If we are not reactionary, we cannot ever win any ‘fight’ at Xitter (or X or Twitter or the social media site formerly known as Twitter) because Elon Musk owns the site and has unchecked raw power to cheat pretty much any way he chooses. The only way back to fairness is out of there. Drain Xitter of interesting material and leave it to become another 4chan.
REPUBLICAN BUBBLES
Elon Musk has already set Xitter up to maintain Republican bubbles but to disallow Democratic bubbles. Increasingly, all users at Xitter must scroll through Republican comments but no users are forced to see other views because of the way blue checks work now. Elon Musk has totally redesigned blue checks.
BLUE CHECKS
In the past, blue checks provided a system of authentication for those whose identities were verified — a safety feature to prevent misrepresentation and fraud. Elon Musk got rid of that system.
Today blue checks go to those willing to pay money — mostly Elon Musk sycophants and reactionary Republicans. By paying for money=speech, Republican users gain premiere placement in replies. Others are banished to underneath the blue checks. Users cannot avoid Republican spam but could easily miss other content.
We can counter this bias by feeding money to Elon Musk for better placement too, or we can leave. But be aware: If we pay Elon, he will continue to find ways to game the service to enthrone his preferred participants. So leaving is the only true option.
Just like when five Republicans at the Supreme Court threw out 100 years of laws to enthrone money=speech in the infamous Citizens United case as of 2010, Elon Musk threw out fair verification and moved to money=speech at Xitter as of 2023. And just like money=speech advantages Republicans in the bigger world, the same money=speech advantages Republicans on Xitter.
HISTORY: PROPAGANDA WORKS
In the late 1980s, Ronald Reagan eliminated the Fairness Doctrine as AM radio filled up with partisan hacks like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity all day long unchallenged. Though at first it seemed obvious to many they were pushing largely nonsense, over time the repetition and the shortage of other views turned the minds of enough people to change politics in America. Garbage in, garbage out. By 1994, Republicans took control of Congress after a whopping forty years out.
Nonstop propaganda is a means to policy ends. Under a Republican-controlled Congress, the late 1990s became a period of reactionary legislation — media deregulation, material support law, TANF, Defense of Marriage Act, capital gains tax cut, copyright extensions, class action limits, banking deregulation, etc. And things have gotten worse since then, especially at the partisan Supreme Court.
REPUBLICAN ADVANTAGE AT XITTER
The Republican advantage is built into the Xitter system and cannot be overcome. But there is an easy solution: Move out of Xitter and on to another service. It may be painful in the short run, but it must be done.
We need to show billionaires that they cannot just buy up ‘free’ speech and pervert it to their agendas, or they will continue to buy up social media to fill our information stream more and more with unchallenged Republican content–content that bends more people to supporting Republicans based upon bad information. As I said, garbage in garbage out.
NEW, October 5, 2023: The Axis of Elon Musk has now taken away article previews, so text was added to this article picture.
NEW, October 9, 2023: If you click on a reply then click to go back, you go back to the top of the thread. This means you have to rummage through all the blue checks AGAIN.