I mentioned sometime back in April that I had been Borged by Twitter, mainly so I could listen to Tucker Carlson. So of course, while I'm already there, I may as well do my best to piss off the algorithm and started to follow every crackpot. It's been fun.
Now, there are those out there who would claim Elon Musk is the second coming of Jesus Christ himself, or maybe Moses leading us out of our captivity in the Egyptian hell of censorship into the Promised Land of free speech. Well, I got some bad news for y'all. In my short time on the platform, I already have a list of people I follow who have had accounts suspended, shadowbanned or deleted outright for no discernible reason other than expressing support for conservative politicians or criticizing liberals.
So far, none of this was affecting me directly, but now I think it is. When I first joined, every time I posted a comment or retweeted, I would get half-dozen likes and usually a follow. Lately, it feels like I'm talking to myself in an empty room. I've even run a couple experiments, leaving comment for people I had a lot of interaction with to respond in some way if they are seeing my comments and I get nothing. Then just when I thought I had been virtually nuked, I got a couple follows and several likes out of left field. Who the hell knows?
The bottom line is that Elon is no more independent than anyone else in the social media space. The federal government really has him over a barrel thanks to SpaceX, etc. All conversations are mediated by the FBI/CIA/NSA/DHS. The internet as we knew it back in the 1990's is dead and buried at this point. If you want to communicate with people, invite your neighbors over for drinks.
Later.
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