Majoritarian, Capitalist Memetic Warfare

I'm mostly keeping my observations about Elon Musk and Twitter over on Mastodon, but this one's a little too interesting and important.

Musk just announced (quoting, so you don't have to actually go to the hellsite):

Twitter will start incorporating mute and block signals from Blue Verified (not Legacy Blue) as downvotes

This innocuous little announcement is both brilliant and horrifying. Consider:

• He's driven most of the progressive side of the world off Twitter already.
• The people willing to pay for stupid blue checkmarks at this point are mainly his neo-Nazi fanboys.
• He is now officially factoring their views -- but not those of anybody else -- into the Twitter algorithm. If you mute somebody, you contribute to nobody else getting to see them either.

So from here on out, he doesn't need to ban non-right-wing journalists. Instead, he is encouraging his flock to collectively silence them.

Hell, from a financial POV it's the most evilly brilliant thing I've seen in years. He is essentially saying, "The reason to pay me $8 is so that you can own the libs."

All of that while being able to say, "Me? I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm just allowing my customers to express their opinions, and shaping the site the way they want it." And the only way to fight it is to give him money. No matter how it plays out, he wins.

Seriously: if you are active on Twitter, get off. Now. This is beyond Orwellian -- it isn't commanding the mob to be evil and violent, it is selecting for evil, empowering it, and profiting off of it. The appropriate response is ostracism: for us to collectively say clearly that Twitter is now nothing more than a bigger and fancier version of Parler, not suitable for decent folks to hang out on.

Spread the word. If you know any journalists who have a shred of integrity, definitely spread the word to them. If you know any business owners who still advertise on Twitter, make clear that that association is now strictly negative publicity.

And just to be clear: any comments attempting to both-sides this will be deleted. There are times to stand up and be clear, and it is time to loudly declare that Twitter has been corrupted beyond any reasonable hope.