The news of Kamala Harris’s loss was heavy and shocking for many, including for some of Trump’s very own supporters, who are now experiencing buyer’s remorse as they now watch in horror as he has already begun to outline some of his despotic plans and that when he drained the swamp, he failed to mention that he would be filling it with snakes and eels.
Trump has recently released the names of those to whom he owed favors to the members of his new cabinet. One such cabinet member, who may or may not be the richest man in the world, but by all accounts is too rich for anyone’s good, Elon Musk.
Musk is the man who did not come up with the Tesla technology but was just able to profit from it; the owner of SpaceX, a privatized version of NASA, with even less reason to be up there and less knowhow to make a successful launch, and the owner of the social media artist formerly known as Twitter, which he purchased along with American democracy, for the tiny price tag of $44 billion. One of Elon’s first actions as head of Twitter was to name it X and to allow free speech bigotry free reign on the app, welcoming back the once disgraced president and twice impeached god of white nationalists, Donald Trump, to the app after his previous banishment, you know, for his part in trying to overthrow the government; luckily for him, dumbassery is at an all-time high, and he was re-elected.
However, that re-election obviously did not sit well with people who have some f*cking sense.
Musk’s tinkering with his new toy had a lot to do with the outcome of this election, ‘allegedly,’ and people finally reacted to it, even if possibly too late. The consistent dissemination of wrong or biased information, the amplification of white nationalists’ rhetoric and the suppression of leftists xweets eventually broke the South African-owned internet, and Musk is bleeding from the burstation (it’s a word today). In a move that was shocking even if the writing was on the wall, there has been a mass exodus from X and moving to other social media sites with a similar interface, namely Bluesky and Threads. Bluesky was initially an experiment by Jack Dorsey, the former CEO of Twitter, but broke all financial and legal ties with Twitter once Musk took over, which makes sense because it is remarkably similar to Twitter. There are some differences that new users have been raving about, including your ability to detach your skeet (yup, that’s what the posts are called) from a quote skeet which you deem harmful or trolling.
Everyone leaving Twitter and heading to BlueSky: pic.twitter.com/CBq2M9tloW
— NUFF (@nuffsaidny) November 13, 2024
While there is such an obvious positive side to having the ability to direct how someone interacts with how someone interacts with you on social media, it could lend itself to unchecked misinformation if the disseminator of said information is consistently blocking people who correct it. One good thing that X had going for it was the introduction of community notes, which curtailed that problem if it was a far-reaching post. However, the culture of Bluesky is said to promote blocking trolls instead of engaging with them, lending itself to a more harmonious community-like experience. Speaking of which, the block feature has been a staple in social media since Tom was everyone’s first friend. Still, with many X users having blocked Musk, he actually all but disabled the block icon, making your tweets completely visible to someone whom you blocked, even coming up on your timeline, essentially only disabling their ability to communicate with you but still see your entire timeline.
The toxicity part is understandable, you can't even block a toxic user and move on, you will keep seeing their posts everywhere, taking away the Block feature was a very silly idea, it was the best way people had to cope..
— YH (@Yemihazan) November 15, 2024
More of this will happen https://t.co/7YciJQWFTY
Basically, the block button became more like a shield, like a very see-through one, though.
Black people have long been a staple of Twitter’s success, solidified by having an entire documentary dedicated to the illustriousness of “Black Twitter,” a bastion of the culture, a hub of the funniest interactions, and the reason 13-year-old Chad from Torrington, Connecticut uses AAVE. However, after the election loss, there was an incredible shift in Black Twitter’s allegiance to the app, even after the fear that Musk would eventually let the site self-destruct back in 2023. There was a happiness that the social media app we all loved to hate was still intact, so surprise, surprise, when Black Twitter was at its Twit’s end and made “The Great Skygration,’ to Bluesky and to its Great Value version, Threads.
Threads is the brainchild of professional app plagiarist Mark Zuckerberg, who would not allow TikTok, Parascope, nor Twitter to have an original idea if it killed him. It is very similar in its interface to Twitter X but allows easier cross-posting from Facebook and Instagram in an almost encouraged fashion. Threads also has the advantage over building a platform on Bluesky because many users have their followers already integrated from Instagram. However, with the certain software that makes finding mutuals from Twitter easier and having the ability to mass block white supremacists and stan pages and curate your algorithm to a more user-specific community, Bluesky is winning over former Twitter diehards at an alarming rate. With X consistently losing followers and that number having a sharp increase since the election, Bluesky and Threads are vying for the number one and number two most downloaded apps. Bluesky has added 1 million new users since Trump was elected, and that is not including users who downloaded the platform previously but had remained largely inactive until recently, while Threads has gained 15 million new users since the election.
1. Created by the co-founder of Twitter.
— Avery (@Dreadful4Tymes) November 14, 2024
2. Mass Block Feature (I sure did block MAGA and Nazi groups)
3. Say hypothetically somebody randomly quote something you posted and their followers are harassing you. You can remove your post from the quote from their post without… pic.twitter.com/XrEFfKuR1P
The people are clearly pissed, and while they cannot redo this election, they are making a statement about how access to them does not mean access to their liberty. Musk has now been appointed to head the Department of Efficiency as his app crumbles.
This may not be the French’s idea of a revolution, but the mass eXodus from Twitter is an important “f*ck you” and even a reminder that even a bunch of ones are how you make oneness, and a cohesive and simple gesture, that might seem insignificant and even slightly inconvenient, might literally make a world of difference.
