Definitely. But it was the moment where a LOT of people started seeing the real elon

You’ve tied my head up in knots with this one. Haha

As to the argument above yours, fostering a space for Nazis to grow their movement is scary. I get that some segments of society think that posting gay porn is scary too, but gay porn never led to death camps for anybody.

I think all ideas are worth discussing, because if they’re hiding in quiet corners there are no voices of reason to refute them. It’s hard to take that stance nowadays with the internet working the way it does. Algorithms feeding information to people just because that information gets engagement is frightening.

I had a conversation with my neighbor yesterday about how he got interested in the whole furry thing. He said that initially, he read the critical comments online, took them seriously, thought it was funny, so he engaged in harassment of furries. His engagement led him to more furry videos. He began to like some of the people he was engaging with. Fast forward to now and he’s got fursuits hanging in his closet and everyone he hangs with is also a furry.

It got me thinking about how a lot of kids end up going down these rabbit holes online. Not that I consider being a furry a bad thing. My daughter is into that stuff and I support her being herself. His example just made me think of how other people fall into extremism online.

I don’t know why people today are so sensitive?

I don’t know, maybe because it’s hard to not be sensitive about ideas that threaten your life and very existence?

Elon isn’t promoting naziz, he is just not censoring them.

Twitter disproportionately take action against LGBTQ+ individuals and ignore nazis. There is no debate that Elon is promoting right wing ideas by protecting nazi speech.

I don’t know why people today are so sensitive? Why is it hard to see someone say something you don’t agree with?

I also used to be a free speech absolutist, but they took that and ran with it. Just like so many other things in modern life, the crazies take over. If I can no longer use the service then they’ve gone too far and I’ll move to one that’s still civil (why can’t the nazis stay in their damn subreddit instead of infecting mine?)

Then we came to the us 2016 election and all the fallout since. I was just flabbergasted when people in the public space started denying reality. They admitted denying reality and making stuff up. They admitted denying reality and making stuff up and somehow still had followers. They admitted denying reality and making stuff up and still had followers that turned into votes. We all saw the point where crazies took that free speech and ran with it, where the uneducated and gullible or desperate hung in their every word. We saw damage to society right in front of our eyes. Before this, I would have said free speech at least brings it out into the open and lets people become educated. However now I see some people will say or do anything for the notoriety or wealth, some people will follow it blindly and can’t be educated, and that directly increase divisiveness, violence, lawlessness, harassment and discrimination. I don’t know a better approach but I do know the current status is not ok.

Maybe it’s as simple as consequences. You have a right to free speech but you also need to face the consequences of your words. In the past that may have meant you’re ostracized from various parts of society, or marginalized, but online that doesn’t seem to work anymore. You can say anything as long as the clicks follow, without facing the consequences of your words. Maybe the Alex Jones lawsuit will help or maybe we need to find ways to facilitate situations like that: you have free speech but also face the consequences of your words, which may include taking the fortune you made with your “alternative facts”. But when we have a presidential campaign that names it, is proud of it, and people still follow, what can we do? When there’s a huge profit motive for outrage, what can we do? Where fleecing the rubes has no consequences, what can we do? Where there are no checks and balances to keep the entire system stable, what can we do? I’ve never been so disappointed in my fellow supposedly sentient beings.

I am not talking about feeling attacked, but rather to not give anti-societal movements any platform.

Also, that ideology is not based in factual arguments, so why would arguing succeed? The real solution would be for them to get to know foreigners to seez that they are just people, but that doesn’t happen on twitter.

Yes, I see the difference, but its indicative of his ideology I think.

If you’re looking to have a public forum, you need a representative sample from all sides of the political spectrum. Look at parliamentary systems as an example of that, where you have literal fascists and communists sitting alongside one another as a very vocal, but incredibly small minority. If that’s your goal, you need to take the good with the bad.

That is what Musk has stated as his goal, so what you’re seeing makes absolute sense with that stated goal.

That said, I don’t like Musk or what he claims to believe in politically, I just think the idea of an open town square is desirable. I hope someone can pull it off (doesn’t seem like Musk is doing it), which is part of why I’m working on a Reddit/Lemmy alternative that discourages echo chambers and encourages high quality discourse. Doing that is incredibly hard, because people like to group up into tribes, and I think Musk absolutely does that as well (hence why I don’t like him). However, I don’t think Musk is a “Nazi” because he allows Nazis on his platform, I think he’s just incapable of running the type of social media platform he wants to see exist.

Collaborateur! 📣

What are you talking about? Who has he kicked out for that?

I don’t, but there seems to be a very strong correlation between leftist political views and calling people who tolerate Trump “Nazis.”

That said, I’m not a leftist or a conservative, I dislike Trump, Musk, and what they stand for. I’m libertarian, and not in the “I’m a conservative who likes weed” way (I have no desire to use weed, but it should 100% be legal), but in a “We should work toward open borders” way. I respect Musk’s statement that he wants Twitter/X to be a free speech platform and understand him allowing Trump et al back on, but I think he has really lost what made Twitter interesting. I don’t think he actually wants free speech, he wants people to agree with him to be heard, and “free speech” is the excuse to get them platformed again.

My issue here has nothing to do with Musk, but with the liberal (pun intended) use of the term “Nazi” to label people you don’t like. There are actual Nazi movements that could apply to, such as the Proud Boys, and abusing the term just cheapens the meaning of the term.

No, I disagree with each of your definitions. Here’s how I see them:

• leftist - anyone left of center; this is a big tent with both capitalists and communists
• progressives - leftists who want significant, but moderate political change (e.g. universal healthcare, high minimum wage, etc)
• liberals - anyone who believes in individual rights and private property, so basically the capitalist wing of leftist ideology; originally, liberals were more synonymous w/ modern libertarians, but now they tend to prefer larger government

So in terms of size of the groups: leftists > liberals > progressives. The communist part of the left is largely mutually exclusive from progressives and liberals, though some progressives are in favor of some elements from socialism.

At least that’s how I see it. I’m neither leftist or conservative, I’m a pretty centrist libertarian. I’m left of many leftists and right of many conservatives, depending on the issue.

Yup, and that’s more than a feeling, there’s a lot of evidence for it. Here’s a PDF research paper about polarization in social media, here’s an article, and here’s a related poll of people in emerging markets.

Then again, politics has always been divisive and resorting to name-calling isn’t anything new. The research, however, seems to indicate that it has gotten much worse with social media.

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