Ok here’s my question, and I’m really interested in your thoughts on this: Is there a way to use Twitter without becoming complicit in what’s happening to the platform. And if so, what does that look like?
@laseletzky Arguably, if you go in there read-only with an adblocker, then you aren't contributing to his bottom line. But that's also arguably theft of service.
Definitely, though, if you're contributing content to the content machine: you're complicit. No way around that.
@laseletzky Maybe, but there's a dozen ways that's likely to backfire, so it's a bad bet.
Take the obvious option: Honest and deep reporting that happens to be critical of Twitter and its new ownership. The best case scenario there is that the critical reporting draws lots of eyeballs and goes viral. But even then it's just drawing other people to argue and view ads and ends up benefiting Musk's bottom line.
I think the best thing any of us can do is to show others that there are greener pastures and that leaving Twitter isn't the end of the world. It's like masking. The more people who started to do it, the more it caught on and became socially acceptable. Leading by example seems to be the best option.
(Btw, feel free to see how, uh, "gracefully" I exited the platform if you want. The empty husk of my profile is still live over there under the same username as here.)
@LouisIngenthron these are great points
@LouisIngenthron do you think there’s a way to contribute content that undermines the machine?