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this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2024
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politics
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Unfortunately, places like Instagram, X, and Facebook are where all the late-deciders get their political messages from. My wife completely non-political because she didn't grow up in a democracy and she is constantly surprised and in disbelief when i mention what Trump is up to. She's used to periodic meme's about Biden causing inflation and her general takeaway is "Trump is good for economy" even though she knows he is a horrible person who cannot be taken for his word on anything... almost purely thanks to me. Sometimes she thinks I'm the one that has gone extreme and am just talking crazy until I bring the receipts.
At work, she speaks to a lot of customers who are mostly the same. If they get mobilized to vote...they are doing so off similar information avenues.
So i think we should be careful about building ALL our information around sources that are essentially preaching to the choir, and make sure to still actively post to other media even if its not the main/trusted source so it's not just a firehose of unchecked Republican talking points.
Elon Musk will never let leftist memes rise in popularity in X/Twitter ever again.
And I'm convinced that Gaza/Free Palestine was a TikTok disinformation campaign designed to tear Democrats/leftists apart.
We cannot trust any media. Indeed, we must assume they are working against us.
Building new, mainstream media, that allows our viewpoints to be heard is step#1. Do not rely on Twitter, TikTok, Reddit, Instagram, Threads, BlueSky, WashPo, local newspapers, local Sinclair news, LA Times.
We got like, TheAtlantic, The guardian and maybe PBS Frontline. Not exactly a powerful set of media to spread out viewpoints but it's a start.
Lemmy.world and Mastodon seem like they are okay. But as noncorporate entities they will never be mainstream.
It's easy to feel like X is just a fascist wasteland, but guys Medhi Hasan still frequently reach millions of people. Even if we're yelling into the firehose of BS the reach is still orders of magnitude higher than platforms like this. I still prefer here much greater, but we aren't the ones that need to hear this stuff.
We will not win the meme war when Elon Musk can silence our memes and outreach on Twitter through algorithmic manipulation.
It's just like how Ukrainians keep getting censored on Twitter. It's simply not a fair fight, the owner and algorithms are literally against you, and you likely have teams of internal Twitter programmers being commanded to tailor make algorithms to fight us.
We need social media we can trust. Lemmy is one of them but is too small. But we are somewhat safe here.
The goal is not to win, but to simply make it clear that counter-arguments and opposition do exist so people are not as quick to take those posts as established fact and make up their minds based on poor information.
And you think you can do that when your opponent literally controls the outreach of your messages?
There is a +Elon Musk boost to Elons messages on Twitter. Furthermore, all the pro-Ukrainian posts systematically become NSFW and hidden from the timeline. Even when it is totally safe to view (like cute cat videos being shared by Ukrainian soldiers).
How the fuck do you get your message out on Twitter when Twitter specifically is being used to suppress your message?
Do what? Reach more people than we would if we stick purely to our little safe spaces?
Yes. It's trivially provable:
10M views:
https://x.com/tayrilivia/status/1854207409717428564
16M views:
https://x.com/RoseSensu/status/1854215333243949203
94M views:
https://x.com/BarackObama/status/1854284022731669530
Etc. Etc.
Those 2 posts have probably gotten more views than everything you and I have ever posted online combined.
Again, it's not about being louder than Elon Musk and whatever bullshit shenanigans, it's just about not 100% conceding the information spaces like because they aren't fair. Nothing is going to be fair for the next 4 years, but that doesn't mean we give up.