliberate mistakes to see if you can spot them!
Nice to see you are still spending your time obsessing over everything I post though – you are one my most loyal groupies!
Ta-ra for now, lad!
Hey Poo Fash, have you seen Steven Crowder’s cover of I’m a Creep? It’s all about Biden. You’ll love it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMAGbRO5Iz0
Yes. Bluesky is swivelled eyed woke – X before musk. A safe space for petty little fascists pining for the days they could spew their gibberish without reply.
Many of the “scientists” migrating to BlueSky were very intolerant and not so open to criticism during COVID. Now they hope for a safe space …
The word you’re looking for is pedophile.
Before Musk, X was a leftist echo chamber. Leftists still have free rein to spew their weird conspiracies and anti-white hate on X, only now, they get fact checked.
That is literally all that’s changed.
Difficult times for leftists, not having a monopoly on opinion.
What’s that line of theirs that they like to throw around?
‘When you have privilege, equality feels like oppression.’
As though there are no “weird conspiracies and anti-(insert race, religion, sexuality) hate on the right.?
Social media networks are pernicious and a detriment to our cultures. If you want and need to interact with other people, go out and do face to face. Remind yourself how complicated, self contradicting and confusing people can be. Don’t hide behind your screens categorizing people by the tiny part of them social media allows you to see.
Luddites unite! This new-fangled writing stuff is rotting peopel’s minds.
I happen to agree with you, and upvoted accordingly.
Liberals are not objecting to their content being moderated (I don’t know what you mean by “fact checked” — are you referring to Community Notes?). They are objecting to getting too much unmoderated right-wing content in their feeds.
Everyone gets unmoderated content, right and left. That’s called FREE SPEECH. Leftists snowflakes are afraid they’ll melt.
All social media platforms do heavy moderation. They have to. Otherwise the platform degenerates into spam.
No X has not become a Right-wing echo chamber. However, the lefties are incapable of reasoned debate with others that disagree with them. For that reason,
progressivesregressives are looking for an alternative platform to be an echo chamber.I look forward to Musk taking over MSNBC and see how the lefties squeal.The population of active users in November 2024:
Twitter: 415 million
Bluesky: 20 million
Twitter’s user base is roughly five percent (5%) of the entire population of humans living on this planet.
Bluesky’s user base is roughly zero-point-two percent (0.2%) of the world’s population.
Five percent of the world’s population is not an “echo chamber” no matter how hard Leftist influencers want everyone to drink that fake narrative Kool-Aid.
Whereas, 0.2 percent of the world’s population – with many of these users being self-identified extremists who switched away from Twitter in disgust after a democratically-held free and fair election in America – certainly is a “left wing echo chamber” by comparison.
Therefore, Bluesky is a far more dangerous social media site, relatively speaking, in its ability to actively attract and cultivate extremists’ viewpoints that do not represent the center of America, nor the world for that matter.
A matter of simple maths and statistics.
Some might reasonably say this is the voice of science triumphing over mere opinions of one side or the other.
I’d reasonably wager a tenner that only 20-40% of any of the accounts on either platform are legitimate. I’d also reckon that the reason blue sky is seeing so many new users is because as soon as people start talking about it scammers start swarming it.
Although I did a quick perusal and there seems to be more than a representative sample of zoophiles and PDFiles on blue sky than is healthy.
That’s a possibility. Platform companies try to weed out the bots, but it’s a continuing Whac-A-Mole issue; however, this doesn’t change the basic relative comparison between the two.
Twitter has a far larger population of users. It’s a more mature platform, with users having joined for a plethora of reasons over those years.
Bluesky has a far smaller population of users. It’s a recent start-up with a large percentage of its users having joined this month, after they were disgusted with the free and fair democratic election in America.
Relatively speaking, Twitter will have a more normalized distribution of users (with a ‘centralist’ mean) than Bluesky, which is skewed toward Leftist extremism based on the recent influx of its current user base.
Moreover, speaking about science, we should not forget that this is the same science according to which COVID from bats through a pangolin got into the lungs of a Chinese man who had a strange habit of kissing the animals he bought, so idiotic assumptions about a biolab in Wuhan should be thrown in the trash along with the idiots who express them.
Trust the science!
If memory serves, Fox News was set up as a counterpoint to the other networks, which had a liberal bias. So then there was a biased conservative network and some biased liberal ones, and they sort of cancelled each other out. It sort of seems like the same thing is happening on social media. Reddit is hopelessly left-biased. The same for Bluesky apparently. So the logical thing is for Twitter/X to evolve into the social-media equivalent of Fox News. Sad, but there you have it.
I just went over to Bluesky. It took literally one click from the landing page to find a “f**k trump” message. Fair and balanced!
Legacy media consists of about 95% liberal outlets so you
are wrong….
Does the author realize the split in America for X users is almost 50-50 for Republicans and Democrats. It used to be 65% Dem and 31% GOP?
Maybe so, Jimbo, but Musk is censoring and banning anything that doesn’t follow his white supremacist, racist guidelines.
So there’s that…
Hope you have a good lawyer on standby.
That’s why the coward uses a nom de plume.
Ahhh, dear little Fizzlet! You need neither X or Bluesky since you function as your very own echo-chamber!
“WHITE …. white ….. white …..”
“RACIST ….. racist ….. racist …..”
“SUPREMACY …… supremacy …… supremacy …..”
Yet the Lefties who are leaving are not complaining that they are being censored. Not that I’ve seen anyhow. I’m open to be corrected if you have any proof of this censorship. Don’t worry though, I’m not going to hold my breathe waiting for a reply.
You and your ilk just got your asses handed to you. But sputter away, it’s actually quite amusing. The real pushback starts January 20th. Can’t wait to see your reactions.
Poor old Poo Fash. Have you started maskurbating again, or does your bullring get in the way? Does it make it difficult for you to blow your nose after you’ve been crying?
Well, he says in his bio that he’s a *researcher* so of course he has made himself aware of this very widely distributed fact, right?
He is asking a question about future trends
The problem is not bifurcation, but cencorship. In fact I would, by far, prefer to comment in the Times. I could engage with people with different views, except I can’t get pass the censor. Half of my comments there, mostly critical of Times’ journalists, don’t get through- “Your comment has violated our policy”.
That is the problem. The Left cannot take criticism. They get angry, insult you, and then cancel you.
They do not understand democracy or care for it.
Won’t social media always have a left bias? Because, whatever platform, conservatives are more likely to mind their own business?
It’s like the Pilgrim fathers leaving for the New World, putatively to escape religious persecution, but in practise just so they can carry out their own favoured forms of religious persecution in peace
When and why a platform becomes an echo chamber is a more important question than ‘is it?’ In the case of Twitter it was censored to cut out the right; on X the left are leaving by choice. So, yes, it is becoming an echo chamber because the left have not been able to control the narrative. Censorship v free speech.
“More significantly, Musk became an outspoken supporter and funder of Trump’s presidential campaign. ”
Where was the outrage when Zuckerbot enrolled as an ardent Biden / Dem supporter and patron in 2020 ? I don’t remember this journalist complaining of bias then.
Leftists fleeing to BlueAnonSky are people who were rejoicing when right wing voices were being suppressed because they hate having to argue their case and require an echo chamber. Their leaving X is not a choice, it’s a cowardly flight.
Just another one of those pointless thought bubbles by someone who’s had some vague observations of people doing things out in the world.
Two Australian researchers have even suggested that, after his endorsement of the Republican candidate on 13 July, Musk tweaked the algorithm to boost his own posts and those of other large pro-Trump accounts. Regardless of whether this is true (the researchers admit “it is impossible to know for sure”)
”Suggested”, “whether this is true” and “impossible to know” does not make for being informative and certainly presents no argument.
I hear Bluesky is becoming a censorious hell-scape or ravening leftards, who are now, having no alternative enemy, turning on each other like starving rats in a sack . . . or so I hear . . .
Progressives just love an echo chamber. Musk bought X and eliminated the censorship and made it open for everyone. Those on the left can not handle free speech so they are running away to a a safe space (Blue Sky) that will censor anyone they disagree with.
X has not become an echo chamber any more than its former twitter and legacy media outlets/institutions. The big difference is that X now allows different echo chambers to coexist except lefties can’t stand that there is a right-wing echo chamber next door. I notice how outraged lefties become when people disagreed with them. They seem quite intolerant, not inclusive, rather dogmatic and locked in their righteousness, quite the opposite of what they preach. The propaganda and censorship especially self-censoring way of life feels more like communist China and Nazi-controlled Germany. Maybe the left has become what they fear the most!
Don’t get excited about Bluesky. It’s not a real company, it’s still an experiment, not a resurrection of the old Twitter. The company has 20 employees (only 20! — X still has 1,000, down from Twitter’s 7,500). It has no revenues, or even a business plan. No advertising. No subscription fees. Just burning through tens of millions of dollars from its investors.
Bluesky’s investors are venture capital firms who are trying to build a new kind of social media platform in a technical sense, not a political one. Bluesky just closed a $15 million Series A funding round that was supposed to last 2 years so they could get a business plan in place and actually generate revenue.
For the last year or two Bluesky had been metering the number of new users by restricting the platform to invites only. This sudden success of a tsunami of new users is as much a curse as a blessing. I don’t think the fad will last anymore than the Mastodon fad did. The herd will return to X.
Yes, nothing is banned unless you make a conservative post! Lots of paedos and furries.
Hmmm, who are the investors? Soros and his band of lefty billionaires? He/his son are also pouring money into the Guardian and many left leaning publications in Germany. Without their help most of them couldn‘t survive..
No, Bluesky’s investors are not related to Soros or any other political people. They are venture capital firms who are trying to build a new kind of social media platform in a technical sense, not a political one.
Bluesky just closed a $15 million Series A funding round that was supposed to last 2 years so they could get a business plan in place and actually generate revenue. This sudden success of a tsunami of new users is as much a curse as a blessing.
Why invest in yet another social media company? There are already so many around…Why didn‘t these left leaning scientists, journalists, politicians go to Mastodon or Threads to find their new safe space?
Bluesky and Mastodon each use a new way of constructing a social media platform. Both platforms emphasize decentralization, user control, and transparency, offering alternatives to the centralized, corporate-driven models of traditional social media like X and Threads. They are experimenting, trying out different things. Content moderation has little to do with it, being largely automated and otherwise left up to users.
Those people flocking to Bluesky will find the same thing as those who flocked to Mastodon. That is, these platforms are maintained by skeleton staff operating without any revenue streams to support them. They are essentially beta test platforms. People expecting an X or Threads experience will find frustration. Bluesky and Mastodon are not directly competitive with X or Threads, and they don’t try to be.
If this is indeed the case, mr D, then I feel bad for the technology investors. Sunk costs.
Their technical project has now been commandeered by a small band of zealots who – upon being defeated by democracy – retreated from their previously-held iron fortress to requisition this little fort on the digital space frontier in order to form their “resistance.” I’m sure the zealots will have high hopes. But any apolitical investors will (most likely) be grumpy.
It’s a death-knell to a budding brand: Being defined in society by outside users who are the most extreme in society, regardless of whether this happens on the right or the left.
The investors will be fine. This project was started by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey when he was still at Twitter, so it was not conceived as a competitor to Twitter but a complement to it The funding round of $15 million was just to experiment with an MVP (minimum viable product) to try to find a “product-market fit”. If they can develop a viable business, their investors will put in some serious money. if they can’t, failure is an option.
Fair enough. C’est la vie with early-stage start ups. That said, building brand value/goodwill is related to the MVP. In this case, the technology may move on, but the brand name is damaged and not by the choice of the investors. Oh well Half innovation and hard work, half the luck of market receptiveness at the time, I suppose.
The key here is that Musk didn’t ban Barack Obama. He won’t ban Pelosi or Harris or Hillary or anybody else. He doesn’t have to actually do anything to eliminate left leaning viewpoints because they’re eliminating themselves by leaving in disgust. The obvious conclusion is that the left wants and demands an echo chamber. When they controlled Twitter, they tried to keep it one sided by force. Now that they can’t control it, they’re leaving to make a new echo chamber elsewhere. In a free market that’s perfectly fine, but it’s terrible political strategy.
To say this makes them look bad and confirms everything the other side has been saying is an understatement. What can any rational person conclude other than that these left leaning types openly disdain other viewpoints. They consider different views so distasteful, so upsetting, that they would rather leave and go to places where their beliefs are confirmed and they don’thave to engage with “lies”. In so doing, they give up any chance to understand, debate, and influence the other side. It amounts to an intellectual surrender.
I doubt Musk had any intent of turning Twitter into a right wing echo chamber. More likely he knew it would happen regardless, just like cable news and print media and most everything else has, and wanted to personally profit from it and influence the narrative a la Rupert Murdoch. He may or may not have had any greater goals or motivation. He is many things but he is not stupid. I don’t know what his thinking is but I am nigh certain that ideology and loyalty are not his primary motivation.
He claims to have Asperger syndrome. If that is true, it’s quite likely he has no real loyalty towards any political tribe. He probably does have people he respects and cares about but I would wager a large sum that he seriously considers himself a MAGA Republican or a conservative. More likely he’s simply aligning with whichever side he thinks will give him a greater advantage, or whichever he thinks will end up on the right side of history. Then again, he might have concluded that progressive globalism is a stupid philosophy that has failed utterly and it’s time to move on. He may have always thought that but has very little sense of tribal loyalty so he never had any great difficulty pretending otherwise while it was advantageous to do so.
It appears that you fail to recognize that most normal peopel do not wish to associate with the trash that populates Twitter. And yes, I do disdain the viewpoints of racists, white supremacists, christian nationalists and violent misogynists. Question is, why don’t you?
But I think we know the answer to that, don’t we?
I do disdain the viewpoints of racists, white supremacists, christian nationalists and violent misogynists. Question is, why don’t you?
What has he said that suggests he embraces “the viewpoints of racists, white supremacists, christian nationalists and violent misogynists”.
I’m sure you know how this works. Although Steve says nothing to deserve CS’s accusation, CS’s response is a perfect example of how even a vague association with something they find unacceptable means that Steve must hold the same unacceptable beliefs, regardless of what he has actually said.
The irony is, of course, that CS posts on here and so by their own logic they must be a Trump-loving, Brexit-voting deplorable.
Let us consider your argument, such as it is. The adjective normal is generally understood to mean a typical or average example of the thing being described, thus when you say normal people you imply that the average person and likely the majority would not associate with Twitter users. It stands to eason given your low opinion of Twitter that you regard Trump and Musk as being examples of the racist, white supremacist, and etc., views you describe. Presumably then thos also extends to those who voted for Trump, for indeed who besides a racist would vote for a racist and so on.
If my understanding of your position is correct as I have described, then you are factually incorrect. Based on the election results, it seems “normal” as usually understood would by a small percentage, mean a Trump voter, unless you wish to contest the legitimacy of the election, which would be am amusing debate I admit but not easily proved.
The only logical conclusion you can draw from these facts is that a slight majority of Americans are unacceptable disgusting racist pigs whose opinions need not be heard, understood, or addressed by enlightened folk such as yourself. In that case, the logical response is, if you are American, to seek to leave the country much as other political refugees have throughout history or, if you are not American, to advocate for your home country to find other friends and allies.
In either event, you accomplish nothing by refusing to acknowledge that many people have differing viewpoints. You may deeply resent such viewpoints and believe them to morally repugnant and evil, but your feelings on the matter are quite irrelevant. By seeking to simply escape these views that make you angry and uncomfortable and associate only with the like minded, you reinforce the point I often make that tribalism, whether based on race, religion, or political ideology is an inexorable fact of human society.
Your behavior and that of your fellows serves only to prove me correct and reinforce my conviction that some number of separate relatively harmonious tribes with different cultures, beliefs, values, traditions, and interests that define their tribe and differentiate it from other tribes is the natural and best realistic state to maximize human thriving and minimize conflict and suffering. Your actions show the futility of the globalist cause far better than my words ever could. You so thoroughly demonstrate my basic point that I honestly question whether you’re some sort of bizarre double agent advancing views by advocating for their opposite in the worst possible ways. Either way, I suppose I should thank you.
Oh and to answer your direct question, I do dislike such views, but I am mature and humble enough to understand that my personal feelings ultimately mean very little in the grand scheme of things. I also was blessed/cursed with the ability to separate my sense of self from my logical assessment of issues. For me, none of this is personal. I have no difficulty engaging with views I deem morally or objectively wrong because I frankly don’t care whether people agree with me or not. I do understand this is far more difficult for others so you have my sympathies, though it doesn’t change my assessment of the facts as I see them.
Three straw men in the first paragraph. That’s impressive even for you!
At least twitter limited the length of posts – that would have saved us from wading through this word salad drivel! Follow my example – brevity is the soul of wit.
I will concede that brevity is not my strong suit. Well done noticing the most obvious superficial flaw in my writing. Your assertion is actually valid and justified. It is an ad hominem attack and does not address the substance of my admittedly long winded argument but still it is a coherent thought rather than a schoolyard taunt. Perhaps there’s some hope for you yet. I really would love to hear you turn your powers of observation and your concise rhetoric towards the substance of arguments rather than the style, but this is progress.
Why do you consider yourself such an authority on “normal people” that you are able to speak for them ? And better qualified to do so than anyone else commenting here ?
Is it arrogance ? Or ignorance ? Or something else ?
As someone once told me: “It’s the arrogance of ignorance.”
I’m sure lots of people have told you about your ignorance
“Why do you consider yourself such an authority on “normal people” that you are able to speak for them ?”
Intelligence, education and experience. I doubt you’d know much about them, slick.
I heard Musk explaining that he used to vote Democrat until they changed their more traditional policies for the woke stuff they now push. I suspect that he would just as easily dump the Republicans if they started adopting equally dumb policies. Musk voted with his feet in the same way most Americans have just done.
It did make me laugh that the mass influx of the political left resulted in Bluesky experiencing an exponential increase in complaint reports. Can’t remember the exact figure, but it was something like the same number in a week as they are used to in a quarter.
Bluesky now has over 5 times the number of users it had just a month ago. It’s not prepared for that. My bet is that users will flock out like they have flocked in once they realize Bluesky is not pre-Musk Twitter reborn.
Don’t use either. I just don’t ‘get’ why one would be interested in being distracted by such short missives. No doubt my age.
However agree with the final point about dangers of polarisation and ‘echo-chamber-itis’. Main reason for subscribing here. A failure to expose oneself to others arguments, and I mean proper arguments not just sloganeering nonsense and yah-boo abuse, does make one dumber.
It is fabulous. Get my news, opinions, recipes, laughs, cute animal videos and the like. Plus plenty from Elon Musk who called the election percentages early on – this and a pile of humour.
Remember the algorithms will be working hard to further confirm your bias if it’s a bias Elon welcomes.
Folks that sign up to these systems are signing up to have algorithms play havoc with them
This piece is shot through with exactly the same kind of bias as the writer is complaining about. Bifurcation is inevitable because you can never change anybody’s mind with facts anyway and the comfort zone is so called for a reason.
Twitter/X’s strength is its ability to break stories in real time with faster reactions than long-form media, and as an active space for independent journalists and data wonks who are then followed, and boosted, by bigger accounts. To mirror Twitter isn’t so much about the audience, but more for the dopamine hit of new stories to gawp and gasp at.
If Bluesky curbs the information feeds to spare the blushes of its members it would just be another LinkedIn – full of gush and gee-wizz and look-at-me. The essence of a story is in the ‘what-happens-next’ and the tension and conflict of different options. (Although LinkedIn has also seen signs of a break with the be-woke-or-lose-your-job omerta with comments on the Jaguar rebrand)
If anything, Twitter’s biggest competitor remains TikTok – not so much for political stories, but for the much larger feeds and interest in celebrity. (As I post, Trump is running at 20-30 tweets a minute. P.Diddy is running at 5 posts a minute, and he’s not even in the news currently)
Noah, if you are an independent researcher, perhaps you could provide a little bit more than just ‘what is obvious and known’.
What accounts were banned in India? Just accounts engaged in child sex trafficing or political too? Were there any substantial differences to the requests from the Indian and Brazillian governments? Or would that all be irrelevant to the point you wanted to make anyway?
It seems to me that the real story here is that Twitter was a left-wing echo chamber because it banned people who didnt fall in line with far left views; Musk changes it to X and the left-wing flocks to Bluesky, a left-wing echo chamber. When you do the maths on echo chambers its Left-Wing 2-0 Right Wing, just on this platform’s users experiences.
Left-wing nut jobs are still welcome on X. Its only in danger of becoming an echo chamber due to the migration of the left to an actual echo chamber.
How nice it is to have a socialist here fully revealing their character and views.
Please stay on Unherd Champagne Socialist! Don’t pay any attention to the down ticks. I appreciate you!
Another satisfied customer! But how amusing that you think I would even notice what you refer to as downticks!
Well, if I had 20 downticks and 0 upticks, I would be worried.
But maybe it’s a socialist trait. Like Starmer, seemingly unaware of what people think of him.
Maybe neither care what people think of them (or in CS’s case, maybe he doesn’t care what the people who post on UnHerd think of him).
*Maybe neither care what people think of them (or in CS’s case, maybe they/them doesn’t care what the people who post on UnHerd think of they/them).
Musk hasn’t made politics more polarized; he’s made it possible for the existing polarization to be acknowledged and to be openly discussed – as opposed to the old Twitter, where polarization was papered over by only allowing one side to talk. Guess which side that was.
A mass exit to BlueSky of the woke progressives who cannot bear to hear opposing views is to be welcomed, surely? If they are self-imprisoned in a luxury-views echo chamber (recall CS Lewis: the gates to hell are locked from the inside) they will be even less likely to find out what the world is really like and what normal people really think of their pet conceits. They can enjoy stroking each others’ egos while their political influence continues its accelerating descent from the cliff it has just fallen off. Meanwhile reasonable people, with a wide range of non-insane views, will be able to have a serious conversation on X about the pros and cons of reasonable policies.
So is Musk turning Twitter, now X, into a Right-wing echo chamber?
No, leftists who prefer to live in safe space bubbles and are afraid to debate issues are causing the tilt to the right.
Even CNN recognises X as being neutral. https://open.substack.com/pub/censorednews/p/with-election-over-cnn-admits-musks?r=1hfsrp&utm_medium=ios
I think Mr Musk may need another business venture.
That Bluesky seems to be on the up and he likes to back a winner,
No, in my opinion he simply allowed points of view that challenged the woke perspective that is being enforced like some latter day religion that brooks no heretics and forgives no one.
Change the name from “X” to “1st.” For example, “X” signified by the skull and crossbones☠️, portrays death; “1st” means the First Amendment, the most important, which portrays free speech — the very foundation of Athenian Democracy.
“If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”— U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis (1856–1941), Whitney v. California, 274 U. S. 357 (1927).
Wow, how much was this dude paid to write this fantasy hit piece? Whatever it was, it was too much. Maybe Mr. Carl is too wet behind the ears to know real freedom of speech, and the right to speak your piece, no matter how offensive or ignorant to anyone else. This is your right and those rights were taken away by the technies, apparently at the behest of the Dems and the Federal and some state governments. Musk removed that veil and if he keeps his word, it will introduce a lot of folks to the freedoms their parents and grandparents enjoyed not that long ago.
> So is Musk turning Twitter, now X, into a Right-wing echo chamber?
Perhaps it’s moving rightward by itself — why do you suggest that Elon might not simply be letting X ‘go where it wants to go’?
> openly favouring one candidate over another obviously undermines the platform’s neutrality.
Not really. Elon himself could be a Trumpist and yet permit complete freedom on X because conservatives very often really do believe in FOS.
Is the question in the title a serious one? If so, the answer is “Yes”.
This article was painful to read. Shorn of sense, lacking reason, it answers its question by repeating it. I heard nothing about X itself, but the author rambled on about Musk (while supposedly proving something or other about X). I feel dumber for having read it, and I’m sorry I did.