@irwin tbf privatization amd commercialization of actual public space(s) isn't entirely unheard of, but I generally agree.

@irwin There are no public squares in the US

@irwin Sure wasn’t

@irwin *Adolph Ochs has entered the chat*

@irwin THIS.

@irwin so true. 👍

@irwin

The Tragedy of the Public Square.

@irwin The Birdsite was never a public square. No centralized platform is.

@irwin people called it the public square, but the whole joke was trying to explain anything happening on twitter IRL made you sound totally insane.

@irwin
If a corporation can own the public square then same.

@irwin

@irwin Right. Also the analogy only works if the public square is a place where everyone yells each other in an endless game of toxic one-upmanship, and where walking through involves the risk of random strangers hurtling rotten vegetables at you.

@irwin fair point.

@irwin if a few corps own entite sectors from seed to the bakery it's not capitalism either. It's a closer to a feudal estate or centrally planned cokmand a control monopoly

@irwin A mall... along with Ts, Cs and security guards 🙄☹️

@irwin the rich dude is the very fortunate village idiot

@werwolf @irwin Not sure I follow. Public would imply gov. owned/controlled. The gov rents out public space (e.g. you can buy a parking pass to park your car on public space). Why couldn’t the gov sell off public space? I seem to recall Greece doing that with some whole islands.

@irwin 👏 👏 👏

@irwin yup. It was always the mall food court, not the Forum Romanum.

@irwin excellent point!

@irwin pretty much

@irwin

thats why ist .com Not .org or .public

@irwin Did you really think twitter was the public square??

@irwin This is such a good point.

@irwin 👍

@irwin THAT PART!

@irwin right?

@irwin private property👀

@irwin More like a POPS (Privately Owned Public Space), so pernicious in urban planning these days.

@irwin

Facts.

@irwin wow that’s solid thank you

@irwin you’re not wrong

@irwin it was never a public, you just happened to like who owned it.

@irwin
Thats the thing when some rich dude declares his place a public square after setting up some billboards and later on sells it to another rich dude wo doesn't like the idea or thinks that the billboards won't make him enough.

.@irwin public squares are performed, they aren’t just legal distinctions. it was a public square because we all treated it as such and it will cease to become a public square until we can’t.

@irwin

@irwin yeah, but ‘Murica.

@irwin Exactly right.

@irwin But it's still a sheep 😂 #Twitter

@irwin amen to that :akko_fistup:

@irwin I mean yeah, but have you seen how cheap some politicians are to buy?

@irwin 🫳🏽🎤

@irwin that’s why he bought it - to destroy it.

@irwin nice

@irwin But it doesn’t mean it wasn’t *used* as the public square.

@irwin Well put sir!

@irwin The "public square" you are talking about was always owned by a company. So it never was a public square, it's was just a website.

@irwin

@irwin Yes it was. The local government decided to sell public space. It is a easy concept.

@irwin Exactly. And I heard well-intentioned folks say, "stay and fight for Twitter!" Why? Would one say that about Facebook? It was never a _public_ forum. Mastodon, etc, is far closer to that and anarchist in spirit.

@irwin Rich dudes have been buying literal, physical, formerly-public squares in London for 2 decades. In Salt Lake City, several blocks of Main Street were sold to the LDS church and privatized as a non-public promenade subject to restrictions on speech, dress, and last I checked, gum chewing. All to say, what the public square is and isn't does seem to fluctuate in both time and space, and sometimes what a thing was remains unclear until it is lost.

#publicsquare #privatization #enclosure

@irwin the gov only consumes $2T per year they couldn't have built Twitter! they are busy not fixing potholes and not fixing policing!

@irwin He CAN'T. He tried to buy the thing it was located on, and that cost him $44BIL. But what gave it value (the town square) was the COMMUNITY it created. That community has now fled the space it created. Much of it has been absorbed by Mastodon. Twitter is no more. There's just a rusting hulk falling apart, faster and faster, till the end.

@irwin Twitter was owned by a very rich man before Musk. It is run by fabulously wealthy people. Who make many times the average American income, and who live in one of the most expensive areas in America.

A public square requires access for all to openly debate a topic. All side should be able to speak. All sides should have a seat. Then people can choose who is right from the strength of the arguments.

@irwin

we should make it public again...