Crossposting here as I consider X a threat to both privacy and freedom

  • Dalaryous@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    So funny to see how a media campaign gets so many sheep following and beleiving without questioning. All they have to scream is fascist repadidly and sheep will repeat.

    While government was in control of Twitter and silenced and censored harvard educated doctors and professors about Covid to push the vaccine and make billions, nobody screamed Twitter was fascist. Or did you forget the twitter files? Suddendly twitter is bad once gov censorship is gone but Facebook/Threads is ok because things gov wants to censor is being censored.

    I’m not saying social media is not bad and yes, needs to be controlled but seriously use a little bit of your brain before blindly repeating someone else’s words. Learn history, see a bit from other angles and maybe think a bit why Twitter is being singled out right now.

    Social media is bad but lack of critical thinking is way way worse.

  • foremanguy@lemmy.ml
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    3 days ago

    Don’t think it’s a good thing to ban anything from anywhere. The best way is to make them realize how bad mainstreams socials are bad. Everyone is concerned about the Elon Musk’s social but nobody care when GAMAM harvest your datas

  • Fusty@lemmy.ml
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    3 days ago

    Why do you people talk about defending and supporting democracy, but never talk about that the population has a right to vote for anti-government people? Democracy is about following the will of the people, and if the majority of the people vote to cut government, eliminate government, and start taking powers away from government rule, democracy says to follow the vote of the people.

    • R00bot@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      3 days ago

      Because we have to defend democracy or it will be eroded. We should not stand by idly as misinformation and corporate interests continue to cripple it. Just because people are voting against their best interests does not mean they are no longer their best interests.

      • Fusty@lemmy.ml
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        3 days ago

        Ahh ok, I see that you’re making a specious argument.

          • Fusty@lemmy.ml
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            3 days ago

            I already said that I get it. You are very clear in your specious statement and I thoroughly understand.you.

      • INeedMana@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Don’t get me wrong, I agree that sometimes freedom has to fight for itself

        have to defend democracy or it will be eroded

        Are we sure this is going to happen? Or it is possible that we got convinced on that by people who don’t care about democracy, only want to be in charge?

        • R00bot@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          23 hours ago

          Yes, I’m sure failing to defend democracy will result in it being eroded. Of course people can use this to their own personal advantage and claim democracy is at stake when it is not. Voters need to be well informed to discern whether those claims are legitimate, or not.

  • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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    3 days ago

    i wonder if elon would prod trump to make good on their threat to defund nato if the eu cancels twitter. how would it impact ukraine?

  • felsiq@lemmy.zip
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    3 days ago

    Fuck that platform, if it dies right now the world will be a better place overnight. That being said, I’m against it being banned - imo if we’re petitioning for anything, it should be to get governments off of it and onto better alternatives.

  • Sam_Bass@lemmy.ml
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    3 days ago

    I also think he should be investigated for buying votes in the recent election.

  • PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml
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    3 days ago

    The EU can and should ban government and business’s from using twitter as part of their official communications. But if private citizens wants to tweet, then sure go for it, even the EU with it’s less then stellar speech record, particularly with the labeling antisemitism, still allows freedom of association.

      • XTL@sopuli.xyz
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        3 days ago

        Blocking, yes. Bans can be more, though. When poor opsec gets you defenestrated or shipped to an offshore entertainment facility, it’s a bit more than an inconvenience.

  • HailSeitan@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Ban surveillance advertising and help speed the demise of the site, or mandate interop and make it easy for those still on it to take their followers with them, but holy fuck bro—calling for a government to ban a communications platform for an entire continent?

  • EngineerGaming@feddit.nl
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    18 hours ago

    We have several major social media banned here, and they’re still popular. All a ban would do would be teaching people what VPNs are… As well as exposing a lot of them to malware, because most people would not be doing research and instead of legitimate, charity-run free censorship evasion tools, they’d be using shady apps from the top of Play Store search results.

    If the ban comes from “up top”, people’s desire to use it will not suddenly disappear. If the people decide to leave en masse on their own - now that’d make an impact.

  • INeedMana@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    I don’t know

    Wouldn’t that enable an angle of “martyr for freedom of speech”?

    And while I agree that it stopped being what it was and we can’t rely on it anymore, wouldn’t that separate EU from the rest of the world given current market share?

    In my opinion: abandon - yes. Ban - no

    • sleen@lemmy.zip
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      3 days ago

      Initially thought the post was an attempt on a joke. But yes, what would banning prove?

      X might be a threat to privacy and freedom but doesn’t Facebook, Microsoft and others do the same. It looks like a poorly developed plan.

      • sibachian@lemmy.ml
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        2 days ago

        in my opinion facebook and microsoft are worse because you can’t optionally avoid them. no matter what you do, you’re still paying for microsoft products through your taxes with money that should go into domestic development. facebook is so insideous that in some countries it is the de-facto internet (because it’s free to use without a paid internet plan/subscription); all hobby communities that i’m aware of now exclusively live on facebook, and forget your grandma having any other means of contact than through facebook messenger and certain companies and services offer facebook messenger only live support. and as a business owner? you don’t have a choice on the matter, facebook (and google) is the only means to advertise nowadays that have actual measurable results on the campaign budget.

        twitter? unless you’re a creative or a connoisseur of creatives, it actually has a lot less relevance than the current drama suggests, otherwise the big alternative platforms wouldn’t have actual relevance and upwards mobility, which they currently do.

    • OneMeaningManyNames@lemmy.ml
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      3 days ago

      In my opinion: abandon - yes. Ban - no

      Perhaps it is time to bring this old post of mine back from the dead? I argue that we have to start a war of attrition on mainstream platforms.

      • INeedMana@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I’m not against this angle. But IMO evangelization and conversions only really worked when backed by the state

        My approach is calmly keep using free platforms, keep degoogling, when sharing information, share the links from those free platforms, so it keeps pinging in general consciousness that these exist. So the next time everyone does suprised pikachu face to what extent our data is used against us, you don’t have to say “see? I told you”. They come to you asking how to do this, what are the limitations and realities of getting free etc

        But, of course, as with everything, diversity is a strength. Some of us should fight, some of us stay calm and keep going on
        I think

    • NarrativeBear@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Abandon would be the best approach. A ban would just make people want to use it more.

      When twitter (now formally know as “X”) was first a thing, the only reason I joined was because private business, city services, and news agencies became a little easier to follow in one unified location. It also made it easier to reach them with quick tweets.

      Maybe the solution is to put a restriction on business, news agencies, and government services from using it?

      • INeedMana@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Maybe the solution is to put a restriction on business, news agencies, and government services from using it?

        But that opens another can of worms. A precedence for a governing body to say which platforms can be used for reaching your audience. I’m afraid the change will have to come from the bottom

        If anything, I’d phrase it “public service messaging has to operate on platforms which don’t require an account to read”. But that doesn’t solve the problem of general culture on the service

    • .Donuts@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Wouldn’t that enable an angle of “martyr for freedom of speech”?

      Could you elaborate on this angle? I’m not very well versed in the rights of companies operating in the EU, but I’m unsure “freedom of speech” is one of them.

      Edit: I did find information about how social media needs to help us protect freedom of speech for all of their users. Currently, X is doing the opposite it seems

      • INeedMana@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Could you elaborate on this angle? I’m not very well versed in the rights of companies operating in the EU, but I’m unsure “freedom of speech” is one of them.

        I rather mean “political discourse”

        There was Twitter. Apart from advertising, the very good thing it brought was free access to information. But not only getting it, also sharing. So we knew about for example Arab Spring or Umbrella protests and more or less what is going on, before news decided to tell us and how to tell us

        Then came Musk, all in white, saying that moderation on Twitter is biased and he’s going to bring it more freedom of speech

        Some time passes and let’s say that now EU does ban X. What’s the next logical thing he’ll say?

        I think it might be something like “see? EU banned X because they didn’t like the truth. For the truth, come to me”. I’m afraid that banning would rather give him power and echo chamber, rather than fixing what is going on

  • idefix@sh.itjust.works
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    3 days ago

    Musk has openly supported right-wing politicians such as Trump and Meloni in Italy

    Not right-wing, far right. Or fascists. Even though Meloni is much more coherent than Trump so it’s difficult to put both of them in the same basket.

  • Bobr@lemmy.libertarianfellowship.org
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    3 days ago

    Let me guess, you think Russia/China/etc. banning websites is bad (because obviously they are doing it due to being authoriatarian regimes and to not let people learn the truth), and EU (or generally any western country) banning websites is good (because obviously it would be done to protect democracy and people from consuming dangerous misinformation)?
    Did I miss anything? :)

    • OneMeaningManyNames@lemmy.ml
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      3 days ago

      Yes, you missed how social media algorithms work, having captivated the attention of whole nations, and carefully control every bit of information that pass in front of your eyes, then some billionaire buying said mechanism and taking part in the government he helped elected, then threatening the nations that have banned him that they will lose the next elections. Did I miss anything?

      Real democracies need to shield themselves from this kind of corporate interference, yet most people don’t even understand how it works, or why Cambridge Analytica was a big hit, or where are these experts now and how they are making a living.

      • Bobr@lemmy.libertarianfellowship.org
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        3 days ago

        Yeah, so just as I said - good guys banning social medias is good because they are the good guys protecting the democracy against bad people and so on, and bad guys banning social medias is bad because they are the bad guys censoring the truth from oppressed people or something.

        No hypocrisy here :)

        • OneMeaningManyNames@lemmy.ml
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          3 days ago

          This is not a matter of opinion, rather than centralized control of information.

          Musk can shadow ban you, for example, nobody granted him that power except he was able to by it.

          This type of social media are a power structure that is despotic in nature, and it is deeply problematic for democracies.

          It is not like a nation state banning a religious minority or an anarchist site. That would be censoring of opinions.

          In the case of Xitter, it is Musk and a team of political advertising engineers doing the censorship. So they are worse than Nazi apologists for example. The latter we only anticipate they will impose censorhip (let alone murder) once they are in power.

          Xitter has that power already at orders of magnitude above what traditional media outlets have. He controls the flow of information. (And he made it a fucking nazi bar right enough).

          But I will grant you that we should not expect nation states to ban Xitter. We should aim for its destruction.

          • 9bananas@lemmy.world
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            21 hours ago

            you’re arguing government action with a user that hails from “@lemmy.libertarianfellowship.org”.

            i don’t foresee a fruitful discussion, mate…

    • tekato@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Pointing out their hypocrisy will not help anybody. The best you can do is sit down and watch this comedy from the sidelines.

      • Bobr@lemmy.libertarianfellowship.org
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        2 days ago

        Pointing out their hypocrisy will not help anybody.

        I choose to, perhaps naively, think that some people might actually recognize how absurd this is, and hopefully change their opinion :)

        The best you can do is sit down and watch this comedy from the sidelines.

        Just “watching comedy from the sidelines” can result in one day waking up in a totalitarian hell :/
        (Not that my shitposting will change much of course :/)