Sure, Elon is a certified schizo, but labeling everyone who points out issues with the EU leadership policies as "trolls", "far right", "MAGA" and "Putin supporters" to discredit opinions they don't like, only causes further contempt, and adding censorship to "protect democracy", doesn't fix the structural issues of your democracy which stem from the lack of trust and disappointment the voters have in their leaders and their policies from the last ~10 years, not from X and its blue checkmarks which only serves as a convenient scapegoat to dodge accountability.
X is just one of the few unmoderated escape valves people have left to vent their frustrations without fear of speech censorship or repercussions, and instead of leaders treating it as an option poll or pulse of the nation to know where the displeasure of their voters lie, they do exactly the opposite of what people there say, and then are shocked at elections why people get even angrier and start voting more extreme right/left in retaliation.
Oh, and the major hypocrisy that gives X a lot of weight despite its issues, is that when the free sharing of information on Twitter led to the 2011 Arab Spring regimes topplings despite those regimes trying to stop Twitter, GSM and internet access, it was championed as a victory for free speech by the west, but when the tables turn and the same free sharing of information on X leads to exposure of corruption, cronyism and lies of western governments and mainstream media, then now X is the problem and we get attempts of Chat-Control and Age-ID for our internet access. Huh, aint that sus how what's good for the goose isn't good for the gander.
So as that old saying goes, if you cut a man's tongue, you're not convincing people he's a liar, you're convincing them that you're afraid of what he has to say. Just to be clear, by "man" here I mean X and social media in general, not Elon, that guy's nuts.
Autocracy is what threatens EU democracy, not a check mark on a social media website.
So I don’t get called a Pro-Elon shill, I don’t like Elon, and think he is an ass. But he has done (maybe unwittingly) more for democracy on social media than his counterparts.
EDIT: Community notes might have been before Elon. So he only gets a half credit.
This. The government diverges from the will of the people, the government structures itself to resist the people changing it to reflect their will, the people become more likely to say "f this" and so something drastic. This isn't a new pattern or even unique to democracy. The 1790s French professional managerial class lost their heads this way.
where a huge amount of influential accounts posing as American patriots were actually essentially content-farmers from the global south?
For my 2 cents, I consider X in 2025 (which is very different from Twitter in 2011!) to be basically an anonymous imageboard like 4Chan, mostly full of straight-up noise and largely decoupled from reality, with the only reliable signal being a bias towards information that is personally flattering or aligned with Elon Musk.
I don't know that I'd ever seriously listen to a place like 4Chan for guidance about how to tie my own shoes, much less how to govern an entire nation.
Which is why I'd like a button that allows me to geofence the global south from posting on my social media feeds. Their opinions are irrelevant anyway to the political issues happening in my EU country since they're not citizens and can't vote in the elections here, so there's no loss there, same how I'm not gonna go on Indian social media boards and lecture them about how to solve the conflict with Pakistan because it doesn't concern me.
Like for example a popular blogger from my country solved this issue by paywalling his blog behind a 5 Euro monthly Patreon fee. Suddenly, no more bots, trolls, low quality rage baiters and Asian scammers. Gatekeeping is important if you want to maintain quality and don't have massive resources for moderation.
Also this isn't anything new. Spying, botting and farming on the internet aka information warfare in general, has been happening for 50+ years now. We're now just more aware of it because now "others" are doing it to "us", when in the past it was mostly "we" who were doing it to "them".
>I don't know that I'd ever seriously listen to a place like 4Chan for guidance about how to tie my own shoes, much less how to govern an entire nation.
[...]mostly full of straight-up noise and largely decoupled from reality
If it's so decoupled from reality, then how come both X and 4Chan were bang on about how Trump was gonna win the US presidential election both times, despite mainstream media telling otherwise from their "polls" as sources?
You can chose not to listen to X and 4Chan the same way how you can choose to piss against the wind, but then don't be surprised you end up getting wet and covered in piss.
I think mostly Meta's and X's platforms have the big issue with asian posters masquerading as westerners, since they get paid for the engagement rage-bait they generate there, but 4Chat doesn't pay you, so they have no incentive to spend their time commenting there when they can farm on X for cash. 4Chan is mostly infested by glowies though, both US and Israeli.
throwfaraway135•2mo ago
* Community notes
* Organization/Person verification
* And now visible locations
All of which are much more than you have in other places like Reddit or Instagram. Is there a lot more you can do? Probably yes.