mesamunefire@lemmy.world
on 01 Dec 23:28
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While I would love people to come over to mastodon (or mastodon adjacent) I personally think this is a step in the right direction. Having more fediverse adjacent platforms makes it easier for people to communicate in a much less platform specific conglomeration.
Mastodon is broken as fuck for me. I don’t know if it’s my instance, or the country I’m in, or what. The app mostly just spins and hangs. It’s been like this for a year. I’ve never been able to see who other people are following, which is something I like to do to discover new content. I’ve never been able to view videos that people post. I joined in 2020 and I’m probably just going to delete my account.
richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one
on 04 Dec 00:15
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Before that, try joining mas.to and using Tusky. I’ve never had an issue.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
on 02 Dec 00:52
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You’re measuring Bluesky with a different measuring stick than they are.
You’re measuring it with the “This is decentralized, and therefore not connected to corporate interests, and never can be” stick.
These journalists WORK FOR the corporate interests you left twitter (or maybe never had an account) over. They are measuring the stick by “These current users are just MAGA users in a cult”.
As long as Bluesky doesn’t start shifting right wing MAGA, it IS different for their purposes. It’s just their purposes are not YOUR purposes, and therefore they can still say that it’s different, and not have that be a lie. Doesn’t mean it’ll satisfy you any.
Lila_Uraraka@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 02 Dec 02:32
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Maybe, but not unrealistic. Bluesky has already begun their shift toward enshittification, changing their default sorting algorithm to one that favors the quantity of engagement over the quality. Usually when you see a platform making moves that are meant to drive user activity without adding anything substantially positive to the user experience, it's a sign that they're about to start monetizing the platform.
Lila_Uraraka@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 03 Dec 05:11
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The sorting algorithm is really splitting hairs. It depends on what you follow and engage with, for me, most of my feed is furry stuff, so it doesn’t matter what the sorting looks like. Now, for someone using it for politics or news, sure, then it matters, but just interacting with an overall positive community, it doesn’t matter
I'm referring to Bluesky's new reply sorting, which will put comments with more likes higher by default. Pretty much every platform that does this kind of sorting by default, does so because it drives up engagement. People are more likely to like/heart/favorite/whatever a comment if 100 other people have liked it than if just 1 liked it. And the more likely you are to like somebody's comment, the more likely you are to open their profile and see the content they post. It's a dark pattern designed to keep you scrolling.
Whenever a developer wants to encourage you to use their platform more and add your +1 to as many items as possible, it's because they're about to start serving you ads or trying to sell you something. The more times you refresh a page, the more ads you get served. You see this on Meta platforms, Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok... basically everything that sorts the "hottest" comments to the top.
A paid BSKY+ service is right around the corner, count on it.
Lila_Uraraka@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 03 Dec 16:20
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the same level of toxicity that I left reddit for seems to be permeating Lemmy, now.
zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
on 02 Dec 23:51
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Not surprising, considering that A) Lemmy is very similar software and B) a lot of the users are former redditors.
Just having downvotes creates toxicity.
Lila_Uraraka@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 03 Dec 05:14
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Yeah, like I understand the reason for down votes, bur they are too often abused because the other people don’t like your opinion or don’t understand your humor
A: whatever those in control decide it is, used as a means of suppressing dissent.
Just think about that for a bit. What if I controlled Bluesky and decided your description of “toxicity” was hate speech?
Windex007@lemmy.world
on 02 Dec 01:36
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The definition as taken to the courts in the USA is:
“Hate speech is any form of expression through which speakers intend to vilify, humiliate, or incite hatred against a group or a class of persons on the basis of race, religion, skin color, sexual identity, gender identity, ethnicity, disability, or national origin.”
It has more rigorous legal definitions in many other jurisdictions where hate speech is explicitly illegal.
You characterizing toxicity and hate speech as being related isn’t a position taken even remotely seriously by anyone who actually write laws on the subject, and many have been written across the world.
Broadly speaking, hate speech isn’t “being mean” in any legal definition… But that is what right-wing talking heads like to strawman it as.
spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works
on 02 Dec 01:38
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“Hate speech” is defined and outlawed by countries around the world:
I know values and meanings that i have come to understand and relate to those respective words. But you wont find a definite definition online.
For every honest academic attempt there is a bad faith troll. Neither actually embodies a literary authority to enforce a meaning to words.
Language is an emergent construct based on human interactions, all of us that use words are maintaining that fickle construct it in real time. Good and bad actors alike.
If by “a little toxicity” you mean a little bit of aggressiveness, sarcasm, etc., I agree with you. It depends a lot on the community though - in some, allowing it will be counter-productive.
If however you mean harassment and hate speech, as the author of the text, I strongly disagree. If the mod doesn’t curb down those things, they might not be “lording” over the discourse, but other users are - because
users shut each other up through harassment
hate speech silences whole groups, as they leave the community
Another detail is that you don’t need to control the discourse to curb down harassment, since it’s only behavioural and not discursive in nature.
So IMO when it comes to those two things the problem is not overzealous mods, but dumb ones not doing due diligence, who are a bit too eager to falsely accuse their own users to be voicing hate speech or harassing each other when it is not the case.
As much as I don’t believe bsky will be any different, and won’t join it myself, the momentum is there. Took a little longer than it should have but the tipping point is here and we should all relish in the bird’s passing.
alsu2launda@lemmy.world
on 02 Dec 06:42
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I think bluesky and twitter will become politically divided and become their respective echo chamber rather than Twitter going out of fashion.
Overall the discourse quality will go down at both places.
CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world
on 02 Dec 09:27
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A lot of people exist on twitter because their favorite celebrity or news cite or company exists on there. The problem is that the lefties and LGBTQ folk create a ton of twitters content and are also a huge majority of those celebrities.
So while I think twitter will become a sort of right wing cesspool, BlueSky will be much different. Especially since BS has the ability to essentially build your own echo chamber on purpose. Which I actually think is fine because some of the echo chambers I’d compare to the instances on here that try to keep people safe and civil like beehaw. But the moment bluesky keeps getting celebs and organizations to make the swap, it’s all over for twitter. There is a critical mass there that will migrate regardless and honestly the echo chamber design means right wing folk would also do well on the platform if they know what they’re doing.
Thought may happen but it will still be an improvement.
The big problem with Twitter / X is everything ends up being about politics.
Want to talk about a video game, you can’t because some dipstick mega supporter is going to accuse it of being woke.
Want to talk about a programming language, nope apparently that is woke too.
Want to share a funny cat picture, nah, can’t do that apparently a man having a cat is gay and woke.
The bird died years ago. Now we wait for the death of a letter.
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
on 02 Dec 02:27
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I’m glad to see Twitter/X collapsing if only to add to Musk’s problems, but at the same time just changing the corporate logo over the outhouse doesn’t make it smell any better. It’s a better place, but I’m sure it’s temporary, the same people/bots/trolls will just migrate right along with the rest of them.
This seems fine, so long as the journos remember how to pull up stakes once a platform decays. I hope they learn a lesson about the importance of owning your own audience, follower lists, etc.
The difference being that Bluesky has very robust block lists which you can subscribe to to remove these accounts for you.
Hackerman_uwu@lemmy.world
on 03 Dec 11:31
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Not sure if this is an age thing but at a certain point I just stopped wanting “forever fixes”. Nothing is forever. You’re just patching in the hopes that the nex hole is easier to patch now that you have all the shit you need to do patches.
SleafordMod@feddit.uk
on 02 Dec 11:33
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People thought the first Trump presidency was a politically divided time, but maybe we’re now entering an even more divided time, given that social media is now fragmenting along political lines, more prominently than it did before.
Sure. Maybe it’s worrying though that social media is splitting on ideological lines. This didn’t really used to be the case. Twitter was intended for everybody, so was Facebook, etc.
Maybe the divisions in western societies are becoming sharper and more bitter. That’s probably not a good thing.
What’s worrying is social media being politicised.
There was a time when it was not, and it was hell of a lot better than what we have now.
I’m not on Bluesky because it aligns with my political views. I’m there because I do not have to look at, or engage in politics. I can speak about my interests. Really quite lovely.
I looked a Bluesky but I noticed a lot of MAGA people trolling in the comments. Maybe they can be hidden with account settings probably but I haven’t looked into that.
Why do people have to listen to toxicity they don’t like in their social media entertainment platform? I don’t want to hear it all the time in real life.
How many more times am I going to see this same title before X implodes?
Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
on 02 Dec 14:28
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Can it implode? Leon can just keep burning money to keep it alive. It’s going to probably be funded by the government soon anyway.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
on 02 Dec 21:52
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I highly doubt it’ll ever be funded by the government.
Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
on 02 Dec 23:13
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It wouldn’t surprise me. He just partners with Truth Social and says that TS and Xitter will be the new government communication method and should be funded by the government. Probably will say it’s more efficient or something.
This is going to be a corruption free for all.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
on 02 Dec 23:19
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Sure, but there are all kinds of issue with that. First, Trump has significant investments in TS, so having the government fund that would be a massive conflict of interest. Second, conservatives love to rail on places like NPR getting public funding, and funding X is a bit too much of an about-face IMO.
Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
on 02 Dec 23:27
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You may be right, but I think it’s more likely than say deporting 10 million immigrants, or cutting spending by more than discretionary spending, or a number of things that people think are likely to happen. It’s not like conservative rags are actually going to tell their readers the truth anyway.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
on 02 Dec 23:49
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Yeah, my coworkers were kind of excited about Trump cutting $2T, and I tried to explain to them that’s not feasible with the way budgets are set up. They could maybe cut $1T if they really went deep, but to get anything more, they’d have to cut SS, Medicare, and the military, and Trump said that’s off limits.
I doubt they’ll hit $500B. They might get $2T over 10 years (so $200B/year) though, which I guess is how Congress likes to quantify spending changes to lessen the blow.
zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
on 02 Dec 23:45
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Yeah, you’re right. Trump would never do anything that’s a conflict of interest.
Same for Reddit, still very much alive apparently.
(I’m not going back, I’m happy here)
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
on 03 Dec 21:42
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Yeah, and it’s doing really well since it’s IPO, basically tripling since IPO and it even rose nearly 6% today. As much as Lemmy wishes it would die, it’s just not happening.
I’m still here because I’m stubborn, but Reddit is absolutely a thing.
The same is true for X, though things are looking a bit worse for X than for Reddit right now since a lot of people are leaving. But it’ll likely stabilize with the new administration, and I guess we’ll see whether it’s able to get back to growing.
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 02 Dec 12:11
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journalists flocking to a site built on the backs of trans people and they’ll still refuse to hire/interview trans people when talking about trans issues.
I’m not serially online enough to understand what you mean, can you expand on this?
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 03 Dec 13:00
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trans people are the reason why there’s robust safety and moderation tools on bsky but journalists, more often than not, refuse to hire or bring on trans people to discuss trans issues.
whydudothatdrcrane@lemmy.ml
on 03 Dec 10:12
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This is interesting. Why build on the backs? Did trans people contribute to it a lot, or are we talking about the early user base?
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 03 Dec 12:59
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trans people (and sex workers too) were early adopters who left twitter for it and helped shaped the block list, safety features, and moderation system that it boasts today
whydudothatdrcrane@lemmy.ml
on 03 Dec 13:37
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Wow, that’s good to know. Did you know the blocking feature in Activity Pub also ended up there because of queer and feminist people?
Also reminds me of Party Block, a discontinued Twitter blocking app developed by a feminist tech-startup. And Shinigami Eyes of course. The blocking system of BlueSky seems to have best of both worlds. This is exciting!
dataprolet@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 02 Dec 21:41
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“Journalists flock to yet another proprietary, commercial platform as the last becomes increasingly ‘toxic’ for reasons unknown.”
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
on 02 Dec 23:49
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Flock to wherever the critical mass of the herd is moving, in this case the very guy that caused their troubles in the first place.
Those are the very people supposed that are supposed to inform us and warn us of upcoming threat as well as mobilize the general population to defend against them.
But again they lead the population to the slaugtherhouse.
The death of journalism in the beginning of the 00s is certainly the first thread unravelling our civilizations in favour of the hype con-mens and their billionaires backers and other monarchs trying to swallow humanity whole.
All this effort, yet we don’t even resist…
TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com
on 03 Dec 01:48
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Dude, what ?
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
on 03 Dec 06:09
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The commenter is expressing a deep critique of modern journalism and society at large, suggesting that journalists are failing in their responsibilities and are complicit in societal decline. Here’s a breakdown of what the commenter likely means:
#“Flock to wherever the critical mass of the herd is moving”
The commenter is criticizing journalists for following trends or popular movements (the “herd”) without critical thought. In this case, they’re pointing out the irony of journalists leaving X (formerly Twitter) for Bluesky, which is owned by Jack Dorsey, the same individual who they believe contributed to the issues with X in the first place.
#“Those are the very people supposed to inform us and warn us of upcoming threats”
Journalists are traditionally seen as watchdogs of society—tasked with investigating and exposing wrongs, informing the public of dangers, and holding power to account. The commenter believes that journalists are failing in this role and instead are following the crowd or serving the interests of the powerful.
#“Bow again they lead the population to the slaughterhouse”
This is a metaphor suggesting that journalists, instead of protecting society or providing guidance, are leading people into harmful or exploitative systems (like Bluesky, which the commenter views as another “slaughterhouse” similar to X). They argue that journalists are enabling the public’s exploitation rather than resisting it.
#“The death of journalism in the beginning of the 00s”
The commenter seems to argue that journalism has been in decline since the early 2000s, likely referring to trends like the rise of sensationalist media, the collapse of traditional news revenue models, and the increasing influence of corporate and billionaire-backed interests in the media landscape.
#“Unraveling our civilizations in favor of hype conmen and their billionaire backers”
Here, the commenter criticizes how society has moved toward elevating “hype” (short-term trends, marketing gimmicks, and flashy tech solutions) and “conmen” (figures like tech CEOs or opportunistic influencers) who are supported by billionaires. They argue that this is undermining democratic values and public institutions, leading to a general unraveling of civilization.
#“Trying to swallow humanity whole”
This phrase likely reflects their belief that powerful individuals or entities (tech billionaires, corporations, or modern elites) are consolidating power and control, exploiting humanity for their own benefit, and eroding societal structures.
“All this effort, yet we don’t even resist”
The commenter laments the lack of resistance or pushback from the general public or journalists against these harmful trends. They suggest that society is passively accepting exploitation and harm instead of fighting back.
#In Summary:
The commenter believes that journalists, who should be resisting harmful trends and informing the public, are instead complicit in perpetuating systems of exploitation (like Bluesky or X) controlled by the very figures responsible for creating societal problems. This lack of resistance reflects a broader societal failure to stand up against powerful entities that are eroding civilization for their own gain.
#You said:
Why is this seen as a failure of the journalistic profession in particular ?
Can journalist really be expected to the understand the nuance and the weight of consequence of the architecture of the “public square” that they choose ?
In this case, privately owned “monarchical” centralized social media platform with one individual assuming complete control of all language and the means of mass communication of the entire intelligentsia ?
Is it fair to expect journalists to understand the weight and consequence of their actions ?
#ChatGPT said:
The commenter’s critique stems from the high expectations placed on the journalistic profession and the role it plays in democratic societies. Journalists are often seen as both watchdogs of power and facilitators of public discourse, which places an ethical and intellectual burden on them to understand the broader implications of their decisions and actions. However, your question raises important points about the fairness and feasibility of holding journalists to such a high standard, especially in complex situations like the architecture of the “public square.”
Why is this seen as a failure of journalism?
#The Role of Journalists as Informers and Guides:
Journalism has traditionally been tasked with more than just reporting facts. Journalists are expected to critically a
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
on 03 Dec 06:17
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Conclusion:
The commenter’s critique reflects a broader frustration with the state of journalism and society, but it may oversimplify the challenges journalists face. While it is fair to hold journalists accountable for the choices they make, it is also important to recognize the systemic nature of the problem. Addressing issues like the centralization of digital public spaces and the concentration of power in the hands of tech billionaires requires more than individual action—it calls for collective awareness, interdisciplinary collaboration, and structural reform.
I have an even shorter summary. The viewership are on bluesky, and not on Mastodon, so that’s where the journalists must go, end of mystery. No evil conspiracy required.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
on 03 Dec 14:35
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What kind of journalist just follows the herd? Haven’t they learned from Twitter that their participation in the platform, is what enpowers it. And if they can’t put that to good use, what good are they as journalists? Just slaugtherhouse hypemen? As if we needed anymore of those??
Missed a few points for not using: in summation lmao
Fedegenerate@lemmynsfw.com
on 03 Dec 08:30
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I hope that form of response doesn’t become a trend as scrolling through the wall of text will become irritating fast. But the level of snark is hilarious the first time you see it. I wonder if instead someone could set up a “lmgtfy” but for gpt, a lmgpttfy, so the snark could just be a link.
I dunno I think it demonstrates the point nicely. that the majority of people on the internet lack basic reading comprehension skills. which is fairly ironic.
whydudothatdrcrane@lemmy.ml
on 03 Dec 10:05
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Wait what happened here? Did the GPT understand what the hooman did not? R O F L
mostlikelyaperson@lemmy.world
on 03 Dec 09:46
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I mean, what’s the alternative? Mastodon culturally could not get its shit together enough to be a viable alternative.
You act like there’s some kind of alternative which there isn’t. Mastodon, which I’m sure you were going to mention, absolutely does not count because it’s a nightmare to use and they haven’t bothered to fix any of its problems.
So there is no viable alternative.
Also because it’s so awful to use, no one does use it, and so no one’s on the platform. After all, journalists need to go where the viewers are.
There is zero point being smug about your open source platform, if no one uses your open source platform.
SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 03 Dec 11:39
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Okay then, hope people won’t complain when things go to shit again
Just forever on march towards the inevitable due to convenience
You do realise people would’ve switched to mastodon if it weren’t so inconvenient? People don’t care about the long term projections of Bluesky. They want Muskless Twitter and they got Muskless Twitter. Simple as that
SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 03 Dec 11:59
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I’m just really tired of telling people about the obvious, and every time history keeps repeating
I don’t believe it’s just convenience, it’s as you said, people don’t care about the long term. In anything.
A big corporate platform (or whatever else, like, say, oil companies vs climate protesters) will always have more resources, whether it’s for development or marketing, so people will always have to be a bit willing to not have full convenience for a better world
If we don’t think about the long term, what are we even thinking of instead?
Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world
on 03 Dec 12:59
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Social media rises and falls just like any other fad or fashion. It’s a never-ending churn, as people (particularly, young people) inevitably crave something novel. There’s little use in fighting the cycle, just as there’d be little use in fighting the trendy choices of a teenager.
It’s frustrating to watch people en masse continue to make choices that don’t make sense. It turns out that a lot of people are much more driven to follow the crowd than to have (let alone stand by) personal principles or rational decisions. Thankfully, we’re not obligated to be like that. There’s always some sort of counter-culture that bucks the main trends, and honestly? That’s where the most interesting people tend to be.
If you feel driven to educate people on the futility of trends, then by all means, go for it. I just know it can be draining, and not everyone is going to be receptive. On the plus side, you sound like a rational person who actually thinks about their decisions - in a world full of followers, that can be pretty powerful.
News outlets should be spinning up their own federated social media instances, so that THEY control their own platform, akin to a website, or email addresses.
I’m not saying that this makes X good, I’m saying it makes it interesting. Most social media sites lean left of center or very hard to the right, yet X seems to have found a balance. Or maybe it’s in transition into being a far right platform, idk, but at least as of this moment, it’s pretty balanced. Users are down, but it seems the current userbase is more balanced than it was.
That has little to do with whether X is “toxic,” but I do think it’s an interesting statistic to discuss.
ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world
on 02 Dec 22:40
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I think this whole concept speaks to how differently we all use social networks. For some, it’s a passive news source. For others, it’s entertainment. For others, it’s a place to be social.
Ideological balance is the least important feature for me in picking a social network. I’m there to joke around and talk to interesting people. In real life, my friends and I don’t go “You know what bar we should go to? That new ideologically balanced one down on 2nd St.” (and then my horny friend says we should go to the bar where he met a hot girl once and we end up at TikTok^1^, AGAIN).
^1^ That’s a joke. I’m 40 and my friends pick bars based on proximity, beer selection, and how long they have the baby sitter for.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
on 02 Dec 22:53
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I’m more interested in ideological balance, because I’m looking for social media to curate news sources for me. If all I’m getting is conservative or progressive articles, it’s not doing its job.
I had a pretty good setup on Reddit with just the right subs to get a good ideological balance (despite Reddit being pretty left leaning), but I bailed when they pulled the API BS and I’m staying away due to their data harvesting. Lemmy is much worse than Reddit as far as bias goes, but it’s better than nothing I suppose. I’ve had to actually go back and follow news sources to rebalance my media consumption, which is a pain because there’s so much BS on news sites.
I don’t want to be social, and if I want entertainment, I’ll play video games or watch a movie/TV show. I just want to stay informed and hear other peoples’ takes on current events, ideally from a diverse set of perspectives. And yet, my main options are left wing or right wing sources, both of whom will misrepresent stuff and nobody will correct them.
I’m probably not going back to Twitter/X because I hate the format, but I am happy to see that at least someone thinks it’s somewhat balanced. I’m working on my own Reddit/Lemmy alternative with the express goal to make it easier to get a balanced feed, so hopefully some day I’ll be able to eat my cake and have it too.
richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one
on 04 Dec 00:21
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Common decency and skeptical thinking skew left. So forced equilibrium actually promotes evil.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
on 04 Dec 04:50
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I think you’re saying that because that’s what your political persuasion is. If I asked someone on the right, they’d give me a similar answer with a different justification.
I’m not a fan of left vs right mudslinging, I’m a fan of well thought out policy based on facts. Calling someone else’s ideas bad doesn’t make yours good, in fact it makes me want to disregard yours. It turns out both sides have some decent ideas, as well as a lot of stupid ones, and I’d like to focus on the good.
I can’t accept that anyone accepts or rejects any party’s platform wholesale, they just pick the one that they think goes in the better direction at the time. Some think Democrats are right more than the GOP and thus are loyal to that party, and the same is true in the other direction. A lot of people sit somewhere in the middle, and they’re the ones that decide elections.
That said, forced anything can absolutely promote evil. But tweaks to encourage more diversity is welcome. It’s hard to tell which it is at Twitter/X, but I’m hopeful that Musk actually wants X to be a bastion of free speech where people from all sides can make their case, but also where blatant hate isn’t accepted. I don’t think that’s what he’s actually going for since he seems to just want a platform for ideas he agrees with, but I’m hopeful nonetheless. I don’t and probably won’t use Twitter/X, so it’s a moot point.
AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee
on 02 Dec 23:32
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Have a link to the actual article and not some rando with a video without context?
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
on 02 Dec 23:55
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I don’t think there’s an article, at least I couldn’t find one. I tried to find the original source, but internet searches suck these days (or maybe I’ve lost my touch).
So, it mostly doesn’t mirror US demographics then, as the US, as a whole, skews away from the GOP.
Yes, I get it, “but the ballots”… ballot cast are not a 1:1 for the party lean of the US as a whole.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
on 03 Dec 00:03
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So, it mostly doesn’t mirror US demographics then, as the US, as a whole, skews away from the GOP.
They also skew away from the Democratic Party. Look at approval ratings for Biden and Trump if you don’t believe me, both were absolutely terrible, and Congress is arguably worse. I think most people hate both parties, but the system is rigged to support a two-party system.
If we look at issues, I think most people lean a bit more progressive on social issues and pretty moderate on fiscal issues. Even in my very red state, there are tons of pride flags out during pride month, and our conservative governor was openly supportive of trans issues (esp. kids). But neither party seems to do much to actually progress social issues, so I think people just end up getting pissed off. Democrats push on climate change and Republicans push tax cuts, when we really just want to legalize marijuana and let people marry whoever they want.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
on 03 Dec 03:26
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Perhaps it’s because he’s boosting right wing causes that the numbers have balanced.
Again, I’m not saying this is a good thing, merely that it’s interesting. I would like a platform that’s properly diverse, and this is one interesting metric. However, given that total userbase has dropped, I wonder if it’s more attrition than anything that caused the balance. In any case, it’ll be interesting to see where it ends up, and hopefully it’s not just another Truth Social…
The problem is if he is boosting right-wing viewpoints and suppressing left-wing viewpoints then all the casual viewer ends up seeing is the right-wing viewpoints.
So just because left-wing content is on there doesn’t mean people can easily access or find it.
So it’s not really balanced in any way.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
on 03 Dec 14:18
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I honestly haven’t used Twitter/X in any meaningful capacity, so I don’t know what that looks like. But if he continually adjusts the algorithm to show a good mix, that would be a good thing. If he keeps pushing right wing stuff, it’ll end up like Truth Social.
If the CNN report is accurate (and I have no reason to suspect it’s not), then it’s probably in a good place. We’ll see in a few months though.
if he continually adjusts the algorithm to show a good mix, that would be a good thing.
Have you been living under a rock or something? He isn’t doing that, stop trying to argue a situation that doesn’t exist. He’s pushing right-wing extremist propaganda in order to get near Trump.
He’s not balancing anything.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
on 04 Dec 14:23
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I don’t use Twitter/X, I just see outrage here on Lemmy and other left-leaning media orgs like CNN. So I take that outrage with a grain of salt, especially since those same groups disliked Musk before he bought Twitter. I dislike Musk too, but I try to not let that color my perception of what he’s actually accomplished.
So I’m hesitant to take those complaints at face value. I didn’t like Twitter before Musk bought it, and I like it less now, but that doesn’t mean a whole lot, which is why I rely on statistics like these to help cut through the BS from the big media firms.
If you can point to actual tangible facts and not cherry picked content, we can have a discussion. I provided mine, and the stats look promising.
I’d like you to demonstrate where this discussion I linked to “cherry-picked content”. I do not believe you are arguing in good faith and are trying the very tired “I’m a centralist” argument. That road ran out about a decade ago.
I’m going to be in honest, I’m not going to go out of my way to try and find information that is very easily publicly available. Your refusal to be even moderately informed about current events is your problem, not mine.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
on 04 Dec 22:35
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I didn’t accuse you specifically of cherry-picking content, but a lot of the posts I see here on Lemmy about Twitter/X being terrible seem very much like cherry-picking.
“I’m a centralist”
I’m not a centrist, but I do disagree with both parties. I consider myself ideologically as a left-leaning Libertarian, and I honestly think more people are closer to Libertarian than either major party. Hence why I’m interested in hearing discussion from both sides of the proverbial aisle, I think a lot gets missed in our stupid 2-party system.
current events
Twitter/X isn’t “current events,” it’s a social media app. Yes, people post about current events, but there are many other ways to stay informed of current events than that particular medium. I have avoided Twitter in the past because I don’t like the format, and I’ll continue to avoid it now that it’s relabled as “X” because I still don’t like the format, and I also don’t like the CEO. But I also don’t like opinions being passed around as facts.
I’ll never understand liberals need to distance themselves from those who disagree with their opinions while simultaneously asking for their vote. You really need to engage and find common ground with those you disagree with to win their vote.
People have been trying that for years without apparent success. Let’s try shunning the antisocial people instead. We didn’t defeat the nazis by being nice and friendly to them
Besides, journalists being on twitter is one large reason anyone cares about twitter. Getting people to care about a platform not owned by the first lady might be a good idea
The problem with having reasonable and respectful discourse with people you disagree with, is that you first have to find people willing to have reasonable and respectful discourse. In real life I’ve met plenty. On Twitter, there are none. They’re mostly just in getting a rise out of libs and lefties. We’ve already been finding that disengaging with them and moving to a platform they don’t have influence over has made them a lot more impotent.
threaded - newest
While I would love people to come over to mastodon (or mastodon adjacent) I personally think this is a step in the right direction. Having more fediverse adjacent platforms makes it easier for people to communicate in a much less platform specific conglomeration.
Mastodon is broken as fuck for me. I don’t know if it’s my instance, or the country I’m in, or what. The app mostly just spins and hangs. It’s been like this for a year. I’ve never been able to see who other people are following, which is something I like to do to discover new content. I’ve never been able to view videos that people post. I joined in 2020 and I’m probably just going to delete my account.
Before that, try joining mas.to and using Tusky. I’ve never had an issue.
thanks for the recommendation. i suspect some of the issues are instance related
Hahaha, they’re just now noticing? Rich.
And how will Bkuesky be any different? It won’t.
You’re measuring Bluesky with a different measuring stick than they are.
You’re measuring it with the “This is decentralized, and therefore not connected to corporate interests, and never can be” stick.
These journalists WORK FOR the corporate interests you left twitter (or maybe never had an account) over. They are measuring the stick by “These current users are just MAGA users in a cult”.
As long as Bluesky doesn’t start shifting right wing MAGA, it IS different for their purposes. It’s just their purposes are not YOUR purposes, and therefore they can still say that it’s different, and not have that be a lie. Doesn’t mean it’ll satisfy you any.
Wow, that’s pessimistic
Maybe, but not unrealistic. Bluesky has already begun their shift toward enshittification, changing their default sorting algorithm to one that favors the quantity of engagement over the quality. Usually when you see a platform making moves that are meant to drive user activity without adding anything substantially positive to the user experience, it's a sign that they're about to start monetizing the platform.
The sorting algorithm is really splitting hairs. It depends on what you follow and engage with, for me, most of my feed is furry stuff, so it doesn’t matter what the sorting looks like. Now, for someone using it for politics or news, sure, then it matters, but just interacting with an overall positive community, it doesn’t matter
I'm referring to Bluesky's new reply sorting, which will put comments with more likes higher by default. Pretty much every platform that does this kind of sorting by default, does so because it drives up engagement. People are more likely to like/heart/favorite/whatever a comment if 100 other people have liked it than if just 1 liked it. And the more likely you are to like somebody's comment, the more likely you are to open their profile and see the content they post. It's a dark pattern designed to keep you scrolling.
Whenever a developer wants to encourage you to use their platform more and add your +1 to as many items as possible, it's because they're about to start serving you ads or trying to sell you something. The more times you refresh a page, the more ads you get served. You see this on Meta platforms, Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok... basically everything that sorts the "hottest" comments to the top.
A paid BSKY+ service is right around the corner, count on it.
Why it doesn’t matter
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/13616526-6e58-4c05-9e84-ddff0eec8698.webp">
the same level of toxicity that I left reddit for seems to be permeating Lemmy, now.
Not surprising, considering that A) Lemmy is very similar software and B) a lot of the users are former redditors.
Just having downvotes creates toxicity.
Yeah, like I understand the reason for down votes, bur they are too often abused because the other people don’t like your opinion or don’t understand your humor
I know right??? So disappointing
Maybe the goal is to get Musk to buy Bluesky and start all over again 🤷
Bluesky has far more robust tools for blocking bad actors. You can subscribe to auto updating block lists which take these people off your feed.
To call hate speech and harassment “toxicity” downplays both issues.
Wtf is “hate speech”?
A: whatever those in control decide it is, used as a means of suppressing dissent.
Just think about that for a bit. What if I controlled Bluesky and decided your description of “toxicity” was hate speech?
The definition as taken to the courts in the USA is:
“Hate speech is any form of expression through which speakers intend to vilify, humiliate, or incite hatred against a group or a class of persons on the basis of race, religion, skin color, sexual identity, gender identity, ethnicity, disability, or national origin.”
It has more rigorous legal definitions in many other jurisdictions where hate speech is explicitly illegal.
laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/…/section-319.html
Canada for example.
You characterizing toxicity and hate speech as being related isn’t a position taken even remotely seriously by anyone who actually write laws on the subject, and many have been written across the world.
Broadly speaking, hate speech isn’t “being mean” in any legal definition… But that is what right-wing talking heads like to strawman it as.
“Hate speech” is defined and outlawed by countries around the world:
en.wikipedia.org/…/Hate_speech_laws_by_country
Threatening people based on their religion, race or other attributes is not dissent.
Look it up.
Look up “woke”, “liberal”, ”facism”
Or simply the evolution of “gay”
I know values and meanings that i have come to understand and relate to those respective words. But you wont find a definite definition online.
For every honest academic attempt there is a bad faith troll. Neither actually embodies a literary authority to enforce a meaning to words.
Language is an emergent construct based on human interactions, all of us that use words are maintaining that fickle construct it in real time. Good and bad actors alike.
You’re reading too much into my “look it up”. It was basically “I’m not wasting my time with your rhetorical question”.
I’m aware of what you’re explaining (semantic drift + polysemy), however neither is relevant here.
I rather have a little toxicity than a bunch of overzealous moderators lording over the discourse.
If by “a little toxicity” you mean a little bit of aggressiveness, sarcasm, etc., I agree with you. It depends a lot on the community though - in some, allowing it will be counter-productive.
If however you mean harassment and hate speech, as the author of the text, I strongly disagree. If the mod doesn’t curb down those things, they might not be “lording” over the discourse, but other users are - because
Another detail is that you don’t need to control the discourse to curb down harassment, since it’s only behavioural and not discursive in nature.
So IMO when it comes to those two things the problem is not overzealous mods, but dumb ones not doing due diligence, who are a bit too eager to falsely accuse their own users to be voicing hate speech or harassing each other when it is not the case.
[Sorry for the wall of text.]
As much as I don’t believe bsky will be any different, and won’t join it myself, the momentum is there. Took a little longer than it should have but the tipping point is here and we should all relish in the bird’s passing.
I think bluesky and twitter will become politically divided and become their respective echo chamber rather than Twitter going out of fashion.
Overall the discourse quality will go down at both places.
A lot of people exist on twitter because their favorite celebrity or news cite or company exists on there. The problem is that the lefties and LGBTQ folk create a ton of twitters content and are also a huge majority of those celebrities.
So while I think twitter will become a sort of right wing cesspool, BlueSky will be much different. Especially since BS has the ability to essentially build your own echo chamber on purpose. Which I actually think is fine because some of the echo chambers I’d compare to the instances on here that try to keep people safe and civil like beehaw. But the moment bluesky keeps getting celebs and organizations to make the swap, it’s all over for twitter. There is a critical mass there that will migrate regardless and honestly the echo chamber design means right wing folk would also do well on the platform if they know what they’re doing.
My bet is that Truth Social buys Twitter in an all-share deal, simultaneously enriching Trump and providing liquidity to Musk.
Or giving Trump an excuse to cash out of his shares.
Thought may happen but it will still be an improvement.
The big problem with Twitter / X is everything ends up being about politics.
Want to talk about a video game, you can’t because some dipstick mega supporter is going to accuse it of being woke.
Want to talk about a programming language, nope apparently that is woke too.
Want to share a funny cat picture, nah, can’t do that apparently a man having a cat is gay and woke.
It’s exhausting dealing with these idiots.
The bird died years ago. Now we wait for the death of a letter.
I’m glad to see Twitter/X collapsing if only to add to Musk’s problems, but at the same time just changing the corporate logo over the outhouse doesn’t make it smell any better. It’s a better place, but I’m sure it’s temporary, the same people/bots/trolls will just migrate right along with the rest of them.
This seems fine, so long as the journos remember how to pull up stakes once a platform decays. I hope they learn a lesson about the importance of owning your own audience, follower lists, etc.
/glances at substack
I hope that too. It would be nice.
The difference being that Bluesky has very robust block lists which you can subscribe to to remove these accounts for you.
Not sure if this is an age thing but at a certain point I just stopped wanting “forever fixes”. Nothing is forever. You’re just patching in the hopes that the nex hole is easier to patch now that you have all the shit you need to do patches.
It’s not the same though.
Yet.
.
People thought the first Trump presidency was a politically divided time, but maybe we’re now entering an even more divided time, given that social media is now fragmenting along political lines, more prominently than it did before.
When a Maga billionaire buys a large social media platform… that will cause the divide. And it is.
Sure. Maybe it’s worrying though that social media is splitting on ideological lines. This didn’t really used to be the case. Twitter was intended for everybody, so was Facebook, etc.
Maybe the divisions in western societies are becoming sharper and more bitter. That’s probably not a good thing.
What’s worrying is social media being politicised. There was a time when it was not, and it was hell of a lot better than what we have now.
I’m not on Bluesky because it aligns with my political views. I’m there because I do not have to look at, or engage in politics. I can speak about my interests. Really quite lovely.
I looked a Bluesky but I noticed a lot of MAGA people trolling in the comments. Maybe they can be hidden with account settings probably but I haven’t looked into that.
Why do people have to listen to toxicity they don’t like in their social media entertainment platform? I don’t want to hear it all the time in real life.
I’m not saying you do. I don’t use Twitter anymore. What I was trying to say is that I find the state of the world worrying.
How many more times am I going to see this same title before X implodes?
Can it implode? Leon can just keep burning money to keep it alive. It’s going to probably be funded by the government soon anyway.
I highly doubt it’ll ever be funded by the government.
It wouldn’t surprise me. He just partners with Truth Social and says that TS and Xitter will be the new government communication method and should be funded by the government. Probably will say it’s more efficient or something.
This is going to be a corruption free for all.
Sure, but there are all kinds of issue with that. First, Trump has significant investments in TS, so having the government fund that would be a massive conflict of interest. Second, conservatives love to rail on places like NPR getting public funding, and funding X is a bit too much of an about-face IMO.
You may be right, but I think it’s more likely than say deporting 10 million immigrants, or cutting spending by more than discretionary spending, or a number of things that people think are likely to happen. It’s not like conservative rags are actually going to tell their readers the truth anyway.
Yeah, my coworkers were kind of excited about Trump cutting $2T, and I tried to explain to them that’s not feasible with the way budgets are set up. They could maybe cut $1T if they really went deep, but to get anything more, they’d have to cut SS, Medicare, and the military, and Trump said that’s off limits.
I doubt they’ll hit $500B. They might get $2T over 10 years (so $200B/year) though, which I guess is how Congress likes to quantify spending changes to lessen the blow.
Yeah, you’re right. Trump would never do anything that’s a conflict of interest.
Same for Reddit, still very much alive apparently.
(I’m not going back, I’m happy here)
Yeah, and it’s doing really well since it’s IPO, basically tripling since IPO and it even rose nearly 6% today. As much as Lemmy wishes it would die, it’s just not happening.
I’m still here because I’m stubborn, but Reddit is absolutely a thing.
The same is true for X, though things are looking a bit worse for X than for Reddit right now since a lot of people are leaving. But it’ll likely stabilize with the new administration, and I guess we’ll see whether it’s able to get back to growing.
journalists flocking to a site built on the backs of trans people and they’ll still refuse to hire/interview trans people when talking about trans issues.
I’m not serially online enough to understand what you mean, can you expand on this?
trans people are the reason why there’s robust safety and moderation tools on bsky but journalists, more often than not, refuse to hire or bring on trans people to discuss trans issues.
This is interesting. Why build on the backs? Did trans people contribute to it a lot, or are we talking about the early user base?
trans people (and sex workers too) were early adopters who left twitter for it and helped shaped the block list, safety features, and moderation system that it boasts today
Wow, that’s good to know. Did you know the blocking feature in Activity Pub also ended up there because of queer and feminist people?
Also reminds me of Party Block, a discontinued Twitter blocking app developed by a feminist tech-startup. And Shinigami Eyes of course. The blocking system of BlueSky seems to have best of both worlds. This is exciting!
“Journalists flock to yet another proprietary, commercial platform as the last becomes increasingly ‘toxic’ for reasons unknown.”
Flock to wherever the critical mass of the herd is moving, in this case the very guy that caused their troubles in the first place.
Those are the very people supposed that are supposed to inform us and warn us of upcoming threat as well as mobilize the general population to defend against them.
But again they lead the population to the slaugtherhouse.
The death of journalism in the beginning of the 00s is certainly the first thread unravelling our civilizations in favour of the hype con-mens and their billionaires backers and other monarchs trying to swallow humanity whole.
All this effort, yet we don’t even resist…
Dude, what ?
I think I was clear enough … but ok fine
chatgpt.com/…/674e9f43-b38c-8005-983b-52b292558f2…
The commenter is expressing a deep critique of modern journalism and society at large, suggesting that journalists are failing in their responsibilities and are complicit in societal decline. Here’s a breakdown of what the commenter likely means:
#“Flock to wherever the critical mass of the herd is moving”
The commenter is criticizing journalists for following trends or popular movements (the “herd”) without critical thought. In this case, they’re pointing out the irony of journalists leaving X (formerly Twitter) for Bluesky, which is owned by Jack Dorsey, the same individual who they believe contributed to the issues with X in the first place.
#“Those are the very people supposed to inform us and warn us of upcoming threats”
Journalists are traditionally seen as watchdogs of society—tasked with investigating and exposing wrongs, informing the public of dangers, and holding power to account. The commenter believes that journalists are failing in this role and instead are following the crowd or serving the interests of the powerful.
#“Bow again they lead the population to the slaughterhouse”
This is a metaphor suggesting that journalists, instead of protecting society or providing guidance, are leading people into harmful or exploitative systems (like Bluesky, which the commenter views as another “slaughterhouse” similar to X). They argue that journalists are enabling the public’s exploitation rather than resisting it.
#“The death of journalism in the beginning of the 00s”
The commenter seems to argue that journalism has been in decline since the early 2000s, likely referring to trends like the rise of sensationalist media, the collapse of traditional news revenue models, and the increasing influence of corporate and billionaire-backed interests in the media landscape.
#“Unraveling our civilizations in favor of hype conmen and their billionaire backers”
Here, the commenter criticizes how society has moved toward elevating “hype” (short-term trends, marketing gimmicks, and flashy tech solutions) and “conmen” (figures like tech CEOs or opportunistic influencers) who are supported by billionaires. They argue that this is undermining democratic values and public institutions, leading to a general unraveling of civilization.
#“Trying to swallow humanity whole”
This phrase likely reflects their belief that powerful individuals or entities (tech billionaires, corporations, or modern elites) are consolidating power and control, exploiting humanity for their own benefit, and eroding societal structures.
“All this effort, yet we don’t even resist”
The commenter laments the lack of resistance or pushback from the general public or journalists against these harmful trends. They suggest that society is passively accepting exploitation and harm instead of fighting back.
#In Summary:
The commenter believes that journalists, who should be resisting harmful trends and informing the public, are instead complicit in perpetuating systems of exploitation (like Bluesky or X) controlled by the very figures responsible for creating societal problems. This lack of resistance reflects a broader societal failure to stand up against powerful entities that are eroding civilization for their own gain.
#You said: Why is this seen as a failure of the journalistic profession in particular ?
Can journalist really be expected to the understand the nuance and the weight of consequence of the architecture of the “public square” that they choose ?
In this case, privately owned “monarchical” centralized social media platform with one individual assuming complete control of all language and the means of mass communication of the entire intelligentsia ?
Is it fair to expect journalists to understand the weight and consequence of their actions ?
#ChatGPT said:
The commenter’s critique stems from the high expectations placed on the journalistic profession and the role it plays in democratic societies. Journalists are often seen as both watchdogs of power and facilitators of public discourse, which places an ethical and intellectual burden on them to understand the broader implications of their decisions and actions. However, your question raises important points about the fairness and feasibility of holding journalists to such a high standard, especially in complex situations like the architecture of the “public square.” Why is this seen as a failure of journalism?
#The Role of Journalists as Informers and Guides:
Journalism has traditionally been tasked with more than just reporting facts. Journalists are expected to critically a
Conclusion:
The commenter’s critique reflects a broader frustration with the state of journalism and society, but it may oversimplify the challenges journalists face. While it is fair to hold journalists accountable for the choices they make, it is also important to recognize the systemic nature of the problem. Addressing issues like the centralization of digital public spaces and the concentration of power in the hands of tech billionaires requires more than individual action—it calls for collective awareness, interdisciplinary collaboration, and structural reform.
I have an even shorter summary. The viewership are on bluesky, and not on Mastodon, so that’s where the journalists must go, end of mystery. No evil conspiracy required.
What kind of journalist just follows the herd? Haven’t they learned from Twitter that their participation in the platform, is what enpowers it. And if they can’t put that to good use, what good are they as journalists? Just slaugtherhouse hypemen? As if we needed anymore of those??
Missed a few points for not using: in summation lmao
I hope that form of response doesn’t become a trend as scrolling through the wall of text will become irritating fast. But the level of snark is hilarious the first time you see it. I wonder if instead someone could set up a “lmgtfy” but for gpt, a lmgpttfy, so the snark could just be a link.
I dunno I think it demonstrates the point nicely. that the majority of people on the internet lack basic reading comprehension skills. which is fairly ironic.
Wait what happened here? Did the GPT understand what the hooman did not? R O F L
I mean, what’s the alternative? Mastodon culturally could not get its shit together enough to be a viable alternative.
Shit, they can do a lemmy or kbin instance, it would fit their format anyways. Post link from their domain, and it gets shared across the network.
Oh shut up with that.
You act like there’s some kind of alternative which there isn’t. Mastodon, which I’m sure you were going to mention, absolutely does not count because it’s a nightmare to use and they haven’t bothered to fix any of its problems.
So there is no viable alternative.
Also because it’s so awful to use, no one does use it, and so no one’s on the platform. After all, journalists need to go where the viewers are.
There is zero point being smug about your open source platform, if no one uses your open source platform.
Okay then, hope people won’t complain when things go to shit again
Just forever on march towards the inevitable due to convenience
You do realise people would’ve switched to mastodon if it weren’t so inconvenient? People don’t care about the long term projections of Bluesky. They want Muskless Twitter and they got Muskless Twitter. Simple as that
I’m just really tired of telling people about the obvious, and every time history keeps repeating
I don’t believe it’s just convenience, it’s as you said, people don’t care about the long term. In anything.
A big corporate platform (or whatever else, like, say, oil companies vs climate protesters) will always have more resources, whether it’s for development or marketing, so people will always have to be a bit willing to not have full convenience for a better world
If we don’t think about the long term, what are we even thinking of instead?
Social media rises and falls just like any other fad or fashion. It’s a never-ending churn, as people (particularly, young people) inevitably crave something novel. There’s little use in fighting the cycle, just as there’d be little use in fighting the trendy choices of a teenager.
It’s frustrating to watch people en masse continue to make choices that don’t make sense. It turns out that a lot of people are much more driven to follow the crowd than to have (let alone stand by) personal principles or rational decisions. Thankfully, we’re not obligated to be like that. There’s always some sort of counter-culture that bucks the main trends, and honestly? That’s where the most interesting people tend to be.
If you feel driven to educate people on the futility of trends, then by all means, go for it. I just know it can be draining, and not everyone is going to be receptive. On the plus side, you sound like a rational person who actually thinks about their decisions - in a world full of followers, that can be pretty powerful.
Correct me if I’m wrong but as far as I can tell you have a sample size of one. Twitter.
Twitter went bad, that’s hardly indicative of a trend
News outlets should be spinning up their own federated social media instances, so that THEY control their own platform, akin to a website, or email addresses.
That solves all of their issues with it.
No it doesn’t. No software is perfect.
All of these journalists have a website they can post on already. Their companies site.
How are you on the internet and yet unaware of the concept of advertising?
No one is publishing articles on social media, they are linking to articles, that are on their website, as a form of advertising.
Ten years later
"Journalists flock from Bluesky…
No elon… literally all that matters
Until he also buys Bluesky.
According to CNN, X is the most ideologically balanced of the social media platforms (party affiliation stats are at 1:25).
I’m not saying that this makes X good, I’m saying it makes it interesting. Most social media sites lean left of center or very hard to the right, yet X seems to have found a balance. Or maybe it’s in transition into being a far right platform, idk, but at least as of this moment, it’s pretty balanced. Users are down, but it seems the current userbase is more balanced than it was.
That has little to do with whether X is “toxic,” but I do think it’s an interesting statistic to discuss.
I think this whole concept speaks to how differently we all use social networks. For some, it’s a passive news source. For others, it’s entertainment. For others, it’s a place to be social.
Ideological balance is the least important feature for me in picking a social network. I’m there to joke around and talk to interesting people. In real life, my friends and I don’t go “You know what bar we should go to? That new ideologically balanced one down on 2nd St.” (and then my horny friend says we should go to the bar where he met a hot girl once and we end up at TikTok^1^, AGAIN).
^1^ That’s a joke. I’m 40 and my friends pick bars based on proximity, beer selection, and how long they have the baby sitter for.
I’m more interested in ideological balance, because I’m looking for social media to curate news sources for me. If all I’m getting is conservative or progressive articles, it’s not doing its job.
I had a pretty good setup on Reddit with just the right subs to get a good ideological balance (despite Reddit being pretty left leaning), but I bailed when they pulled the API BS and I’m staying away due to their data harvesting. Lemmy is much worse than Reddit as far as bias goes, but it’s better than nothing I suppose. I’ve had to actually go back and follow news sources to rebalance my media consumption, which is a pain because there’s so much BS on news sites.
I don’t want to be social, and if I want entertainment, I’ll play video games or watch a movie/TV show. I just want to stay informed and hear other peoples’ takes on current events, ideally from a diverse set of perspectives. And yet, my main options are left wing or right wing sources, both of whom will misrepresent stuff and nobody will correct them.
I’m probably not going back to Twitter/X because I hate the format, but I am happy to see that at least someone thinks it’s somewhat balanced. I’m working on my own Reddit/Lemmy alternative with the express goal to make it easier to get a balanced feed, so hopefully some day I’ll be able to eat my cake and have it too.
Common decency and skeptical thinking skew left. So forced equilibrium actually promotes evil.
I think you’re saying that because that’s what your political persuasion is. If I asked someone on the right, they’d give me a similar answer with a different justification.
I’m not a fan of left vs right mudslinging, I’m a fan of well thought out policy based on facts. Calling someone else’s ideas bad doesn’t make yours good, in fact it makes me want to disregard yours. It turns out both sides have some decent ideas, as well as a lot of stupid ones, and I’d like to focus on the good.
I can’t accept that anyone accepts or rejects any party’s platform wholesale, they just pick the one that they think goes in the better direction at the time. Some think Democrats are right more than the GOP and thus are loyal to that party, and the same is true in the other direction. A lot of people sit somewhere in the middle, and they’re the ones that decide elections.
That said, forced anything can absolutely promote evil. But tweaks to encourage more diversity is welcome. It’s hard to tell which it is at Twitter/X, but I’m hopeful that Musk actually wants X to be a bastion of free speech where people from all sides can make their case, but also where blatant hate isn’t accepted. I don’t think that’s what he’s actually going for since he seems to just want a platform for ideas he agrees with, but I’m hopeful nonetheless. I don’t and probably won’t use Twitter/X, so it’s a moot point.
Have a link to the actual article and not some rando with a video without context?
I don’t think there’s an article, at least I couldn’t find one. I tried to find the original source, but internet searches suck these days (or maybe I’ve lost my touch).
Here’s a YT video that talks about it, but it’s also quite biased. The two anchors here are conservative and “libertarian” (I think Robbie Suave is more conservative than he claims). And here’s Sky News YT video about it (right-wing UK media IIRC).
I wish I had more to go on, and I’d really like to see the original story, but there you go.
So, it mostly doesn’t mirror US demographics then, as the US, as a whole, skews away from the GOP.
Yes, I get it, “but the ballots”… ballot cast are not a 1:1 for the party lean of the US as a whole.
They also skew away from the Democratic Party. Look at approval ratings for Biden and Trump if you don’t believe me, both were absolutely terrible, and Congress is arguably worse. I think most people hate both parties, but the system is rigged to support a two-party system.
If we look at issues, I think most people lean a bit more progressive on social issues and pretty moderate on fiscal issues. Even in my very red state, there are tons of pride flags out during pride month, and our conservative governor was openly supportive of trans issues (esp. kids). But neither party seems to do much to actually progress social issues, so I think people just end up getting pissed off. Democrats push on climate change and Republicans push tax cuts, when we really just want to legalize marijuana and let people marry whoever they want.
Certainly an interesting statistic but one thing to keep in mind is that Elon Musk has control over the algorithm and he uses it to boost right wing causes. So even if the Twitter has an equal number of users from both sides one side is getting an unfair advantage. Sources: cybernews.com/…/x-algorithm-changed-musk-boost-ri… vanityfair.com/…/x-has-disproportionately-pushed-… theverge.com/…/musk-trump-endorsement-x-boosting-…
Perhaps it’s because he’s boosting right wing causes that the numbers have balanced.
Again, I’m not saying this is a good thing, merely that it’s interesting. I would like a platform that’s properly diverse, and this is one interesting metric. However, given that total userbase has dropped, I wonder if it’s more attrition than anything that caused the balance. In any case, it’ll be interesting to see where it ends up, and hopefully it’s not just another Truth Social…
The problem is if he is boosting right-wing viewpoints and suppressing left-wing viewpoints then all the casual viewer ends up seeing is the right-wing viewpoints.
So just because left-wing content is on there doesn’t mean people can easily access or find it.
So it’s not really balanced in any way.
I honestly haven’t used Twitter/X in any meaningful capacity, so I don’t know what that looks like. But if he continually adjusts the algorithm to show a good mix, that would be a good thing. If he keeps pushing right wing stuff, it’ll end up like Truth Social.
If the CNN report is accurate (and I have no reason to suspect it’s not), then it’s probably in a good place. We’ll see in a few months though.
Have you been living under a rock or something? He isn’t doing that, stop trying to argue a situation that doesn’t exist. He’s pushing right-wing extremist propaganda in order to get near Trump.
He’s not balancing anything.
I don’t use Twitter/X, I just see outrage here on Lemmy and other left-leaning media orgs like CNN. So I take that outrage with a grain of salt, especially since those same groups disliked Musk before he bought Twitter. I dislike Musk too, but I try to not let that color my perception of what he’s actually accomplished.
So I’m hesitant to take those complaints at face value. I didn’t like Twitter before Musk bought it, and I like it less now, but that doesn’t mean a whole lot, which is why I rely on statistics like these to help cut through the BS from the big media firms.
If you can point to actual tangible facts and not cherry picked content, we can have a discussion. I provided mine, and the stats look promising.
I’d like you to demonstrate where this discussion I linked to “cherry-picked content”. I do not believe you are arguing in good faith and are trying the very tired “I’m a centralist” argument. That road ran out about a decade ago.
I’m going to be in honest, I’m not going to go out of my way to try and find information that is very easily publicly available. Your refusal to be even moderately informed about current events is your problem, not mine.
I didn’t accuse you specifically of cherry-picking content, but a lot of the posts I see here on Lemmy about Twitter/X being terrible seem very much like cherry-picking.
I’m not a centrist, but I do disagree with both parties. I consider myself ideologically as a left-leaning Libertarian, and I honestly think more people are closer to Libertarian than either major party. Hence why I’m interested in hearing discussion from both sides of the proverbial aisle, I think a lot gets missed in our stupid 2-party system.
Twitter/X isn’t “current events,” it’s a social media app. Yes, people post about current events, but there are many other ways to stay informed of current events than that particular medium. I have avoided Twitter in the past because I don’t like the format, and I’ll continue to avoid it now that it’s relabled as “X” because I still don’t like the format, and I also don’t like the CEO. But I also don’t like opinions being passed around as facts.
I’ll never understand liberals need to distance themselves from those who disagree with their opinions while simultaneously asking for their vote. You really need to engage and find common ground with those you disagree with to win their vote.
People have been trying that for years without apparent success. Let’s try shunning the antisocial people instead. We didn’t defeat the nazis by being nice and friendly to them
Besides, journalists being on twitter is one large reason anyone cares about twitter. Getting people to care about a platform not owned by the first lady might be a good idea
There are no Nazis. You sound just like Putin justifying his invasion of Ukraine.
I didn’t claim there are any nazis, read again.
There are certainly nazis on twitter though, now that you brought it up, and Musk seems to like them
Dunno about liberals, but I don’t like hanging out at nazi bars.
The problem with having reasonable and respectful discourse with people you disagree with, is that you first have to find people willing to have reasonable and respectful discourse. In real life I’ve met plenty. On Twitter, there are none. They’re mostly just in getting a rise out of libs and lefties. We’ve already been finding that disengaging with them and moving to a platform they don’t have influence over has made them a lot more impotent.