45 Comments

I remain bitter that this awful person took something so many of us loved and turned it to complete shit. I spent 14 years building a community on there - friends in real life, friends from LiveJournal (my knees are fine, thanks for asking), and people I met through Twitter itself. And Apartheid Clyde has ruined it. And there's no consensus on where to go next, so my community that I worked hard to build and truly loved is dead. Is it dumb to grieve a social media site? Maybe, but it doesn't change the feeling. Fuck Elon Musk. I hope he dies sad and alone.

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I have communities on Twitter that cannot exist anywhere else, and others that don’t exist elsewhere yet. I realise this is the pot calling the kettle black, but I cannot feel good about Threads. I’m still active on FB and I have given them plenty of my data and money, I’m sure, but I really don’t feel good about giving up more of my privacy and inviting Meta further into my life. Particularly since many of my communities have been shadowbanned, outright banned, and suppressed on Insta.

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I think grieving the loss of what was a real community for us makes a lot of sense. I made a lot of friends on twitter, most of whom I never met in real life, but who would check on each other when shit was going wrong. That's gone now and it's because of this small dick supervillain.

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And soonish.

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yes to all of this (also I miss the LiveJournal days SO MUCH).

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founding

Twitter's BEEN a cesspool for a minute now. But him being as open as he is about his antisemitism is wild AF. I can't believe neither of his companies have tried to remove him from the board. He's doing EXTREME harm to the public perception of his companies by going full throated nazi.

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Nov 16, 2023·edited Nov 16, 2023

Capitalists are OK with Nazis, it seems. Fascism seems to exist and thrive in a capitalist society the best, and fascists promise them they'll still make money (and even make more money) under the 'new regime'...As long as they play ball...

Big business seems to have a "well, not so fast...This might be good for us" attitude towards fascism becoming popular again...The Media certainly has learned (at least in the short term) trump gets more engagement/ad revenue than Biden (or any competent, boring politician).

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This is well stated and deeply depressing.

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Twitter: #SoTrue, say Musk and thousands of users to reams of outright antisemitism.

Tiktok: ♡☆Hey! Listen to what my man Bin Laden said about the Jews. Dude had a point!☆♡

Facebook: the ultimate QAnon and Soros crossover - what DO they know?! Listen, watch, tag yor neighbour and your mom, and leave your comments here! Next up: the Rothschilds - how are THEY connected?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I swear, social media has rotted everyone's God damn minds.

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founding

I try not to judge, but to be quite frank, I am mystified a large number of Pajiba commenters actively sharing Twitter links and yes, I also do not undertsatn the need to have about weekly posts " checking" the status of Twitter. You are all helping a megalomanic racist piece of shit getting what he wants: attention.

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I'll be honest, there's still no other platform where I can find news as quickly as I can on twitter.

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That's literally the only thing that still keeps me on. I follow several DC reporters, and I still get political news fastest via their tweets.

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I’m on threads and I’m drowning (in a good way) in up to date news and political journalists and pundits. Absolutely no need to be on Twitter anymore. I left last November and used Post for awhile but threads is very similar to my twitter experience and I’ve already got the same number of followers (500 plus) that it took a couple years to get on twitter. Also people with blue checks are actually real informative types not white nationalists musk bros Anyway I’m happy.

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I was on threads at the beginning but wasn't getting the same experience. Maybe it's worth taking another look now that it's had time to settle and get established.

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Oh yeah, it’s grown by leaps and bounds and full of political news. No comparison to its first few weeks.

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Nov 16, 2023·edited Nov 16, 2023

This question is not meant to be combative, but is it really necessary to get political news "the fastest?" In fairness although I was on Twitter for years, I admit I didn't have an emotional or personal connection to it that some folks commenting seem to have/had. I do agree it's a bummer it's died, whenever there was some disaster in my area (fire, or accident for example) Twitter was always the first place to go for immediate info, though at this point I wouldn't trust the accuracy of info I found there!

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It's more that I am learning things as they happen that frequently take days if not weeks to hit the media and I've found I prefer that method. It's not a necessity at all. Simply a preference I developed right around when I was getting live blow by blow updates during Jan. 6 as the insurrection happened from reporters who were there.

And I should specify re my twitter news sources- I don't believe anything on twitter unless it's from a proven source I trust. The few reporters I follow are live tweeting from Congress, etc. I'm not reading random retweets about the war in Israel and nodding along with whatever rando posted it as truth.

As silly as it sounds (since it's barely news), I found out about McCarthy elbowing whathisface in the ribs as it happened, bc I follow the reporter who saw it happen and she was like "Holy shit these guys are children" and live tweeted it.

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Wait, tell me about this elbowing thing!

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Haha one of the (R) House members who voted to oust McCarthy was pontificating to a reporter in the Capitol Hill hallways. McCarthy walked by with his entourage and I guess elbowed the dude in the kidneys as he passed? The guy who got elbowed lost it and chased after McCarthy shouting at him and it was basically a HS locker room only a lot more pathetic.

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I like posting cute animal videos and sometimes I can't find a video I saw on twitter anywhere else. So I post the twitter link and hope people's distaste for twitter will be overcome by the adorable animal video. It's up to the viewer if they want to click on it or not.

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Pissed at the pod save America guys although they post as crooked media and Dan Pffeifer was using threads. Few others I used to follow aren’t there yet, but everyday more of my old follows show up.

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Edited: Okay so I (poorly) tried to explain the personal reasons I’m still there but it’s not sitting right. Mainly because no one should have to “justify” it. People are still there for reasons ranging from none of your business (Hi!) to everyone’s business because that’s why they’re there, the numbers. It’s a site with billions of users that sometimes still functions the way it was built to, so until a competitor seriously steps up that’s not going to change anytime soon.

(Apologies to the two people who liked the original post for changing it up on you. I know that’s not cool.)

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I think the point is that by being on Twitter, there comes a tipping point where you are actively contributing to harm, and there's a question of an ethical line.

And I've argued in sympathy a lot on Pajiba before, because there are disability activists who rely on it. But I do think Twitter has crossed that ethical line, and that it's worthwhile for communities to discuss and advocate for the principle of solidarity against antisemitism and Islamophobia when a platform is advocating for and profiting from same.

There's no ethical consumption in capitalism sure, but that kind of shit also falls on a bell curve, and this is the tail end of one.

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Twitter is garbage, Musk is a man child with the thinnest skin.

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Nazi putz.

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I wonder about the employees that are still there. I’d heard back when he first started laying everybody off that it was just the Visa holders who couldn’t leave that were left but I don’t now if that’s true. If it weren’t for the employees that probably need a job, I’d wish it would just crater already and put us all out of its misery.

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I think I finally gave up on Twitter over the summer. To me, it's now become so toxic, I don't even want to go through the trouble of a 2FA login to shut it down.

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<i>"I deleted it from my phone and deleted all my bookmarks. It’s proven much easier to leave than I thought (it helps that I’m trying to make Threads happen). The number of blood pressure spikes I experience per day has been cut by 80 percent."</i>

Also, this was my experience almost verbatim. There was a point where I was looking at Twitter on my phone and could FEEL my anxiety spike. That had happened in the past, but not as consistently as it was happening at the time. So I took it off my phone while still periodically checking in on desktop.

Then I stopped visiting altogether. It's just not worth it.

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founding

Man, SAME! At every stoplight, during work calls, before bed, on the toilet, first thing in the morning and I was so anxious. It was so weird - it was almost like "Hmmm, I'm feeling kind of calm right now, better check Twitter and start chewing my own hair." I deactivated the account and life without it has been pretty great. I'm on Threads, but don't feel the same compulsion to check it. Honestly, most of my time wasting comes from IG reels and the algorithm is sending me cat videos, Friends bloopers, makeup tutorials and Taylor Swift shit. And you know what: that's good. For news, I come here and watch A Closer Look. Daily, I check Wapo. It's enough.

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Yeah, I've pulled the plug on other services I've found to be toxic much more quickly than I did Twitter, and I regret that.

I think it kind of speaks to how insidious social media can be. The dependency is creates.

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I never really got into Twitter which makes it a lot easier to not use it now. I've always spent entirely too much time online, just not on Twitter, so I'm definitely not above anyone who spent entirely too much time on the bird site. Knowing when to leave a party is still an important skill.

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I’m trying to make Bluesky happen rather than Threads - lots of friends headed over there. If anyone wants an invite I’ve got 5 going

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Just don’t understand their business model. I wanted to check it out long ago and never got an invite and now I’m uninterested. Threads has completely replaced Twitter for me. Lots of political stuff and cultural.

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Dorsey actively enabled Musk. At least Zuckerberg wants to punch him in the face!

So far I'm looking at Angry Staffer on Threads, and that's all I've built up to.

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I absolutely do not want to go looking for this, so I'm hoping someone here can explain something in this piece to me:

"[Musk tweeted] The [Anti-Defamation League — a Jewish nonprofit dedicated to rooting out antisemitism] unjustly attacks the majority of the West, despite the majority of the West supporting the Jewish people and Israel."

...what? Is the ADL attacking someone? Is the ADL doing ANYTHING besides pointing out anti-Semitism? I mean that as an actual question, like was there a specific incident that set off Musk and his band of racist idiots, or is this just a more generalized anti-Semitic sentiment?

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The ADL hurt Elon's feefees because they labelled him anti-semitic (which, coincidentally, this very piece proves that he is). He claims he's been defamed and that it's cost him revenue.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/elon-musk-blames-adl-lost-revenue-says-anti-semitism-kind-rcna103292

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Twitter sucks on both ends now. Half my feed is people RTing the most vile right-wing shit you'll ever see. The other half is the dumb left wing garbage that will make you wonder if the voting age should be 35.

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Yeah. Without getting too much into it, the left (where I tend to self-identify) is shooting itself in the foot these days.

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founding

The Israeli-Hamas flare-up finally killed it for me. My feed became unrecognizable. I still check it a couple times a week, but that's down from it being where I'd spend a couple hours a night.

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Xitter still has value in small doses. I wouldn't have seen this truly awesome Leslie Jones bit had I not popped in there.

https://youtu.be/0kyRNRZBB4M?t=4

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Noped outta there about 3 weeks ago. Deleted my account, it's too tempting otherwise. Over on bluesky, but it's not the same, just in the sense that I kinda miss everyone.

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