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Your Twitter/X account is a microphone connected to a mixer controlled by a fascist. You can speak all you want. The fascist controls your volume and can mute you whenever he wants. And you might not even know you’ve been muted because you can still hear yourself in your headphones.
It’s not called resistance when your volume knob is in someone else’s hand.
@aral True, but whether that's sufficient reason to completely abandon football twitter (for example) to the fascists is still perhaps moot.
@rooftopaxx @aral Are you arguing with fascists over there? If yes, how can you be sure you are heard? If you are not, what is your argument?
@flip0xfff @aral As just one example, which side would you have preferred the Ultras White Knights to have been on during the Arab Spring? Another, which side might you take on the whole Spanish Football Federation debacle? (Participating in the discourse doesn't mean engaging directly with actual fascists in the misguided hope of influencing them)
@rooftopaxx @flip0xfff Oh don’t worry, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia now owns the second largest share of Twitter/X after Elon Musk so we know exactly where the Arab Spring folks would end up today if they were to use Twitter/X.
And that’s the problem. We have folks who don’t understand the dangers telling people it’s safe to use.
And in case you think I’m exaggerating the danger, Saudi just sentenced a man to death for his posts:
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/31/1196776390/saudi-arabia-man-death-sentence-tweets
@aral @flip0xfff What on earth would give you the impression we weren't aware of that already? The point is whether the territory should be completely abandoned for a culturally insignificant safer space.
@aral @flip0xfff to which we answered "True,but…"
@rooftopaxx @aral Because we can influence what a culturally significant space is. Me personally, I do not care how significant a culture is, as long as it is a culture I can identify with :)
@flip0xfff @aral If Masto allows you a space where you feel safer / more comfortable that's fine of course. For those of us concerned with social change who find social media a useful tool for promoting our issues (SJWs as the alt right would have it) Masto is completely ineffectual however much we might evangelise for it and hope for it to grow to contend. But for now it's football twitter (and presumably FB/Insta/…) where the network effects take place despite that dialling down by Musk et al
@rooftopaxx @aral I don't know. It is weird to me to acknowledge ones actions are beneficial to bad people and still do it because it pushes dopamine. So is watching the world cup when thousands of workers died building the stadium and other human rights violations happen. Or drinking beverages of a company that steals water, just because their soda is tasty. I think we are responsible for the effects of our actions, also when they seem distant. But that is just me 
@flip0xfff @aral that's also fine as long as you understand your perfectly principled actions are very, very niche in the overall scheme of things. There's always that Baudrillard quote about a thousand people trudging through the rain one evening in Paris on a demo in support of Klaus Croissant (lawyer for the RAF) while millions were sitting down in front of the telly to watch France in the World Cup
@rooftopaxx @aral change always starts with a few. I am perfectly content with what you said, although I disagree with the conclusion. I miss out on nothing and can perfectly sleep at night, that is all that matters to me. All the best to you!
@rooftopaxx @flip0xfff @aral That's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Twitter started from nothing. Another network can be built up too. It takes some time to build up, like it did with Twitter. Not wanting to do the work and contributing to Twitter staying relevant is... problematic.
@DanielTuttle @flip0xfff @aral And doing both?
Another example, those raising awareness for the very current issue of migrants' rights over on Xitter using the hashtag #NoOneIsIllegal, are they just supposed to simply give it all up and decamp to Masto while we're still building the network?
@rooftopaxx @flip0xfff @aral I mean... if they moved to Mastodon that would solve the problem, wouldn't it?
@DanielTuttle @flip0xfff @aral No it wouldn't, would it.
@rooftopaxx @flip0xfff @aral well them moving here would accomplish the "build it" part, right? That's the core problem: people staying there.
@DanielTuttle @flip0xfff @aral Nope! Different example: disability rights worker and campaigner, on Twitter since 2009, over 4000 followers. Say they up sticks and come over here, how many of their followers follow them in that?
@rooftopaxx @flip0xfff @aral I suspect people not wanting to give up clout is huge. That isn't a good reason for supporting fascism.
@DanielTuttle @flip0xfff @aral Sorry mate, but if you're crass enough to conflate clout with campaigning you just got yourself blocked
@rooftopaxx @flip0xfff @aral not conflating the two. But people that have 100k+ followers are not likely to give that up, even if it means supporting fascism.
@rooftopaxx @DanielTuttle @flip0xfff @aral They should leave. What Aral said is true. No organization on Twitter controls their own volume knob. All their efforts are for nought. They would be better off starting over from scratch on a fair platform.
@mastodonmigration @rooftopaxx @flip0xfff @aral this. Plus, rebuilding here is... ethically consistent.
The reality is, people should be building up their own email lists and making their own webpages their hub and using these networks to... network. They aren't very good CRMs
@mastodonmigration @flip0xfff @aral Listenership does not equate to volume.Think this is all covered so much better than we could ever express it (plus it's late here) in @doot's blog (link in their bio)
@rooftopaxx @flip0xfff @aral @doot
Prefer Audre Lorde...
For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change...
@mastodonmigration @rooftopaxx @flip0xfff @aral @doot At the same time, the gasoline in the master's shed can very well burn the master's house.
But I'll take that's a limitation of the analogy.
@rooftopaxx @DanielTuttle @flip0xfff @aral I would argue that the people who do actually care about the message won't care on what platform the message is transmitted. And the ones who don't care.. why would you want them to come over in the first place?
@rooftopaxx @DanielTuttle @flip0xfff @aral And what is this hashtag resulting in that makes it worth helping Elon Musk?
When I post here I'm just preaching to the choir.
https://kolektiva.social/@LevZadov/111009012592176115
@LevZadov @flip0xfff @aral Diversity of tactics, eh?
Why pose the question in the form of alternatives? When the Klan takes over my clubhouse, I completely abandon the clubhouse. Whether I have another clubhouse I can use is not important to me. I'll deal with that later. I will not use the Klan's clubhouse.
@aral @rooftopaxx @flip0xfff Why journalists still use Twitter is beyond me.
@rooftopaxx Football? Really?
@aral@mastodon.ar.al when you're still on Twitter/X you are a fascist enabler... generating traffic and money.
@aral I spent six months trying to get my old Twitter account (since 2010) suspended.
What finally got me suspended was saying "Death to all fascists."
Elon doesn't like it when you disparage his core demographic.
@angiebaby @aral Hmm. Doesn't really seem consistent to me that you can't block people but you can still be banned. Weird flex elon.
@SOB2 @angiebaby @aral
Suddenly resisting the urge to make a Twitter account just to literally shit post pictures of my own shit to see how long it takes them to ban me...
Eloff would probably pay you for that.
@EFreethought @SOB2 @angiebaby @aral
I would shit for Elon bucks
@angiebaby @aral impossible to know whether this is just a power grab to promote their new ocean of piss streaming service
I got banned from Twitter for saying of Empty Greene,
"The problem with MTG is for as much as she shoots her mouth off, she never shoots her mouth off."
They really are some snowflakes.
@aral Ah ah perfect 
I like this other analogy : it's like playing chess with a pigeon, there's always a moment when the pigeon gets angry, makes the pieces fly, shits on the chessboard and triumphantly flies away.
Don't even start the game, you'll never win.
, so for persistent tweeters we know where their mind is! 
@aral don’t let fascists play with your knob
@aral The problem: There is no more open microphone heard by most of the free world.
The possible alternatives are either explicitly made not to be heard widely like the #fediverse or clones of twitter with the same problems all over again.
@exception Leaving the problematic framing of the “free world” to one side, I can tell you from my experience that engagement on the fediverse is far higher than it ever was for me on Twitter. Is it the best platform if you want to broadcast to millions of people? No. Is that necessary for a healthy democracy? No. I’d argue we need quite the opposite: smaller, more meaningful, and, essentially, factual communication.
@aral It is very much necessary to reach people who won't engage and even people who don't want to be reached with political messages. This is because disinterested and badly informed people are a majority of voters, and thereby determine the course of any democratic country. In the physical world it's the freedom to distribute leaflets, put up posters in public and make oneself heard with protests. Such low-cost political messaging is needed in the digital world, too.
@aral I don't like it, but the idea that most people engage with democracy of their own will is an elitist pipedream.
@exception exactly.
We might get a TON of engagement within our echo chambers. The amount of head-nodding might give a perception that we’re doing a lot of good.
But just engaging with people whose minds are already on the same page does nothing to progress anything.
@volkris @aral Even if all opinions were part of the engagement, that is still not enough.
We need to reach, inform and convince almost all people about the democratic process and the different opinions.
Most people aren't stupid at all, but they have other things from work to caring for children and the elderly to do and want to enjoy life, too. But they need to be reached and somewhat informed for democracy to work.
@exception @aral Twitter never did any of that.
@exception @aral Twitter was never "heard by most of the free world".
The vast majority of people were never on Twitter.
@ClintonAnderson @aral True. But at least where I live, all the journalists were on Twitter and tweets were regularly cited in news or lead to articles.
@exception @aral a bug, not a feature
@aral whilst I agree with your sentiments, we need to take action. Ask all those bodies you are connected with to transfer from Xitter to the fediverse. And keep doing it, and explaining why.
@aral
Something noticed about #Twitter lately, when I go on there (first mistake) and look at the feed, not only is it even more overwhelmingly negative than it was before #Elon, but If you search for one of these issues wear that far right fringe is strongly against everyone else, like looking up #Ukraine or the #ADL, the feed is completely dominated by these fringe viewpoints by far right / #neoNazi accounts.
Somehow, he's managed to get the #algorithm to really push these fringe ideas, overwhelming the mainstream on things that aren't actually hotly debated or even #controversial.
@Raccoon The somehow is the simplest part: he owns and controls the algorithm.