Thread by @JesseHeinig

Wondering why all the social media sites were able to suddenly swoop in with a banhammer on all the fascists, when they dragged their feet for so long that it wasn't until there was a violent attempted coup that they did anything?

(A thread)

1/

You may use social media to connect with friends, chat, share pictures, and join events, all for free, but those companies have to make money somehow. They have employees and investors to pay! So where do they get the money?

2/

You're the product. Social media sites are selling "you" to their advertisers and partners. When you read something, click on something, reply to something, buy something, they record it. They develop a profile of you, automatically, by tracking everything you do.

3/

That's why you get funny ads: They're trying to see what you will buy, what you ignore, what you report as offensive. The better they know you, the more accurate their data when they sell it to another company and say "Oh, you want people who like cats? Here you go."

4/

This means that, if you engage with politics a bit on social media, they probably have a pretty good idea of what you support. They know which candidates you like, which ones you hate, which policies you love but wistfully bemoan will never become reality.

5/

So it's *easy* for them to know who the fascists are. That's the whole point of their data analysis: Knowing who the people on their sites are. Knowing who YOU are. And knowing how to sell things to you.

6/

Why not just ban all the fascists, then? After all, by giving fascists a platform and allowing them to organize and recruit, social media sites are... at least a little complicit in the harm that the fascists cause.

Well, turns out that fascism's big money.

7/

All those big Fox "entertainment" news shows—money. The conservative talk radio hosts who agitate—money. The big companies that back conservative politicians in hopes of getting deregulation and kickbacks—money.

8/

And think about the folx who stormed the Capitol on the 6th. Flew to DC? Presumably stayed in a hotel, which isn't cheap in that town? Tactical gear, rifles? Not cheap. Money.

9/

Social media companies look at demographics and say in their conference rooms, "A big percentage of people voted for Trump. A big chunk of Republicans say that they are OK with the coup attempt. If we ban them all, we risk losing millions of users. We risk losing money."

10/

But now the lawmakers on the Hill had their lives threatened. They're pissed. They're mad that the tech companies that could've done something all along have done nothing. And the Democrats are in charge now...

11/

The Democrats are still a party principally captured by oligarchs, but they are marginally more likely to do something. So just like all those people leaving the Trump administration in the 11th hour after the failed coup, the social media companies are hedging their bets.

12/

They want it to look like they're taking action now because the situation has become so grave. The reality is that they could've taken action long ago, but they were more interested in getting that big money, by continuing to allow bigots, racists, and bashers to meet up.

13/

And you might've read that one of the only reasons that the social media companies are doing something is that employees are demanding it. Working on big data algorithms is a specialized skill. There may be a lot of people clamoring for those jobs, but...

14/

... social media companies can't afford to lose everyone at once. They can't retrain an entire base of hundreds of employees all in one go, to use their specialized tools and understand their proprietary algorithms. So when labor organizes, stuff happens.

15/

Social media companies could've done this any time. Their entire business is built around knowing what every one of their users wants, likes, hates, and buys.

They just felt that your lives weren't worth risking their money.

~Fin~