Those who direct these places know almost better than ourselves how we are going to react to information and misinformation, so there is something in all this exodus that causes us x that leads me to distrust
A few days ago the journalist Almudena Ariza said, from her profile in X, why she did not leave that social network that is full of noise, insults, bots and hate: “Because I believe in the information, in the dialogue, in the people In good faith that they seek to understand, not destroy. I will not give this space to those who only hate or lie. I stay for those who still believe in the debate, in ideas, in a better world. That the screams do not shut up, nor the hatred bury the truth. We are still here, for everything we can still change together. Doing journalism. ” Another admired journalist, Julia Otero, did the opposite and put a last post one day before: “I go with the music (and the lyrics) elsewhere. The sky that is blue. Definitive decision for an indefinite time. Thank you all ”.
Both, admired, admirable, active professionals are references for thousands of people. Both reflect the dichotomy in which many people move these weeks about what to do with their social networks when their owners, Elon Musk and Zuckerberg, have taken the direction of making these hostile and dangers places, places contrary to human rights , the social movements and the people who embody them with their voice or their activity. To do?
A recommendation that was given to those who marched from X at the first exit to Bluesky, in the month of November, was that the account was not closed or the profile was erased to avoid identity supplacements. In this way, we can still see, as if they were a frozen image, profiles that stopped being active for a long time, and they miss them. Some said goodbye and others did not. The ones that did say goodbye and even announced their departure have been environmental organizations such as Greenpeace or Ecologists in Action, who have left X the same day Trump took possession. A stampede followed by more than a hundred organizations that had a protest form to point out that Elon Musk’s network is being used for political purposes to attack democracy.
Also some media such as The Guardian (The first) have moved to Bluesky and reported that they would stop publishing in X and have fulfilled it. It would be interesting to know what balance they do of it after three months. Others double their activity in both networks in the midst of this transition moment where the new digital agora is far from the impact space that has become X.
Among the political class there is also that same division, those that are only in X, those that follow in both networks and those who have a portozo to X. Yolanda Díaz is one of those that he has chosen not to continue in X after the Nazi greeting From Musk, he did it with a statement that can be summarized in a phrase of the post of the one who hung it: “Defend democracy is to stop using tools that weaken it.”
To do? Leave or not leave X. And the question could extend to others, A Amazon, to Google, to Apple and Meta (Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp). In fact, the New York Times He has just published that Zuckerberg platforms are hiding and blocking accounts and publications of pills and contraceptive solutions. That is, it is selectively silencing – which in social networks is equivalent to burying – that information contrary to the reactionary and anti rights of Trump. One more signal of that pleitesy of the great technological to the project of the extreme right against what they call Woke culture, in an improper appropriation of a term of the anti -racist struggle, which have co -opted the reactionary agenda.
Stay or not in these social networks, I consider that it is not a decision that we must make in mass or because others do it, nor as a coup. Each and everyone knows what their role in these networks is. In the American context, perhaps the one that most risk and contradiction entails, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders continue in X and from that platform they are doing their job of defending democracy. On the other hand, Naomi Klein was in October renouncing the impact of his opinion and analysis. It is now in Bluesky with much less impact, which is another way of silencing.
My question is whether we can afford to lose the most critical and influential voices of a network like X at a time as the current one. I also understand that there are risks that do not want to run, real risks to which it gives the impression that there will be less protection although it is not much more than that each one was sought with the blockade to profiles. I wonder who is winning if those guides and referents activists, intellectuals and politicians stop issuing signals and light that guide us amid so much noise and dark. Personally, I believe that these types of influential and referents profiles are important that they remain in X, as Olga Rodríguez does that has a profile in X and Bluesky (so far).
Activism, journalism and the defense of human rights must be where injustice is. There are referents that embody these values and whose presence in X is important for thousands of people who continue to go to this social network yet. Millions that will continue in it for a while because not everyone can migrate to other networks or is simply hooked to it, and does not want to leave it.
There are many people in X that are neither troll nor bot, much influence that is still played in this space and that it is not time to leave. Another thing is to decide how and what to be. It is worth asking if we are not making it too easy to those who want to eliminate our messages, ideas, arguments and faces of the global conversation. To whom they want to erase us.
I propose to make a list of points for and against how Alexandre López-9 An article that is suggestive. And by making it starting from the true influence we have on this network or that this network has in us. There will be those who are a reference page of the LGTBIQ culture being their publications a thread of light. There will be other people whose presence in the social network is testimonial, and the one who is or not is something that affects themselves only in themselves, so they will have to assess whether what they find in X is worth it (never better) or if that can be found in other ways. Honestly, I think not yet.
In any case, the decision made, in the midst of so much emotionality that I believe must be mediated and ask as those proposed by López-Borrul. And, in addition, there is always Instagram, although its impact is different. It is good to remember that predecessors to leave X were Cristina you will fail and Ada Colau when it was Twitter, and follow them in Ig is equally interesting. Of course, Instagram is a goal, goal is Zuckerberg.
Personally I have made two threats to leave X. One, when I opened the Bluesky account and another, after Musk’s Nazi greeting. I have returned both times but not in the same way. The latter with the intention of using my account as a space for visibility of messages that I think they must be in this network as if it were a bot defending human rights.
I think that nothing that is happening with Trump and the great technological ones can be decontextualized of complaints that have been carried out in the last decade about the role of these social platforms in the dissemination of hate content, in the operation of the algorithms and Mental health problems, in what happened with Cambridge Analytica (see the great hack) …
Those who direct these places know almost better than ourselves how we are going to react to information and misinformation, so there is something in all this exodus that causes us x that leads me to distrust. I worry that we are putting it too easy, and even that they are taking us to a digital place where we are prey much easier, an island’s spice where we believe someone and we are nothing.
Who knows. Whatever it is, whatever happens, I always read and listen to Marta Peirano, who knows about this for a while. Someone who, by the way, continues in X.
#Leave
