No, they didn't, one of them fucking bought the platform, Jesus fucking Christ—THIS is what I mean about how the day-to-day existence of Musk's Nazi propaganda machine cooks people's brains
Replies
"Moderated their speech" Yeah, we should really call it what it is; They kept people from openly supporting the new american nazi party and it's consequences. They moderated behavior that shouldn't be allowed and ultra richy bought it to amplify that behavior.
aug 25, 2025, 9:38 pm • 21 1 • view
Dude, the far right subverting the platform happened well before Musk came along, bizarre to make this point
aug 25, 2025, 9:39 pm • 11 1 • view
It broke down in two stages: 1. Algorithmic interference, forbidding reverse chron, follow-only private feed, and it degraded from there 2. Musk takeover, which finished the job by promoting his own tweets to the top of every feed, replatforming Nazis, etc. etc.
aug 25, 2025, 10:57 pm • 6 0 • view
They certainly tried, but the moderation team at old Twitter were holding back a tidal wave that Elon just let crash through.
aug 25, 2025, 9:52 pm • 6 0 • view
come on, there's a huge difference between Twitter and X - and I'm not only talking about politics, I'm talking about the functionality of the platform. This is really a weird hill to die on, and I am usually in lock-step with you.
aug 25, 2025, 10:26 pm • 4 0 • view
Why are you conflating their losing tactics (brigade the refs, etc.) with their winning tactic (buy the site and promote Nazis)? In March 2022 Donald Trump was still banned for trying to overthrow the government; when anyone showed up slinging racial slurs then, they would be nuked immediately.
aug 25, 2025, 9:52 pm • 91 2 • view
It is BIZARRE to say it was a losing tactic! They grew massively due to their infestation of social media and gaming of algorithms. They literally won at least one election because of it! Of all the critiques to make of my post (many legit ones!), this is just truly disconnected from reality.
aug 25, 2025, 9:57 pm • 2 1 • view
Elad, "Acquisition of Twitter Elon Musk initiated the acquisition of Twitter, Inc. on April 14, 2022, and completed it on October 28, 2022." The election was in 2024.
aug 25, 2025, 10:01 pm • 2 0 • view
Was Donald Trump on Twitter when Elon Musk bought it, Y/N?
aug 25, 2025, 9:59 pm • 28 0 • view
Donald Trump was on Twitter from pre-2016 until 2021. Elon Musk bought Twitter, and restored his access in 2022.
aug 25, 2025, 10:13 pm • 0 0 • view
Trump was on Twitter in 2016, before Musk. So was the far right, and well before that as well. Which is my point: the ground was laid on social media well before Musk's takeover and well before Trump. My point: It has been proven it is possible to move the needle with the rules stacked against you.
aug 25, 2025, 10:05 pm • 4 0 • view
It has not been proven it is possible to move the needle with an ideologue who has full personal control over the platform constantly and aggressively yanking the needle in the opposite direction! Quite the opposite! Again, all of this is about how Musk has successfully naturalized Nazis winning.
aug 25, 2025, 10:11 pm • 13 0 • view
I agree, that has not been proven, and maybe it's not possible! But saying that it is IMPOSSIBLE has also not been proven. My entire point is that most of us *do not know*, and it is premature to make black and white points on this. I say this as someone who left behind X as my main platform.
aug 25, 2025, 10:13 pm • 1 0 • view
my best guess is that the ceiling on a forum raid against hostile mods is pretty low but not zero; the primary objective is probably destructive entryism designed to degrade the utility of the forum to its owners.
aug 25, 2025, 10:16 pm • 2 0 • view
the mod dynamics at X are interesting, because obviously the owner is a fascist, but the employees are, well, you can literally see it here: www.opensecrets.org/orgs/x-inc/r...
aug 25, 2025, 10:20 pm • 0 0 • view
in the 2024 election cycle X employees gave more to Katie Porter's congressional campaign than to Donald Trump's presidential run.
aug 25, 2025, 10:21 pm • 1 0 • view
By that logic no one has proved it is impossible to fly like Superman if you wish hard enough
aug 25, 2025, 10:21 pm • 0 0 • view
I have no idea what standard of proof you're looking for. He's been running the site for three-plus years and it only ever changes in one direction. Posts get no engagement. Links are suppressed. People rampage around with racial slurs in their usernames. Reversing this through effort is a fantasy.
aug 25, 2025, 10:17 pm • 16 0 • view
In fighting parlance, it is called leading with your face.
aug 25, 2025, 10:34 pm • 1 0 • view
Interjecting here to note that it was not *social media activity* that moved the needle pre-Musk ownership, but *political action off social media* — ie, a rightwing pressure campaign to convince Facebook and Twitter that they were biased towards liberals and to tweak policy accordingly
aug 25, 2025, 10:23 pm • 11 0 • view
No, you must not have followed this closely. Every extremist researcher can tell you how they worked. RW and Nazis quite specifically worked to evade controls and radicalize online long before musk. 1000s of pages of their leaked chats show this. All of this was happening simultaneously.
aug 25, 2025, 11:56 pm • 0 0 • view
The post you were originally trying to dunk on was explicitly and specifically about how doomed it is to try to win the game *on the platform owned and aggressively manipulated by a far-right billionaire*
aug 25, 2025, 10:01 pm • 34 0 • view
Tom is on the money. Twitter was bad, but Twitter was also policing nazis rather than promoting them. To think we could go back and take it over is a fantasy. It would be wasted effort and actually dangerous. Stay the fk away from Nazi Twitter unless you plan on buying it.
aug 25, 2025, 9:55 pm • 7 0 • view
It was also policing facts. Posting "men are not women" got people banned.
aug 25, 2025, 10:10 pm • 1 0 • view
jack was an alt right nazi adjacent freak who let nazis break the site's rules and called musk his favorite poster, come the fuck on
aug 25, 2025, 9:42 pm • 17 0 • view
There is a vast gulf between subversion and control of a platform. The latter is what sealed Twitter’s fate. You can tweak moderation, policies, and algorithms and reverse subversion. Getting bought out by Musk was transformative, it now exists to push those views.
aug 25, 2025, 9:46 pm • 10 0 • view
This is my experience... It was gross, but manageable (at least with a tiny account), was possibly salvageable, and then just straight into the bin.
aug 25, 2025, 10:02 pm • 2 0 • view
I’m sympathetic to the journalists and commentators who struggled with how they’d reach their audience in the wake of the Twitter sale, but speaking as a simple consumer of the product, the whole thing was so clearly doomed to this dismal course that I nuked my account the evening the deal closed.
aug 25, 2025, 10:22 pm • 2 0 • view
I'm kinda not... There are tools to maintain your presence on the site without it being your watering hole. bsky.app/profile/bots...
aug 25, 2025, 10:30 pm • 1 0 • view
That sympathy is past its expiration date, in any event. But you’re right. And I worry that engagement in any form on Twitter just furthers the illusion of open discourse over there. No sense pretending it’s the marketplace of ideas when it’s a command economy.
aug 25, 2025, 10:46 pm • 1 0 • view
It’s also critical to understand that the more ideologically invested the ownership is in the platform’s direction, the less room there is for subversion. You’re never going to outweigh a thumb that’s been placed on the scale.
aug 25, 2025, 9:57 pm • 4 0 • view
It was way different
aug 25, 2025, 9:51 pm • 4 0 • view
Like stuff got through and it wasn’t a loyal left wing platform, but it was actively and vigorously banning Nazis
aug 25, 2025, 9:52 pm • 5 0 • view
Yeah obviously the musk sale was an inflection point, but they had been probing the fences for weakness and have made progress on and off of Twitter regardless.
aug 25, 2025, 9:43 pm • 3 0 • view
X proudly posts every proclamation by Nazi Trump and his Nazi admin minions. It is terrifying. Even more terrifying is the number of people who pay to subscribe. Sure, many are bots and scammers, but too many are not.
aug 25, 2025, 9:44 pm • 1 0 • view
Late to this, but i spent a lot of time on YouTube and— maybe because I'm in the demo for propaganda— there is some really bad normalizing stuff on there. Some of it is clickbait but it intensified. Idk what Google's reason is.
aug 30, 2025, 7:49 pm • 0 0 • view
Dude's advertising his Substack, clearly he doesn't mind Nazis.
aug 25, 2025, 9:50 pm • 7 0 • view
I don't fully disagree with Tom's point here but uh, he's Jewish
aug 25, 2025, 9:51 pm • 0 0 • view
Wow that changes everything. He must simply not know about Substack's support for Nazi newsletters.
aug 25, 2025, 9:53 pm • 4 0 • view
uh erm well ackshully this aint it chief erm
aug 26, 2025, 2:00 pm • 0 0 • view
So is Netanyahu
aug 25, 2025, 9:57 pm • 7 0 • view
And Stephen Miller
aug 25, 2025, 10:13 pm • 3 0 • view
what the fuck, no, he hates nazis. jeebus
aug 25, 2025, 10:40 pm • 0 0 • view
I don't think anyone who hates nazis is still be on substack. cybernews.com/tech/substac...
aug 25, 2025, 10:49 pm • 1 0 • view
Well you'd be wrong about that. He's about the furthest thing in the world from a nazi. I dunno why he's still using that platform, probably a combo of inertia and convenience, but you are just wrong calling him this
aug 25, 2025, 10:54 pm • 0 0 • view
I think you should re-read what I *actually* said. Completely agree with "He's staying on an at least passively pro-nazi website because of inertia and convenience," which is why I said he doesn't seem to mind nazis (at least not enough to overcome inertia and convenience).
aug 25, 2025, 11:01 pm • 1 0 • view
aug 26, 2025, 1:26 am • 0 0 • view
I don't think the meme works here, because there *are* alternatives to Substack that do not tolerate nazi content. I would argue that "We should improve society somewhat" is actually the "People should stop using platforms that promote far-right content if there are functional alternatives" position
aug 26, 2025, 4:04 am • 0 0 • view
btw your work looks 🔥. Im gonna get a copy of your new book
aug 26, 2025, 1:28 am • 1 0 • view
Lol thank you, much appreciated
aug 26, 2025, 4:02 am • 0 0 • view
And was made to do so because he shitposted himself into it. He didn't actually want it! People forget that rather important part.
aug 25, 2025, 10:55 pm • 3 0 • view
As for Facebook, does everyone appreciate that the guy overseeing their algorithm for the past 11 years participated in the Brooks Brothers riot?
aug 25, 2025, 10:31 pm • 2 0 • view
MechaHitler is definitely not the sign of a functioning platform
aug 25, 2025, 10:16 pm • 12 0 • view
And it's not only about algorithms anymore. X is filled to the brim with bots. Many are quite sophisticated and barely recognizable as such, they do seem like a real person at first glance. The amount of people I saw wasting their time & energy on discussing with right wing bots on X is staggering.
aug 26, 2025, 12:34 am • 0 0 • view
Any post challenging right wing narratives will get jumped on by bots that spread lies, propaganda, and hate. It is impossible to fight back against armies of bots, each posting 24/7 and 30-50k comments in a handful of months. The number of bots on Meta's platforms are getting worse and worse, too.
aug 26, 2025, 12:34 am • 1 0 • view
The only way to win is to not play the game. To move on to other platforms, that are not owned by tech oligarchs who support fascism. To not bump up their numbers of active users and support them getting even richer via views on ads. To make their platforms less attractive for new advertisers.
aug 26, 2025, 12:34 am • 1 0 • view
Yeah if what that person was describing were true r/theDonald would’ve taken over Reddit. Instead it’s been whittled down to tiny subs and the main Conservative subreddit left has literal interview processes to post because they are so worried about Reddit being a lefty echo chamber.
aug 25, 2025, 10:16 pm • 2 0 • view
Yeah and as bad as twitter was before Musk bought it you can’t deny how much it changed afterward. His purchasing it was clearly the incomparably largest factor by several orders of magnitude. It literally became impossible to avoid chud shit.
aug 25, 2025, 10:51 pm • 1 0 • view
And Facebook decided that this was the best way to make money. Meta intentionally skews the field. Read Careless People by Sarah Wynn Williams. They aren’t mastering the algorithm, it is being intentionally adjusted to promote right wing fear mongering.
aug 25, 2025, 10:00 pm • 14 1 • view
Correct. They’re exercising editorial control through their algorithms and thus should not be protected by Section 230.
aug 25, 2025, 10:07 pm • 1 0 • view
Yes. “Mastering the algorithm” plays into the notion that the right is full of wily computer geniuses. No. The algorithm was adjusted in their favor.
aug 25, 2025, 10:33 pm • 6 0 • view
Smart people don’t click Dumb people do Click is money Dumb people respond to fear with $ 10 print m a g a 20 goto 10
aug 31, 2025, 7:57 am • 0 0 • view