Thread by @ireneista

The reason hate is flourishing in the world today... is largely the lie of its own inevitability.

(This is an adaptation of a line by an author we like. It was too good not to borrow.)

To expand on that a bit: A lot of mailing lists and web forums are simply given over to toxicity and overt fascism, without a fight, because people assume that if they fight, they'll lose.

The reality is that when communities are run thoughtfully, by people who have a personal stake in their well being and are accountable only to the community, not to corporate interests... things tend to work out.

A key catalyst that led to things getting this bad is that we all did wind up on corporate platforms. Corporations have no particular interest for or against fascism; they may be mildly for it, but it's likely that most aren't led by people who understand this.

About a year ago we wrote a thread, in part, about how social systems can be embedded in other social systems. We're going to draw on that vocabulary below; if you need a refresher, here's a link.

https://twitter.com/ireneista/status/1284635748113829888

There's a thing that comes up sometimes where if someone is trying to uphold the status quo, that tends to mean that they have inadvertently sided with fascism. "To be neutral to injustice is to side with the oppressor."

That's usually said about individuals. People who will sit back and watch a fight happen, rather than break it up - that sort of thing.

Today, we're going to talk about how it applies to corporate social media platforms.

Basically: It *does not matter* whether social media companies *want* fascism or not. Their goal, first and foremost, is to make money. That means they have no particular incentive to care about what their platforms do to the world.

That means, in practice, that to the extent that corporations exert control over what gets said on their platforms... that control tends to be exercised in ways that aim for neutrality, or near-neutrality.

We don't mean to single out any particular platform, because they're all like that, to greater or lesser extents depending mostly on how successful tech workers have been at pushing for change from within.

That said, you can see it most clearly with Nextdoor because that's a company with a business model that is fundamentally predicated on selling people fear.

We've heard stories - when people try to make their local Nextdoor forums friendlier places, over time they tend to get removed by company officials. It's directly analogous to the thing where school administrators "solve" bullying by punishing the victims.

You can identify similar issues on Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter... every corporate platform fundamentally hits this problem. Trying to *change* the world is bad for business.

Some of our followers may be too young to remember, but the Internet used to be a thousand different sites run by a thousand different people. Individuals and corporations, for about ten years, were on equal fotting.

These days the vast majority of people's time is spent on one of about five different sites. It's somewhat absurd.

If you look at *why* it's that way - well, profit, of course. The usual tactics of corporate bullying were used to consolidate everything. The commons got smaller as capitalism ate it.

That's a problem for society, because these giant, consolidated, "neutral" platforms create fertile ground for hatred. The people who make it their life's work to spread hatred have had a field day.

That may sound scary. It may sound like titanic societal forces that there's no way to stop. We're here to tell you that it shouldn't be scary!

Social media platforms only have power because we *give* them power, because we all collectively choose to put more time and effort into centralized platforms than decentralized ones.

We all kind of got lured here with shiny toys, with the excitement of new features every few months.

There is a lot to be said for things that are *not* shiny and new - but are more *real*. Smaller platforms like hobbyist websites and the Fediverse may be old and dusty, compared to Twitter, but they *work*, and they're built to last.

[CW food] Twitter's structure is all about the dopamine hit of watching your numbers go up. It's an artificial, packaged experience. Just like artificial sweeteners, it will always give you *faster* gratification.

Ultimately, all we have to do to take back control from corporations is all decide to spend our time elsewhere.

Ultimately, all we have to do to stop fascists from spreading their ideas is *actually kick them out* of our social spaces.

Hate is *not* inevitable. When we look at how it spreads, it's clear that fighting back *does* work. It works better when we fight on favorable terrain - small communities built around personal needs, not corporate ones. Even on corporate platforms, it's still worth fighting.

When you see people in your community (online or off) who posture and try to spread hatred, don't be intimidated. They're trying to scare you, because fear is the lynchpin of their strategy. They're trying to convince you that they'll win, so you shouldn't bother to fight.

We'll be there with you. Good luck. <3