okay let’s go – Fascism Watch for 16 December 2023: the X-Twitter Update

Feeling more than a little swamped by all the Fascism to watch? Me too. Still, here’s a focused one, so let’s go:

First up this morning – and it is barely this morning as I discover this, a few hours after it originally went up – we find Elon Musk’s X (ne Twitter) being a fascist fountain of disinformation and propaganda, with massive numbers of “verified” (paid) accounts posting AI-generated anti-Semitic videos and memes. X, naturally, has been doing absolutely nothing to stop this, and has been giving them massive exposure.

When I said Elon Musk bought Twitter to turn it into a fascist disinformation fountain and propaganda machine, I really meant it. When I said those who stay on Twitter are supporting this, I meant that too.

Russian Propagandist Olga Skabeeva is a big fan of Elon Musk, highlighting Musk’s defence of and praise for Putin during a recent X live event between Musk, professional misogynist and sex-trafficking rapist Andrew Tate, psychopath and serial liar best known for attacking the parents of murdered children Alex Jones, and Republican fascist presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

I guess the Russians like not just his praise of Putin, but his self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” stance wherein he uses X’s algorithmic systems to promote far-right and fascist material, while suing people who report accurately on how X places advertisements next to anti-Semitic and fascist content and claiming people that fact checkers using his own systems are “state actors” and distorting content.

A bunch of big Canadian advertisers have dropped advertising on Elon Musk’s X, but don’t worry, he’s still getting ad money from an app that creates fake nudes of women whose pictures you upload. There are also new efforts to organise against X, particularly aimed at news organisations, as Twitter is still seen as the best place for news. (I disagree with that assessment – strongly – for reasons like how both X and X’s new AI tool “Grok” are famously good at promoting disinformation and conspiracy theories, including lies about climate change. But I agree it is out there.)

I’ll keep saying it until it sinks in: staying on Twitter is personally supporting Elon Musk and financially supporting X, his fascist disinformation and propaganda fountain.

On a completely unrelated note, Threads have started testing ActivityPub interoperation and it’s now possible to follow and reply to posts on Threads from Mastodon and other ActivityPub-speaking platforms. Well, to the tiny number of people – mostly developers – who have had federation access added to their accounts. It’s revived the huge controversy about whether to federate with anything Meta does. And it’s meta specifically; nobody minds that Tumblr’s plans are still in progress and people generally look on the idea of federating there positively. But the flagship instance – mastodon.social – is definitely all-in on interoperability, so we’re going to see how it goes one way or another.

So if there’s anybody you want to follow on Threads but you don’t want a Meta account… now you don’t need one. Join the Federation. It won’t all work for several months, but it’s starting to work in real life now.

There, that’s a topic. Let’s see if more short updates work better, shall we?

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.