11mo ago

Inciting rioters in Britain was a test run for Elon Musk. Just see what he plans for America

www.theguardian.com

Just over four years ago, an insurrectionist mob found each other online, descended on Washington, stormed the Capitol and threatened the vice-president with a noose. But that was the good old days. We’re living in a different reality now. One in which the billionaires have been unchained.

Enough Musk Spam @lemmy.world

vovo @lemmy.dbzer0.com

11mo ago

Inciting rioters in Britain was a test run for Elon Musk. Just see what he plans for America

www.theguardian.com /commentisfree/article/2024/aug/18/inciting-rioters-in-britain-was-a-test-run-for-elon-musk-just-see-what-he-plans-for-america

43 comments

It is wild how much conservatives attack these platforms and accuse them of silencing their voices while they continue to weaponize said platforms to nefarious ends.
Facebook? Right wing conspiracy farm (also marketplace which I hate to admit is pretty good).
Twitter? Right wing conspiracy spreader and platform for Christian nationalists.
Instagram? Corporate hellscape and some beach photos.
TikTok? So far has not shown a preference for right wing or left-wing content, but definitely has no reasonable content policing in place to stop misinformation from spreading wildly.
The list goes on. None of it good.
- By attacking their opposition for something, they can seed the idea that it is happening in the first place. Once this idea is established, it gives them license to pursue the tactic themselves under the guise of "fighting fire with fire".
  We see this with stolen election claims. By yelling constantly about cheated elections and fraud, Trump sets the stage to be able to cheat and commit fraud without alienating his fans.
  
  Exactly. Sometimes I think people forget he was saying the election would be stolen before we even saw the results in 2016, then after winning he said the number of illegal votes totaled the exact amount he lost the popular vote by.
- Facebook? Right wing conspiracy farm (also marketplace which I hate to admit is pretty good).
  Note to self: post a thread on !mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world about how refusing to use Facebook severely limits access to the used goods market.
  
  Whoever was allowed to run with the idea did a great job. Again I hate to admit it. It’s truly a Craigslist 2.0.
- I'm forced to use Instagram for engagement as a performing artist and producer.
  My community is FREQUENTLY at odds with its automated content moderation, which heavily favors conservative values. Posts get censored for "sexual activity" even when there's no nudity, and performer accounts are more often shadow banned than not. Even posts in which I'm fully dressed in winter street clothes get censored as "sexual activity"
  Meanwhile, I have NEVER seen Instagram take action a single time on posts that promote CSAM or that are made by literal white supremacist Nazis. Like clockwork, every time I report one it comes back with "this content does not violate Instagram's guidelines"
  Fuck Instagram. Fuck META. Nazi pieces of shit.
  
  Was so glad to ditch IG once I stopped freelancing
  
  I dread this shit. I have nothing to do with social media (unless Lemmy counts) and I haven't for almost 15 years now, but I'm finishing up a mobile app that I'm going to start selling in a couple of months and I think I'll have to make accounts on all of these sites to promote it.
- They won't be happy until they can propagandise uncontested
  It's expensive to have to come up with good propaganda campaigns only to have them never see the light of day
- At best tik Tok is brain rot. It's digital heroine.
- The only one of those I ever made an account for was Facebook back when it was like Friends Reunited but free.
  Of course what you find is that most of the people you thought were fairly normal were illiterate raving lunatics all along.
- Facebook marketplace is literally a shit show full of scams and it is hard to find anything, a bad UI, and no good filtering. The only thing holding it up is the algorithm to show you products (based on your browsing and advertising data). It is a step up from Craigslist, but it is mediocre at its absolute best. There are just no used alternatives in many places
  We have an app here called 2dehands which has a similar scam problem, but is easier to filter out. However, the UX is 10x better with robust filtering, setting up pre-specced searches based on location, price, text strings, quality, categories, etc... with email and/or app notifications for new items added and everything surrounding bidding and favorite item status.
  
  I really do not understand how people are getting scammed. I am totally willing to concede that people have very different experiences with FB marketplace overall. Mine has been good, does not mean it has been good for everyone. But the scamming I really don’t get. Are y’all just not using the actual platform to pay? Have you personally been scammed?
- (also marketplace which I hate to admit is pretty good)
  The new Craigslist.
If he starts this shit again, seize the Twitter and X.com domains, and charge his ass with inciting violence.
- As long as we're living in fantasy land, let's go the full nine yards and seize all his assets.
  
  Nationalize SpaceX
A disturbing thing about the UK riots to me is that it seems that, between the crypto scams and the porn bots that are mixed together with Musk's incoherent ramblings on Twitter, there is still real humans in between the bullshit.
I have a Twitter account that's been dormant for 16 years or so (and never really active at all). I signed in to it today for the first time in a few months - the last time it was just to delete what was left of personal information and change my user name to something offensive to fascists.
Anyway, the content on my feed was:
Musk tweets about Kamala losing ground
A bunch of tweets with the same optical illusion, "can you read this number". One had a picture of a panda. Three of them were from Musk parody accounts using his profile picture, promising a million dollars or whatever to whoever could see it.
X bitching about Brazil. Musk bitching about Brazil.
Porn. So much porn. Hardcore porn, amateur porn, only fans promotions or what looked like it. Generally not marked NSFW, just people being pounded directly in the feed.
Barack Obama for some reason
A video of a young woman farting
Video of Trump and a black woman who didn't look like anyone in particular AI'd into a sunset together
A bunch of bitcoin spam
One guy plotting up his master plan for how people could go about to leave Twitter, despite it being so irreplaceable and all. Obviously an ageing white man who considers himself some sort of public intellectual.
Why are there still people left in this mess? Do they not realize there is porn available elsewhere?
- 🌍 🧑‍🚀 🔫 🧑‍🚀
  
  I guess so. Or at least for a long time - back when I signed up it was sold as a way of broadcasting SMS messages, and nobody really knew what it was good for. At least now we know it's good for nothing.
- I personally stopped using Twitter for the most part, I locked my account, and instead I advertise my game engine on the Fediverse (@PixelPerfectEngine@peoplemaking.games, currently I'm in the process of fixing a borked release due to not having proper power in my room), since my reach on Twitter with it was nonexistent, and I don't want to associate my brand with nazis, fascists, or the "we swear we're just moderate christian-conservative democrats, we just think secularism should be completely abolished and we should control the media" types of the far-right.
  As for porn, it's already available on more specialized sites, or even the Fediverse itself.
Americans are very tired of his nonsense. Once his car company goes over a cliff because of his actions, big changes are going to be happening for him.
- He's not trying.
It might be time to openly call Elon out as the threat to Americans that he actually is. How many American lives would be saved if his private jet were to suffer from a Boeing incident and fall into the sea?
- Oh, you mean the private jet that landed in Austin on Saturday?
- Yeah I'm glad I nuked mine right after Musk bought it. I already hadn't used it in a couple of years by that point but that was the final straw.
As a person from the UK, it really does feel sometimes like the UK is just the place where America tests out all of its most dystopian ideas before it rolls them out at home.
Ya know I called ou that Musk was going to becoem increasingly dangerous with time all the way back in 2016. Folks like him can never be satisfied and will do everything to feed their maw for it combine that with the obvious moral flaws thatd exist with someone who directly benefited from apartheid and you have a volitile solution. I just figured it was gonna evolve into increasingly shitty and dangerous build quality for any projects he was involved with combined with horrific labor violations.
Now im curious if he'll be found with foam coming out of his mouth or with several bullet holes in his chest from one of his own kids. Those are two of my other predictions, ill also add plane bombong to the list for shits and giggles.
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