Thread by @SethCotlar

At this point, I think I’m done producing content for this malevolent thug who is using his power and platform to target violence at others.

This thread captures it well. Just as FloridaOrban said Fauci should be “chucked across the Potomac,” Musk knows he just required Fauci to have even more security protection against the right’s growing ranks of stochastic terrorists.

https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1601900968907608065

For the next few days any social media activity I engage in will happen on Mastodon and Post. I’m also locking this account so that only my current followers can see it.

I know that me leaving Twitter will have exactly zero impact on Elon's bottom line or the future survival of this place, just as my not shopping at Wal-Mart has had zero impact on that company. I take this action because it sickens me to be complicit with what is happening here.

I have reservations about ceding this very important public space to Elon, his army of sycophantic right wing propagandists, and the scattered band of conspiracy-obsessed stochastic terrorists who serve as their thuggish (but at arms length) enforcement mechanism.

Elon has his head so far up his own ass (and is surrounded by so many yes men bros who consider themselves "free thinkers") that I just can't see this mad king changing course and making Twitter less politically and ethically toxic on his own accord.

I'm also done counting on the "good intentions" of huge corporations who some had hoped would refuse to do business with a thuggish authoritarian and enabler of stochastic terrorism like Musk. It would be great if they would do that, but I'm not expecting much from them.

I most certainly do NOT want to see forceful government oversight of a platform like this. Perhaps it would work to hold Twitter legally accountable for harms caused by the violent hate groups that Twitter knows full well gather their forces here. But that's not happening soon.

As with many things in a democratic society, it's mostly humans with a sense of decency & shame, and a respect for informal norms of generosity, kindness, equity, and inclusion that can make big institutions like Twitter function as promoters rather than destroyers of democracy.

Elon as Chief Twit has revealed himself to be a magnet that attracts only the most angry, hateful, small-minded, and anti-democratic figures to him...he doesn't just attract them, he fires them up much as Trump fired up the previously demoralized bigots scattered across the US.

It's possible that global social media technology & democracy are just fundamentally opposed to each other. If that's the case, then I choose to side w/ democracy. I still have hope that they're NOT incompatible, but Twitter just feels like a democracy-destroying machine rn.

If I was a cynical propagandist like many of the people with whom Elon has engaged in jovial banter since taking over the company, I would try to get the hashtag #twexit going.