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Labour MPs begin quitting X over ‘hate and disinformation’ (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 2 months ago by girlfreddy@lemmy.ca to c/world@lemmy.world

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Labour MPs have begun quitting X in alarm over the platform, with one saying Elon Musk had turned it into “a megaphone for foreign adversaries and far-right fringe groups”.

Over the weekend, newly elected MPs took to WhatsApp groups to raise growing concerns about the role X played in the spread of misinformation amid the far-right-led riots in parts of England and Northern Ireland.

Two Labour MPs are known to have told colleagues they were leaving the platform. One of them, Noah Law, has disabled his account. Other MPs who still use X have begun examining alternatives, including Threads, which is owned by Facebook’s parent company, Meta, and the open-source platform Bluesky.

In an article for the Guardian on Monday, a former Twitter executive, Bruce Daisley, said Musk should face personal sanctions and even an arrest warrant if he continues to stir up public disorder online.

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[-] digdilem@lemmy.ml 122 points 2 months ago

No shit. The amount of far-right propaganda, hate and disinformation it's pushing is so much that it's pretty much over the line as an extremist site now, and I expect it to start getting flagged as that with a lot more organisations.

Musk wants to set the world on fire and X is his box of matches.

[-] IcePee@lemmy.beru.co 23 points 2 months ago

How powerful a tool X is depends on how much legitimacy it can gain. If politicians are leaving the platform it can't be long before advertisers also leave. I'm old enough to remember Myspace. Even Facebook is a bit pacé nowadays.

[-] shalafi@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago

passé

Or is that a language I don't know?

[-] xenoclast@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

I think you mean Twitter

[-] fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc 4 points 2 months ago

Advertisers have been leaving since Musk bought it. He might have wooed some back but not on the same terms as before.

[-] xenoclast@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago

I think you mean Twitter.

[-] june@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 2 months ago

Thank you for your service, Twitterenoclast 🫡

[-] AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 76 points 2 months ago

Of course, none of them are going to the fediverse, because social media that’s not owned by a corporate entity and ready for algorithmic enshittification is not a thing for normal people.

[-] hannesh93@feddit.org 52 points 2 months ago

Tbf - once the fediverse gets big enough it's kind of open season for misinformation spreading groups. They can just join another server once the one they used got blocked. Worst case they get onto a server that actually gets used by normal people and produce a lot of casualties by getting the server defederated.

I think it's a nice concept but for this type of misinformation it's really not the best thing...

[-] IcePee@lemmy.beru.co 8 points 2 months ago

It really depends how well maintained the instances are. This extra work may come at a cost. Which may exclude some of the opportunists.

[-] GoodEye8@lemm.ee 7 points 2 months ago

If by "well maintained" you mean keeping a whitelist of instances, then yeah. But I doubt anyone is doing that because it's actually counterproductive to the concept of fediverse. By keeping a whitelist you are creating an in group and an out group and instances can live or die based on that grouping.

As for why you'd need a whitelist, you can't defend against a malicious attack if they keep spinning up new instances with bots designed to spread misinformation. The moment you ban once instance another one gets spun up. The only solution is a whitelist so all new instances are automatically blocked. Of course that works if all "normal" instances also have proper registration policies and can't become attack vectors.

If the fediverse becomes wildly popular defending the instance can become a full-time job as the open nature gives more attack vectors. Also most instances are ran by volunteers so it's probably not going to be a good time for anyone.

[-] fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc 6 points 2 months ago

I've been saying this for a year now but no one cares to listen.

Federating with all instances by default only works if admins and mods of all instances are acting in good faith. Sooner or later that won't be the case.

[-] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Do you think systems like fediseer would help with that? As I understand it's a voucher based reputation system.

[-] IcePee@lemmy.beru.co 11 points 2 months ago

I could imagine Labour HQ running their own Lemmy server for their MPs and staff.

[-] shininghero@pawb.social 5 points 2 months ago

Would be interesting, but Lemmy and Mastodon would both need some work to tick some security and compliance checkboxes.

On the plus side, we could get proper 2FA support (i.e. Yubikeys or TOTP tokens) as a result. I'd love to get some more use out of that old yubikey.

[-] psvrh@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 months ago

I really wish Bluesky could federate with other Mastodon servers.

Also, fuck Threads.

[-] Angry_Autist@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

No offense but you guys are on almost no-one's radar. I only found out about the fediverse by googling reddit alternatives last year, and I WORK in IT.

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[-] pineapplelover@lemm.ee 3 points 2 months ago

Don't the french and german people use it? I swear I saw that post somewhere.

[-] Etterra@lemmy.world 53 points 2 months ago

Took 'em long enough. Everybody should've ditched Twitter like a year ago.

[-] dlatch@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago

Stopped using it the moment it became "X". Realized a few weeks ago that I still had an account and that I hadn't missed it once. Deleted the account and now happily live in a Twitter free bubble.

[-] P00ptart@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

That place was toxic before musk got a hold of it. I can't imagine how bad it is now.

[-] DJDarren@thelemmy.club 2 points 2 months ago

I ditched it entirely the day they admitted that killing third party apps was a feature not a bug.

I used Tweetbot for ten years, so the idea of having to raw dog a fascist’s plaything didn’t appeal to me.

[-] chrislowles@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago

Whenever I reminisce about Twitter I gotta remind myself that I'm probably gonna run into 90% of what's going on there on IG anyway, two thirds of my explore page is just screenshots of tweets lol

[-] gladflag@lemmy.ml 50 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I wish own/governments/journalists started running their own mastodon instances.

[-] Blackmist@feddit.uk 17 points 2 months ago

For authentication more than anything else.

If I see kier.starmer@mastodon.gov.uk I'd know it was him. I see therealkierstarmer on twitter and it could be any joker with $8 to spare.

[-] IndustryStandard@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

On the contrary they are starting to use Twitter to declare war and post about resigning as presidential candidate.

[-] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 months ago

Who declared war via a social media platform? That sounds like horrible military strategy

[-] Angry_Autist@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

Then make a package where it's easy for them to roll out.

[-] Blackmist@feddit.uk 2 points 2 months ago

If a couple of furries can figure it out, I'm pretty sure a major Western government can do the same.

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[-] EnderMB@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

But that's not where the average voter is. It's not really where any of their constituents are.

[-] gladflag@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 months ago

Build it and they will come. The media will follow for the story and people will hear the message. Maybe.

[-] njm1314@lemmy.world 39 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

As should everyone. At a certain point you're sticking around a place that literally promotes racism and hatred and pedophilia and actual nazis well it says things about you. And I've heard the arguments before about how convenient Twitter still is, about how it was just easier. I've heard those kind of arguments about hanging out with Nazis before. Came from Germans who pretended like they weren't Nazis.

[-] solsangraal@lemmy.zip 37 points 2 months ago

the news SHOULD be everyone is quitting twitter, and get rid of the scare quotes around hate and disinformation

[-] ms_lane@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago

Most public facing organsations quit it when they started requiring an account to be logged in to see tweets.

What's the use of it as an official announcement platform if only logged in twitter users can see it?

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[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 21 points 2 months ago

Meanwhile, Trump is going to DeSantis himself on Twitter tonight with an "uncensored" live conversation with Musk.

[-] thefartographer@lemm.ee 14 points 2 months ago

Oh my god, he DeSantised all over himself! That's fucking disgusting. I haven't DeSantised myself since the fourth grade. I mean, sure, I've Gulianied myself, but who hasn't eaten too much Taco Bell and then Gulianied themselves on a regrettably hot day?

[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 months ago

Oh boy, all them Jan 6 tweets right up there, it's a great reminder!

[-] suction@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

Should never have started with Twitter. Not everything has to be on social media

[-] fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc 6 points 2 months ago

LOL. Sure, not everything, but politicians do if they want to win elections.

[-] MadBob@feddit.nl 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Are you sure? I can only think of Donald Trump as an example, and even then I think he's garnered more ridicule than support for it.

[-] anytimesoon@feddit.uk 4 points 2 months ago

Obama famously used twitter in his first election campaign to create effect. In the brief moment when I had an account, he was my only follower

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[-] TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

That government agencies are staying with them just makes them seem like jackasses that just care about the views by any means necessary. Anne Frank would be a nobody today, nothing but a banned account in today's social networks, a lot of the intentional disinformation, narrative shaping, and hidden incontestable moderation these social networks are getting away that can completely lock away your work from any access except their own should be prosecutable and have legal recourse.

[-] ArdMacha@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

Yet they've been there for the last year and not noticed this, anyone with sense quit as soon he became owner.

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this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2024

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