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Top-level
Daniel Yeo
@aral I totally hear what you're saying and agree wholeheartedly. But as I reeducate my social media reflexes here, and revaluating my engagement on Twitter - I'm wondering whether it would be better to export new behaviours back into that world rather than turn away? Lots of internal conflict about this concept... 26 comments
Daniel Yeo
@aral yes, I hear and see that. But sadly it's not going away. It is top down but it is we are also still the content. And in many ways its a mirror to the duality of mankind.
dmhindle
@yukinosaru @aral I have great hope in a kinder human nature, both because it is the only way we will survive and because our own society shows a halting and uneven evolution in that direction. But the many people who feel they benefit from the current systems of power and privilege are not going to change and they are going to fight changes to the systems they depend on. Unlike our planet, we can leave the world of Twitter to create a better one. 
Aral Balkan
@yukinosaru I mean, by all means if you want to infiltrate/sabotage that system, go for it. Sabotage is the only legitimate means of changing such a system from the inside (but I’m not necessarily convinced of its long-term effectiveness). Personally, I prefer to create. To work on alternatives. To try and help build the kind of world I want to live in. I’ve railed against that system long enough and let me tell you, it’s a soul-destroying affair. I still call it out but my focus is creating.
Eirliani A Rahman
@aral @yukinosaru Beautifully said, Aral. Yes, there is much value in creating indeed.
Daniel Yeo
@aral I'm not really advocating for sabotage, I've muddled two thought streams there. My main point is that I do find that there is still value there and I'm questioning whether and how my own behaviour has contributed to the toxicity and how I might do things differently. I too believe that creation is the better choice and I've also tried to build and live the world that I want to see, although in a different domain. Interrogating my own instincts and behaviours is part of my growth journey. 
Dave Lane 🇳🇿
@aral @yukinosaru agreed - trying to change a broken system from within generally sees the idealists who go into it with that aim (to justify the pangs of conscience felt when taking such highly remunerated roles) ground down & recast as a rationalising apologist, redefining 'good' so that it includes them and their behaviour. Extreme cognitive dissonance. I've seen it many times over the last 20 years. The system sabotages idealists with far greater certainty than idealists sabotage the system.
FinchHaven
"Or. Infiltrate, poison the data pool, switch the dynamic up?" Oh, please Stop dreaming You and what Seven Nation Army is going to generate enough tweet volume to "poison the data pool, switch the dynamic up?" You're only helping #ElonMusk to bail out a sinking ship
catjungle
@FinchHaven @yukinosaru @aral @flyswatter If no one is there, it won't be relevant. If everyone with a conscience just left, it would be Truth Social within a month. It's so easy to migrate the whole operation here. I don't understand why people don't just do it. They have to stay and enrich Elon and the fascists and keep him and his "own the conversation" relevant. They can't be inconvenienced in the slightest. They are complicit. 
myrmepropagandist
At 4am in NYC I wake up to catch the early bus. When I'd look at twitter at that hour it was totally filled with all these students and scientists and nurses from Nigeria-- They are already at work and in class and taking about the news, papers, jokes. And I made friends that way too. I learned new things. That's the power of a network with 100s of millions of people. 
Jon
@futurebird @aral yep. I've made lots of friends on Twitter and Facebook -- and reconnected with old acquaintances as well. There are plenty of good critiques of Twitter, FB, and surveillance capitalism-based social networks ... but this is not one. 
Steven Bodzin bike & subscribe
@futurebird @aral yeah I have Twitter connections in Nigeria, iNaturalist connections in Australia, and Facebook connections in remote areas of Colombia and Peru. LinkedIn has let me connect with corporate leaders in Chile and El Salvador. Corporate social media is bad on many ways but it's also a miracle. Maybe your job doesn't require constant global outreach. But don't preach at me about thinking small.
Steven Bodzin bike & subscribe
@futurebird @aral It's a lot like cars. I make structural critiques of cars and driving. But when I do drive, I keep a window open almost all the time. I almost never speed. I stop completely at stop signs and let pedestrians and bikers go first. It's possible to use a bad system conscientiously. And while I have biked across the USA and taken other long trips, I now have a job. So if I am going NYC-Montreal, I usually go by car.
Steven Bodzin bike & subscribe
@futurebird @aral it isn't that hard to use social media conscientiously. Yes, you are going against the design. But if you don't learn how to operate against malicious or predatory designs I don't know how you live in this world. That said I've never enjoyed going viral. When I had a blog it had 100 daily readers and that was plenty. I get the pleasures of small streams where I can get to know the other fish. But I amv also desperate for easy access to the wide ocean. 
Rhombus Ticks
@aral @yukinosaru Um, that is totally wrong. It has been changed and we will change it.
Daniel Yeo
@CheckingInOcassionally @aral that first line is genuine. I do agree, but I'm genuinely asking myself the question. Playing devil's advocate to myself is important to see behind my own paradigm. It's too easy to blame the site and its overlords. But ultimately aren't "we the people" the content providers. Can't we become more savvy to the dark forces and nurture different ones?
Daniel Yeo
I think this question matter more than we might think because it's a microcosm of the real world challenges that we face. Except we don't have an alternative to migrate to...
CheckingInOcassionally
@yukinosaru @aral The alternative to migrate to is called Life.
FinchHaven
Any activity -- any activity at all -- that you drive back *into* #Twitter benefits one and one person only Want to guess who? Period Full stop #Musk needs the traffic volumes and replies and likes to pump up #Twitter's stats to dupe advertisers into maybe sticking around You're just helping Musk bail water out of an otherwise sinking ship Stop trying to overthink it
ekes
The main purpose of the fediverse is decentralization and unentanglement of paying a service with your self-determination.
Pensive™️
@ekes @yukinosaru @aral
ekes
@PensiveTM @yukinosaru @aral The key is you can leave without giving up on your circle and other instances can block them if they misbehave. |
Gregory's Server
@yukinosaru You can’t export behaviours into that world. It’s a top-down, not bottom-up, world driven by venture capitalists chasing exponential growth and profits investing in the most extractive and exploitative means possible of obtaining them. It’s a corporate world of CEO kings where their word is law. That world is what it is. Not you nor anyone else can change it. It’s like asking factory farms to be kinder. They can’t. It’s their nature to be cruel. (All they can hope for is better PR.)