収束ゾーンでのライフ: Life in the Convergence Zone

Now that Elon Musk’s experiment with Twitter has succeeded, Mark Zuckerberg is following suit with the MAGAfication of Meta – meaning Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. More, they’re pushing to take all of this hate parade out past the US and into other countries, as a fairly-openly-declared plan to boost fascist and near-fascist far-right movements across the globe.

I told everyone that Musk’s experiment would be repeated, and here it is, being repeated, exactly as I said it would be.

These are grim times. There are no longer good outcomes, there are only more and less bad ones – we’re most certainly doomed to miss some critical windows now.

It’s still worth fighting for the less bad outcomes, mind you. It’s still desperately important to do so, because the sort of nightmare unfolding in the LA fires right now will not be going away on its own, and there’s still a big difference between “oppression” and “pogroms.”

The question has now become how many disasters we can prevent, rather than can we stop them from happening at all.

So.

It may surprise you that unlike with Twitter – where the stakes were both obvious and even higher – I don’t really know what to tell you about Meta. Despite functionally designating LGBT people, immigrants, and women as fair game – while occasionally being downright petty about it – the situation overall is… a little less clear.

No, honestly. It is. Bear with me on this.

You see, the crux of the argument to leave Twitter – “X” – came down to two key factors:

First: X was an experiment to see whether you could take over a major social media site, turn it into a fascist disinformation and propaganda platform, and survive. While that hasn’t worked out – yet – in direct financial terms, it’s worked out in terms of getting Trump back into office, so has worked out in indirect power-and-money terms… which means it’s worked.

Second: Elon Musk was and is actively on the side of the fascists. He’s promoting them, having his algorithm promote them, paying them outright to be there, censoring left and critical voices throughout, and making it as clear as possible that his foot has been on the goddamn scale as hard as it could be. (Yes, he said repeatedly that wasn’t true. We call that “lying.”)

The first item is no longer applicable. His experiment worked. It gained him both money and power, even if “X” is still losing money had over fist as an individual company. (That, too, may be temporary; he’s asserted many times that ad boycotts should be illegal, that companies should be required to give him money, and as de facto Co-President, he may in fact see that happen.)

The second item is … less clear with Facebook/Insta/Threads. It’s quite possible that Fuckerberg (Suckerberg, Cuckerberg, there are so many variations) may plant his foot on the algorithmic pedal there, as well.

If he does – as Musk did with Twitter – then “stay and fight” becomes truly nonsensical and the only option is to leave. You can’t fight a propaganda war when the algorithm makes sure that no one is allowed to see you. All you’re doing at that point is raising money for your own oppressor.

But until that happens, “stay and fight” might be a valid option.

Is it?

I don’t know yet.

One of the reasons I don’t know yet is that unlike with “X”, the employees are reportedly generally up in arms about this. Will Suckerberg institute mass firings? Will he push out all the women, queers, and BIPOC like Musk did at Twitter?

Maybe. But Facebook is far, far larger than Twitter ever was, and far, far more complex. It will not be so easy as it was for Elon.

I don’t think we know enough to know what to do, yet. Certainly, protest. Certainly consider leaving. Certainly, see if you can pull your friends to other social media.

If you have group obligations keeping you there, it’s time to move them to another service if you can. I myself have managed to get one group which required my professional attention onto another platform; perhaps you can, as well.

Preparation for evac in these situations is always good.

But unlike with Twitter, even with all this vileness, I can’t say for sure that “stay and fight” isn’t a valid response. It might well be one.

Until it’s clear that Zuck’s putting the Bad Succ on Meta display algorithm, it might just be a legitimate option.

And it’s worth considering, because honestly, if I couldn’t get people to leave Literal New Daily Stormer, I don’t see how in hell we’ll get people to give up Instagram.

Particularly once TikTok is gone.

I imagine – as things unfold over the next few weeks – we’ll get a clearer view. I hope so, at least.

Until then, well… play it by ear – and by conscience, too, of course.

That may well be all we really have left.

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this is an actual photo of elon musk shaking donald trump’s hand at the trump rally today. caption, of course, added. source photo for the crop below.

An evil image of an evil man knowing he is doing evil that will benefit him in ever so many ways. It is, honestly, grotesque.

I think it’s time for another Elon Musk catch-up post, because holy shit do I have the material for one.

Cropped from:

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Every so often, I still have to go back and check up on the fascist disinformation and propaganda fountain Elon Musk made out of Twitter, and it’s never good news.

I once again urge everyone who is still there to migrate their followers away from it, to… basically anywhere else, really. Literally. Anywhere in the Federation would be outstanding (Mastodon being the most famous, and where I am now), BlueSky, TikTok if you can do video, hell, even Threads – though I’m a bit hesitant these days about Threads, for reasons I’m leaving out for now.

It’s not just because continuing to use Xitter puts money in Elon Musk’s pocket. I mean, it does, but I’ve beat that drum for months and nobody cares.

It’s because if you depend on it this election, you’re making a real big mistake, because there’s a real good chance that it won’t be there when you need it – at least, not for you. It’ll be there for the fascists, but not for civil society and/or the left. It’ll be part of the problem, and most certainly not part of the solution.

I keep telling people not to use Twitter / “X”, because Elon Musk has turned it into a fascist disinformation and propaganda fountain, but people keep using it anyway because when push comes to shove, most people are basically okay with drinking at the Nazi bar.

This is how fascism and fascist beliefs get normalised. Repetition equals truth to the mammalian brain, he shoves more and more of it in your face, people who are diametrically opposed get used to it even if staying in opposition, people who aren’t just decide it’s another normal political opinion, and it doesn’t matter how many times I explain this, it doesn’t matter.

Anyway, it’s been a while since I did one of these, so here’s what Musk has been up to the last few months.

This isn’t the newest, but it doesn’t fit the flow well, so I’m putting it here: Elon declares that people wanting to fight climate change are communists. Which is pretty amazing given that was one of the supposed reasons for Tesla. Clearly his current gang have turned against that hard enough that he’s decided sure, why not.

Also looks like he may’ve helped himself to a big ol’ bowl of insider trading. But that’s just ordinary corruption; let’s get to the real meat of the matter, shall we?

The American College of Paediatricians is a decades-old fundamentalist sockpuppet group. It’s not the real professional organisation, which is the American College of Paediatrics. Its entire job its entire existence has been to crank out various anti-LGBT, anti-abortion, anti-sex-education and anti-birth-control bullshit, along with various other conspiracy theories at times.

Naturally, they’re all-in against health care for trans people, and now Elon is pushing them and their lies as hard as he can on his propaganda platform. Fox News is boosting them too, which they’ve done before.

Elon Musk’s X app ran ads on #whitepower and other hateful hashtags – A review by NBC News found X running ads on 20 racist and antisemitic hashtags more than 18 months after Musk said that he would demonetize hate posts. Because he’s a fucking liar, and doing this normalises neonazi and white nationalism being placed with ads.

Remember when I said that if people didn’t leave the platform – if people decided they were okay with drinking at Elon’s Nazi Bar – that the advertisers would come back? Well, “It’s 2024. Elon Musk Rules X. And the Political World Is Still Addicted. Paid ads for political candidates are all over the platform, and politics insiders are secretly buying blue checks.“

I mean, remember, this is the guy who literally recruited white nationalists and neofascists back to the platform, and pays them. Somehow NBC thinks this is surprising. Meanwhile, Y-combinator authoritarian Garry Tan is boosting Peter Thiel’s “political theology.” Surprise: it’s christofascism!

Musk, naturally, thinks his best bud Trump shouldn’t be prosecuted for crimes, much less punished. He’s auditioning for a role in any future Trump administration, naturally, because he wants to run American elections to make sure they come out right.

Trump, naturally, wants second and third terms, Constitution be damned. He’s been floating this since his first term, so it’s not new, but he hasn’t walked away from this and you shouldn’t think he doesn’t mean it. He does, and Elon would, one presumes, return whatever numbers Trump wants.

Elon keeps boosting tweets from billionaire darling Balaji Srinivasan who openly plans a political purge of San Francisco. It’s literally an ethnic cleansing, though along political lines.

Talking of ethnic cleansing, Elon had a fakeumentary promoting the Great Replacement racist conspiracy theory pinned to the top of his profile for a while. He promotes it regularly and went all-in on it back in March. In April, he spent a bunch of time pushing fake election fraud videos.

Naturally, Mr. Free Speech Extremist sues anyone who reports too accurately on the fascist flood he’s brought to Twitter. He lost another lawsuit back in March, but, well, he has all the money, and people keep giving him more, so he’ll be back.

Talking of “free speech extremism,” remember when the explicitly neo-Nazi cartoonist behind “Stonetoss” got outed? Elon ordered all accounts identifying him be suspended. Again, this is Mr. Free Speech Extremist at work. Please don’t let anyone get away with calling him that, because it’s a fucking lie. Wired put up a big story on all the ways Elon works to protect neo-Nazis and other fascists, of which Stonetoss is only one.

lolgop wrote up a big article on how Elon turned Twitter into a Nazi-generating machine. If you don’t like any of mine, maybe you’ll like theirs.

“Oh, yes, please tell me more about how you could never vote against fascism because it’s wrong to support Democrats who’ve made ideological compromises…on Elon Musk’s Twitter.”

Here’s a longthread documenting some of Elon’s lies. Might be useful reference someday. Here’s a story on his deposition in a lawsuit he’s facing, involving his false declarations that a young Jewish man was part of a neo-nazi brawl, naturally on the side of the nazis.

Also, I can’t link to it because I don’t want to link to Twitter and the screencap is private, but he said that Anthony Fauci is responsible for the deaths of millions of people.

And since everyone’s forgot about this too, here’s a story on that very brief Don Lemon show on Twitter, the one where Musk pulled the plug on the entire show because Lemon asked actual questions instead of sucking his white dick. I’m closing with it not just because it’s the oldest, but to point out yet again the sheer inanity of “staying to fight” on Twitter. If somehow – despite the well-documented suppression of non-far-right voices and elevation of fascist rhetoric – you build an audience and get any traction, all he has to do is notice you…

…and if he thinks you’re actually effective…

…you’re gone.

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Feeling more than a little swamped by all the Fascism to watch? Me too. Still, here’s a focused one, so let’s go:

First up this morning – and it is barely this morning as I discover this, a few hours after it originally went up – we find Elon Musk’s X (ne Twitter) being a fascist fountain of disinformation and propaganda, with massive numbers of “verified” (paid) accounts posting AI-generated anti-Semitic videos and memes. X, naturally, has been doing absolutely nothing to stop this, and has been giving them massive exposure.

When I said Elon Musk bought Twitter to turn it into a fascist disinformation fountain and propaganda machine, I really meant it. When I said those who stay on Twitter are supporting this, I meant that too.

Russian Propagandist Olga Skabeeva is a big fan of Elon Musk, highlighting Musk’s defence of and praise for Putin during a recent X live event between Musk, professional misogynist and sex-trafficking rapist Andrew Tate, psychopath and serial liar best known for attacking the parents of murdered children Alex Jones, and Republican fascist presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

I guess the Russians like not just his praise of Putin, but his self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” stance wherein he uses X’s algorithmic systems to promote far-right and fascist material, while suing people who report accurately on how X places advertisements next to anti-Semitic and fascist content and claiming people that fact checkers using his own systems are “state actors” and distorting content.

A bunch of big Canadian advertisers have dropped advertising on Elon Musk’s X, but don’t worry, he’s still getting ad money from an app that creates fake nudes of women whose pictures you upload. There are also new efforts to organise against X, particularly aimed at news organisations, as Twitter is still seen as the best place for news. (I disagree with that assessment – strongly – for reasons like how both X and X’s new AI tool “Grok” are famously good at promoting disinformation and conspiracy theories, including lies about climate change. But I agree it is out there.)

I’ll keep saying it until it sinks in: staying on Twitter is personally supporting Elon Musk and financially supporting X, his fascist disinformation and propaganda fountain.

On a completely unrelated note, Threads have started testing ActivityPub interoperation and it’s now possible to follow and reply to posts on Threads from Mastodon and other ActivityPub-speaking platforms. Well, to the tiny number of people – mostly developers – who have had federation access added to their accounts. It’s revived the huge controversy about whether to federate with anything Meta does. And it’s meta specifically; nobody minds that Tumblr’s plans are still in progress and people generally look on the idea of federating there positively. But the flagship instance – mastodon.social – is definitely all-in on interoperability, so we’re going to see how it goes one way or another.

So if there’s anybody you want to follow on Threads but you don’t want a Meta account… now you don’t need one. Join the Federation. It won’t all work for several months, but it’s starting to work in real life now.

There, that’s a topic. Let’s see if more short updates work better, shall we?

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Unfortunately, this deserves its own post, because it’s Musk Twitter doing what Musk Twitter does best, which is spread fascist propaganda and harassment.

Earlier today, a former MMA champion who I will not name posted in support of mass murder anyone and everyone who aids trans people, young trans people in particular. Doctors, teachers, etc. Straight up. Evan Uqruhart has the receipts.

Since the overwhelming majority of blue-checks now are one degree or another of fascist, authoritarian, or alt-right, a flood of support for mass murder leads all replies, and since such accounts are the primary receipts of boosting, the original tweets and subsequent replies got promoted by Musk Twitter’s algorithm.

The tweet was eventually taken down, and screencaps are being blurred – including those taken by people posting them as evidence.

But since OP’s account wasn’t otherwise affected in any way I can tell, OP is retweeting and quote-tweeting people who complained about his post. Those people are now being bombed by the same fash and alt-fash who supported OP’s call for mass murder. Their replies are full of accusations of paedophilia, gleeful cheers for murder and public executions, and just-barely-short-of direct calls for violence against them, too.

And all of those are on top also, because Musk Twitter bluechecks are built to give fash first reply to everything.

The impression to the casual observer – the propaganda result – is that everyone supports the fascist OP and everyone supports the murder and execution of all those deviants, perverts, and child molesters supporting trans people.

THIS IS THE INTENT.

THIS IS WHAT MUSK TWITTER IS FOR.

THIS IS HIS PLAN.

And this is why being active there at all is untenable. You’re literally giving him money, even if you don’t pay him directly, for him to do this.

If you’re still active there, this is what you’re helping.

And that’s just the facts.

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I said a little while ago that part of the intent at locking down the Twitter API and replacing it with a new one was to lock out people researching things like alt-right propaganda and fashy disinformation. Basically, to make Twitter more opaque, so it can be more manipulative, in the run-up to the 2024 election.

Given the obscenity of the pricing and the massively throttled data in the new pay API, I feel more strongly that I’m correct here. It’s genuinely beyond the ability of basically any research institution to afford, and it’s not even close.

But the extremely wealthy and large governmental organisations? They can afford it, no problem.

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