Post

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Bluesky has been a net negative for US politics. They corralled everyone on the left into a little glass fishbowl where they shout at one another & everyone else ignores them. Meanwhile, all the pols & institutions stayed on X & are being dragged farther right.

Very telling that so many people are interpreting this as a defense of X.

Does it treat right-wing capture of a social media site as inevitable? Or does it treat the power imbalance between posters and the very rich and very right-wing guy who runs the site to promote his right-wing beliefs as not something that an individual poster or even reasonable collective action

I think Roberts may have a point here; we self-segregated, albeit for heavily justifiable reasons, but the inevitable result is the right wing nature of the site’s tenor accelerated both because of the astroturfing and by no longer having us to argue against it. There’s still left wing voices…

…there but they’re far more heavily isolated and It isn’t that Twitter was inevitable, but I think what is is that if a mass of leftists leave a social space, that de facto radicalizes it towards the right wing because it’s a social space, it *is* a societal organ, and left voices are no longer…

…present in it in mass. That said you’re right, the question it raises is going to be unreasonable for many. Most people do not have the resources to be a bulwark against the encroach of fascism in an Internet third space when they have to navigate and withstand its physical incarnation already.