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Marcus Hutchins :verified:

The case for leaving Twitter

"You’re not fighting a war, you’re not stopping Twitter from falling into the hands of the far-right, you’re selling burgers in a Nazi bar, paying more than you profit in rent. Every dollar Twitter makes in ad revenue is a dollar against everything you stand for."

throwawayopinions.io/the-parad

44 comments
Elon Muksis

@malwaretech And then ppl move to another nazi billionaires Twitter 2.

Toni Aittoniemi

@malwaretech One of the best written-out depictions of why leaving X would be a good move.

For those who still care about things of course.

As the writer points out, most people care more for feelings than facts. Up to the point of following a far-right sympathiser down the rabbit hole as far as it goes.

Jack Yan (甄爵恩)

@malwaretech Very well argued, especially the point about helping proliferate hate speech.

Exiled New Yorker - Connie

@malwaretech

Excellent.

Thank you so much for putting it all so well.

DELETED

@malwaretech Are there still a lot of people who actually think they’re helping by staying? Real question, haven’t been there in months.

Steven Rosenthal

@DontMindMe @malwaretech There are. I suspect it’s mostly people with a large following they’re reluctant to give up.

DELETED

@stevenrosenthal @malwaretech I take some comfort in the fact that they feel the need to be defensive about it. Maybe there’s one huge #twittermigration coming yet.

Poirot Fella

@malwaretech I would probably ask the cat accounts that I follow to leave. It's no use of them staying there on Twit.

Olver :neurodiversity:

@malwaretech It's worth mentioning that Musk was hired by petrodollar owners to lay off as many people as possible and end the culture of employees playing ping-pong.

Jeff the Alien

@malwaretech@infosec.exchange

I'll put it more bluntly!

It has been well over a year since space Karen bought Twitter and turned it into a speak freely. If you haven't left yet you are complicit in it all:

- All of the misinformation.
- All of the outright lies.
- All of the hurt.
- All of it.

All Twitter users are now responsible. Period.

Mattsodon

@malwaretech that’s why I left, but man is it hard. I miss the shit out of that site on a regular basis.

The MaryEllenCarter

@Marrsodom @malwaretech I don't miss the site, I miss all the friends I made during my 15 years there—especially since 2020, when I had more social interaction there than IRL!

Many are still there, but I'm not—and the rest have scattered to the four winds. Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, Tribel, CounterSocial… I can't participate in all of them. I bitterly despise Musk for destroying my online world.

ja2ui0

@malwaretech this analogy is perfect.

I understand the case for artists and folks who depend on vast immersion for their livelihood.

As an owner of a design studio and a technologist myself, I have to insist that no amount of income is worth sacrificing my morals for a few extra dollars.

Also, completely subjectively, Mastodon appears to have a WAY lopsided userbase with regards to the demographic most likely to patronize bespoke creators and consume our products.

Don't sell burgers to nazis.

Donnchadh

@malwaretech second paragraph and already you're calling everyone Nazis (everyone you don't agree with that is).

Are there actual Nazis there? most likely yes, as with everywhere.

But what is considered phobic these days is just ridiculous. Everything must be debated especially if it's uncomfortable.

DELETED

@donnchadh @malwaretech Radicals want to punch Nazi's like a wicked game of whack-a-mole, but there aren't enough real life Nazis to satisfy the demand, so they keep lowering the threshold of what qualifies as a Nazi until they, themselves become the very authoritarian fascists they hate, punching at anyone and anything that pops up in front of them. How absurd is that?

Xymon

@malwaretech this is why I was so disappointed in the ADL announcement that they would be giving the Nazi site more money.

DELETED

@malwaretech Everything is a fucking nazi to Democrats. Can you people find a new key word for your klan? It's getting old.

Mike

@malwaretech

People remain because the MSM is so untrustworthy, they are searching for news / opinion that partisan mainstream outlets won't report. The unvarnished truth, if you will

Anon

@malwaretech did you not hear Elon. He doesn't own twitter. Irl he never did.
Elons dog owns twitter.
Just a shame he never learned to train his dog.. 😘

Ceremus

@malwaretech I will always advocate for people to find alternatives to twtr, at best it's an insufferable place flooded with annoying BS bluecheck accounts, at worst it's fundamentally unsafe without the use of a robust blocklist.

But I still don't buy the argument that simply using the site enriches the platform (or Elon), because it fails to take into account how catastrophically dire twtr's financials really are.

Ceremus

@malwaretech
Musk's leveraged buyout meant the company was on the hook to pay a debt bill of $1 billion every year just to keep the lights on. Twitter had only been profitable two years in its entire operation, in the before-times when ad revenues hadn't fallen across the board and the company's reputation was better than dog vomit. The way things have been going I'll be surprised if the company isn't repossessed by the banks before the end of the year.

Ceremus

@malwaretech
I highly recommend this video from Qualia Redux, a former professional accountant, if you'd like to see the number breakdowns.
youtube.com/watch?v=zYg0remH-D

Benjamin

@ceremus @malwaretech It’s a straightforward argument. Since most of their revenue is from ads, they are selling your eyeballs. And if you post, that content draws in other views.

One viewer doesn’t matter, but one million do. And if the right 10,000 people leave, it could be enough to send the platform into a clear death spiral.

Ceremus

@birwin
As said, I'm happy to see people leave the platform, but I believe anyone who thinks it's not f***ed either way has a rosey and uninformed view of its financials.

They are MASSIVELY over-leveraged, they have driven eyeballs away from their ads, they've probably lost ad partners, and they're not making that up through existing ad revenue and their lukewarm verified subscriptions. The debt Musk saddled it with is an albatross, unless he pays for it from his own pocket it'll go default.

72mz

@malwaretech
Only foxnews and mr pillow belong on twit.

Felix 🇺🇦🚴‍♂️

@malwaretech
Karl Popper’s paradox of tolerance.

Very interesting article ⬆️ beside to the Twitter/X topic.
#X #TwitteRx #tolerance #sociology #phylosophy

DELETED

@malwaretech the purpose of X, is only a social media company as a controlled entity. Similar to Starlink posing as a service, maybe for some, for now. The intent is to own the means of communication: To Have a degree of Control. Start as a good tech cause, end as a Rupert Murdoch.

Anthony Ho

@malwaretech this is my second post here and although I agree with you in principle, pushing that seemingly absolutist approach might make those still on X not really want to leave. Perhaps another approach may be better?

🫡

@malwaretech Interesting follow up question: At what point does a site become a nazi supporting site? Mastadon is used a lot by nazis because many of them have been banned from twitter. Does supporting or contributing or maybe even posting to mastadon because mean you support the whole mastadon project as well as all the nazi spin offs? Doesn't mastadon's popularity kind of mean nazis might get boosted too, even if mastadon instances are more separate?

🫡

@malwaretech All I ever see here is take after take. At this rate I think it will devolve into reposting and complaining about takes from nazis eventually. The real problem is probably the culture that twitter has created - it's just takes. And everyone just wants hot takes. The whole culture just fucking sucks.

Benjamin

@o7 @malwaretech Well, X is a platform designed to boost alt-right content and is at best ambivalent about Nazi content.

It’s one thing to be a general purpose communication platform that gets Nazi content as an unfortunate side effect. It’s totally different to encourage it.

Tom_Huth

@malwaretech Found this in the German Spiegel online today.
Clown Elon Murks (German Murks means botch)
Very good and correct representation
spiegel.de/fotostrecke/cartoon

T Kennedy

@malwaretech why are all the "respectable" journalists still on there? is there really nowhere else for them to go or do they enjoy the company?

Neil Brutalist

@magnusrobotfighter @malwaretech Mainstream journalists absolutely love writing hagiography for reprehensible people. This is probably because, for decades, getting an exclusive interview with a mass murderer, dictator, or serial killer was the fast track to winning an award and the plaudits of your peers. Except now it’s so ingrained they’ll make do with someone who thinks trans people shouldn’t be allowed in bathrooms.

Karl

@malwaretech Twitter today reminds me of old YouTube (around 2012) where it was filled with brainwashy right wing propaganda.
Pre Elon my feed was filled with cyber security, now it’s filled with extreme right wing videos. I can’t stand it.

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