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@elonmusk
Britain is going full Stalin

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1858521463889825807

Whether or not you think inheritance tax on farms is a good idea, on balance I'm against it, the idea that it is "full Stalin" really does show what an absolute moron Musk is. He didn't use to be as big a berk as this, or maybe he hid it, but it looks like social media has done a number on his mind.

It's why hoping on a favourable deal from Trump is utterly daft. Musk loathes Starmer and wants a populist right-wing government to succeed Labour in 2029. He will try to get Trump to humiliate him and the UK government.

Yes, it's weird - Musk does seem to have quite a personal dislike of Starmer. Commenting on such a parochial issue as IHT on farmers in the UK is odd.
I'm surprised Musk hasn't weighed in on the gross injustice of removing the VAT exemption on private school fees.

I think you'll find there are dwindlingly few people who don't have quite a personal dislike of Starmer.

"Nigel Farage holds highest favourability rating in Ipsos poll, but almost half hold unfavourable opinion of Reform UK leader"

https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/nigel-farage-holds-highest-favourability-rating-ipsos-poll-almost-half-hold-unfavourable-opinion

Trump more popular with younger British voters than older ones.

18-34: Fav 28%, Unfav 48%
35-54: Fav 28%, Unfav 53%
55+: Fav 20%, Unfav 69%

But still very unpopular overall.

I’d love to have a long chat with the 13% of LibDem voters with a favourable view. I don’t understand that at all.

They liked him because he split the Tory vote in some seats the Lib Dems won.

No, Trump. 13% have a favourable view of Trump in that poll. Bonkers.

Oh that, it’s obvious, his planned policies make joining the EU inevitable.

Show your workings. 500 words maximum.

I do wonder how long it will take until people realise that will never happen again.

When will Rejoiners realise the future EU is going to be hard right?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/18/european-union-right-wing-ursula-von-der-leyen-eu-commission-hard-right-parties

It will be interesting to see how lefty Remainers react to this dawning reality

Hardcore remainers' EU forelock tugging is a far more deeply ingrained predeliction than any distaste they might have for fascism. They will simply explain it away. It will be lovely continental fascism - cut from a far silkier cloth than the lumpen British variety.

Morning all.

Social media polarisation at its worst again this morning. Bluesky, which I'd thoughtful, literate and considered on topics like literature and photography full of posts on Biden's missile policy along the lines "Let's go ! Now let's go faster and harder."

Meanwhile, TwitterX has thousands of posts along the lines that it's all the work of Soros and the regime of "Sodom and Gomorrha".

The 3 main functions of Social Media

1) to display your beliefs like a mating peacock.
2) to find a group of others to approve your beliefs
3) to find a group of those opposed to you, so you can hate them.

No. I disagree. That may be your view, or a deliberate bit of hyperbole for a Monday breakfast time.

I'm more with social media is what we collectively make of it, with a whole spectrum of variation.

My local Sutton Living Memory Facebook Group (16k members) tells me oodles of recent local history.
This morning Nottingham Cycle Chat (private, 1000 members) has told me about a new cafe in Shipley Country Park and which Nottingham Cycle Parking facilities have a history of scrotes stealing things.
Cycling UK Canals and Rivers (50k members iirc) has told me other things.
And the Omnipod 5 user group (4k and growing rapidly) is educating me about the wrinkles of my new capsule insulin pumps.
The Leeanderthal Man's group is obviously full of Leeanderthal men.
And my various family and friends networks keep me in touch. Too many adoring photos of one relative's Shit-Pooh dog, however.

The issue with Twitter is systemic, with all pretence of being a neutral service provider abandoned. It's like swimming in a river where the water company is forever releasing raw sewage. There is an opportunity to make something better without the sewage, so I will support it with my small contribution. If Elon Musk wants me to be his plaything, he can go and fuck himself.

Social media is a tool. Use it well, and it can be fun, engaging and informative. Use it badly, and it can be annoying, discontenting and misinformative. I like Facebook, because it allows me to keep track of far-flung family and friends and mutual interest groups (e.g. trains, pathetic triathletes...)

But Twix is rapidly becoming a Torx screwdriver that has become mangled after an idiot has tried to use it on too many Phillips heads screws. It's still a tool, but pretty useless for anything other than a shank.

Twitter has been completely unusable for a while now. I remember the good old days (2009-2014ish) when you would follow people with similar interests and spark up a conversation. You'd even meet some of them IRL at 'tweetups' and become friends.

I exchanged information and met up with industry peers at a few IRL events, bonded with people over similar music tastes, shared random memes and funnies.

Then the rot set in. And by rot, I mean politics. It corrodes everything it touches. Once twitter hit the tipping point of being mostly politics, slowly, all the people using it for other reasons left. Eventually it just became arguments and porn bots.

Bluesky is useful because of its blocklist feature. Meaning you can have, say, a discussion on queer literature without some knuckle dragger turning the thread into a DID U KNO THER R ONLY 2 GENDARS? and turning the whole discussion into a flaming dumpster fire. Not everything has to be about politics, all of the time. Sometimes, you just wanna talk about books.

Where Bluesky is bad is that it's 2014-Tumblr redux. A coterie of hard-left radicals who pile on to anyone who doesn't share their views who are the second cheek of the same arse of the MAGA types who make Twitter unusable. Bluesky has a "this is a space for leftists" culture and if you don't meet the purity test, you'll quickly end up blocked.

It's worth pointing out that the second most blocked person on Bluesky at the moment is Brianna Wu, who you may remember as the trans woman who got brigaded on twitter a decade ago by far right morons in 'gamergate'. Now she's getting hassled by the far left for daring to suggest that their absolutist views are harming trans rights. She's also pro-Israel. Truly, the revolution eating its own children.

I like PB because it enables me to compartmentalise political debate - I don't talk politics elsewhere online, or ever in real life. The problem is everyone wants to turn everywhere online into a political slanging match. Imagine everyone turning every forum everywhere into non-stop football talk. When you just want to share recipes for cake. Eventually the politics corrodes everything, making 'general purpose' public spaces utterly useless for anything other than politics, forcing people into highly moderated niche forums, subreddits, discord channels, etc, to discuss other topics.

TL;DR. Even with strong moderation, social media is probably dead as a means of communicating *anything* except political hatred for the other side.

Excellent post, but I think you go too far. For instance I am on PB (too much) and currently Netweather. The biggest issues on both sites? For PB its the consumption of exotic yellow fruit on artisanal Italian flat bread on the other its peoples constant imbyism about whether it will snow or nor.

Like the old adage - if you meet one arsehole in your day, bad luck, you met an arsehole. If you meet lots of arseholes, then maybe its you? I don't see the issues with twitter that others do, and Facebook etc seems fine.

Facebook has been a dead platform since 2016 - around the time of the Presidential Election. Politics drove most people off the site, and it's never recovered. I have a few hundred 'friends' on there and not a single one posts with any kind of regularity any more. The occasional round robin type 'look at my lovely child's first day in school' post. I check it maybe once every couple of weeks. It's a generational thing, I think. I think only people 60+ use it.

The problem with Twitter is it's impossible to have a civil conversation about anything as a) all the people who don't want to argue politics left long ago and b) all the people who do want to argue politics think because it's an open forum, they can just wander in and start bombarding you with their pet obsessions. Effectively derailing what could have otherwise been interesting discussions. Imagine Leon brigading this forum with AI posts constantly when you're trying to talk about politics. That's what Twitter has become, but in reverse. Bluesky is going the same way, but with a more leftist bent.

I stand by my idea that 'open' social media is dead and political argument drives out all others until the platform is dead. An enshittification cycle, sort of like the 4channification cycle, where something starts out cool and underground, develops a wider userbase, then the nazis and pornbots move in, everyone else moves out, until there's only nazis and pornbots left.

You're assuming there won't be some form of counterrevolution.
There's clearly a market for an unshittified platform. So the chances are that one will, in time, evolve.

One interesting feature of people talking about the "echo chamber" of social media is that it all comes from a political perspective. Ok, that's understandable - both here and in the media - because that's the angle from which it is approached in this context.

But my socials are an overlapping set of interests: guitars, painting little toy soldiers, classic TV, theatre, books, archaeology, business, tech, and some news/politics. The "generalist" ones (Twitter as was, Bluesky as of the last month or so) is a curated feed of all those overlapping interests. I also have a few more focused places, like PB and a couple of Discords.

Aggressively muting and blocking people who were not contributing positively to my happiness on any of those channels makes them an "echo chamber" I guess. But I don't want my every interaction to be an argument. Mostly I just want to be able to chat about things I enjoy.

Twitter reached the point where I couldn't paddle against that tide any more.