An interesting take on whether or not to ditch Twitter:

[Ocelot II]

Elon Musk Wants You To Leave Twitter: Don’t let the bros seize this ground. The unopposed damage they can do is yet another existential threat to democracy. Musk has two possible motives for pulling the trigger on this amnesty nonsense.

First, he desperately wants to increase the number of active users on the platform. He figures the more users there are, the more he can charge advertisers – revenue he desperately needs. And what’s the best way to do that quickly? Release all the inmates from Blackgate Prison, like Bane in The Dark Knight Rises: “We give it back to you, the people. Gotham is yours. None shall interfere, do as you please.”

Second, and most importantly, Musk wants to drive away all Normals.

Releasing the worst a-holes and disinformers back into the bloodstream of the site is a great way to force regular people, liberals, moderates, and so forth to flee for better, less abusive platforms.

From the start, this appears to have been the central goal of Musk’s investment. With Normals out of the way, it leaves this massive communications hub to the Republicans, Trump fanboys, fascists, weirdos, bros, and other terrible people who Musk considers to be fans and allies, just in time for the 2024 presidential election. For instance, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and his $1.9 billion stake in Twitter would love a Republican back in the Oval Office...

The rest at https://open.substack.com/pub/thebanter/p/elon-musk-wants-you-to-leave-twitter?r=3om6b&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

I don't use Twitter so I don't have to make that decision, but this is an interesting look at the issue.

[Kota]

1. Not sure I buy this idea, other right wing platforms have failed. If everybody leaves twitter it

will be a cesspool of hate and fail too. My opinion anyway.

[Ocelot II]

2. We can only hope. Something is certain to appear to take its place.

I just hope it doesn't do too much damage on its way down,

[Kota]

4. I think people actually wanting discussion and news can find other places, like here.

So many people on the app are there to muddle things, distract and deflect. That's easy for republicans, it's what tumpism does. No real ideas or policies, just bullshit.

[Alexander Of Assyria]

6. I agree. If want eyeballs for ad revenue driving away Normals is...highly illogical!

Unless Normals are already a minority?? Monsters can have it all to themselves! Who will they eat then?

[ok_cpu]

3. Those two things seem to be mutually exclusive

unless he thinks he can survive only on advertising revenue from My Pillow and companies that cater to MAGA.

It's hard to see a broad base of advertisers on a platform that allows the stuff Twitter is welcoming back. But, I guess Facebook is still around.

I think more important than going down with the Musk MAGA ship is finding an alternative that will enable all of the good Twitter has enabled in the past.

[Ocelot II]

5. It does seem that way. But we're seeing what a lousy businessman he really is,

and he might find out soon that he can't make enough money selling advertising when all his users are right-wing lunatics and trolls.

[ok_cpu]

7. That's my hope, at least.

And why I left. Let him try to make it work with an exclusive base of lunatic flying poo flingers, sockpuppets, and bots. I don't think I should offer any credibility to his mess.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

22. How does Fox & Fiends survive?

[Ocelot II]

23. Murdoch is a savvy businessman, is how.

He knows his audience and panders to them, and Fox does screen out the most extreme of the homicidal, anti-Semitic trolls that infest online media. Carlson is awful, but he stops just short of being Ye and Fuentes.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

25. The Egoloon may think he can out-fox the Fascist Oligarch eXtremists' network.

He could be trying to find the limit of advertisers and his ego tells him he's the only one who can create a profitable, libertarian cess-pool.

[womanofthehills]

8. I don't buy this idea at all

As of now there are twice as many democrats than republicans on Twitter. Musk is back & forth on where he is politically. He recently tweeted he voted for Obama and Biden in the past and now is slightly more Republican leaning but he still could vote Democratic again.

Most discussions I follow on Twitter do not even involve politics - I like to follow writers, doctors, virologists, latest medical studies, NFT artists etc.

I think being Dems make up a good part of Twitter - why quit and change this ratio? Also, Twitter attracts more younger people and more college educated people. I’m sure many older Republicans would definitely not be very interested in Twitter.

[Kota]

9. I think twitter is the biggest tool for republicans, it's easy for them. Democrats have other tools,

ways of messaging. Elon is changing with the wind direction, I don't believe anything he says is truth. Let twitter fail, I think it hurts them more than it does us.

[Emrys]

14. I don't know whether you're speaking from the standpoint of someone who

has detailed long-term experience of Twitter or from preconceptions, but Republicans and right-wingers in general don't use Twitter at all well or effectively, and are easily sidestepped, leaving them to address their echo chamber to "wind up the libs" to their hearts' content, and those of other political persuasions who choose to spend/waste their time engaging with them, which mainly only encourages them.

The media tend to focus on their worst outpourings (as does DU), but they're more about reinforcing their own views than gaining any converts, and usually terrible at judging the effectiveness or worth of what they do, like spurring a trending hashtag for a few hours or a day that achieves nothing except satisfying their need for attention and reassurance.

Democrats and others on the left of centre are not well served with other tools, otherwise they wouldn't have gravitated to Twitter in such numbers - and like it or not, the DUer you're replying to is correct, those with left-of-centre views have prevailed on Twitter for a long time, media representations just mask that fact.

[Kota]

21. Yes, dems prevail on twitter, but for maga republicans it's a

platform they easily take to. Doesn't mean they are good at it. Thats why left to them it will fail just like like all the right-wing platforms have. The only other tool they have is fox news.

[Hortensis]

13. Agree, womanofthehills. Twitter has always averaged out liberal,

both in its range and proportions of user ideologies and because of the vast range of information on it.

The very concepts and sacredness of truth, information, knowledge, sharing it with others are far more embraced by people who at least lean liberal in those respects, while the farther right one goes the more most are prone to rejection and even fear of large portions of the information shared in Twitter's global public square.

[Martin68]

10. I think I disagree. Let them have their hell-hole. Thou shalt be known by the social media thou

hangest out in. The EU looks set to ban Twitter entirely. Apple and google may stop supporting Twitter. Let them sink in their rotting putrefaction of rancid speech.

[ok_cpu]

12. That's where I landed

If I were meeting friends at a bar that turned openly abusive to its staff and courted Nazis, bigots, child pornographers, etc. would we continue to spend there so the bad people didn't take over?

[Emrys]

11. I recced this article, but I think anyone who looks for consistency

and a sense of business strategy in anything Musk does is barking up the wrong tree! He's driven by impulse and seems quite impressionable.

I think, like many libertarians, he's latched onto the idea/ideal of "free speech" without thinking through what it really entails and what problems absolutism can lead to in general, but especially on an established platform like Twitter.

I don't know who on Twitter could be described as "normals", me included. Investing a good deal of time and energy in any online platform (including DU) is arguably not "normal", but maybe "normal" is overrated anyway. The most interesting people I've found on Twitter (and DU) are exceptional in a wide variety of ways.

[Trenzalore]

15. Normal is the majority of the population

That strategy seems like a bad one.

Most people on Twitter are following celebrities and sports figures, not politicians. Those are the "normals" and those are the people advertisers want to reach. If you drive them off the site by making it a haven for nazis with no moderation, there is no revenue from advertisers.

https://www.socialtracker.io/toplists/top-50-twitter-users-by-followers/

Adding the list of who is the most followed on Twitter. There are a few politicians, but most are celebrities.

[ratchiweenie]

16. I think most progressives are smart people. The MAGAs want to

influence the intellectual elites. When we all leave (which I did the day Musk took over), they have no one to preach to. Preaching to the choir is not very satisfying. No matter what Trump and his gang claim, they desperately want to be seen as smart and right and they care very much what smart people think. I believe Twitter will fail without Dems and Progressives.

[sanatanadharma]

18. Great minds have long pondered the question of "the greatest good for the greatest number"

Is the social, psychological, physical damage done via Twitter worth the benefit to those who consume wisely?
Are people, cultures, even nations to be collateral Twitter damage?
Does not the world of non-users also suffer from Twitter-crappers?
Do we want the future to say, "They valued their independence more than their wisdom, and lost it all."
When the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many, we lose society.

[NQAS]

19. But....

If that’s the plan it becomes 4chan or something like it. An echo chamber for the ultra RW. Not a market for advertisers or a safe place normal people.

For those non political people who are lamenting the loss of a place to exchange info and ideas and make friends with people who share your normal interests, there’s no reason that another service cannot fill that role, eg, mastodon or the like.

[Torchlight]

20. It's kinda frustrating to watch

so many people cede ground to the right in real time.

The abandonment of another media platform comes across to me as did the late eighties when hate radio established a controlled bridgehead in mass-media, and before I knew what had happened, they created a de-facto monopoly from which to whisper (or shout, in this case) to the lowest common denominators of the electorate with justifications on who, how, and why to hate "them".

It worked.

[Caliman73]

24. I don't see the take as very interesting.

Twitter, while a huge influence on culture over the past decade, has never been a very lucrative venture. Any of the success that Twitter has had has been through being a diverse space where many different people come together to share a wide range of interests. Celebrities, Influencers, Sports figures, politicians, and everyday people came together to form loose communities of shared interests. If Musk succeeds in "Driving away the Normals" he will have successfully shrunk his user base to about 10% to maybe 30% of the size it was previously. Twitter will become simply another Gab, Parler, Truth Social, etc...

Do we talk about MySpace anymore? Friendster, etc... Those were some of the more influential sites in the early days of social media, but they died out and lost relevance. People want a space where they can just go and share information in peace. They do not want a weaponized political cesspool where they are just as likely to get harassed and doxxed as get a new recipie for Chile Relleno.

Logistically, We like it when they are all together, feeling free to spout their stupid shit, where we can look in on them, but not have to engage with their stupidity.

[marble falls]

26. So twitter becomes another backwater, like Breitbart. Big deal.