cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/7435108
Thursday on X (Twitter), all users saw the same pinned topic under the “What’s happening?” sidebar. As part of a “timeline takeover” — which gives advertisers “priority access to logged-in users’ first impression of the day” — conservative media nonprofit PragerU is promoting the hashtag “#DETRANS” to advertise its new film about “the stories of detransitioners.”
It’s grim. Obviously twitter still holds sway over a lot of people. And spreading malinformed propaganda is bad.
But it really underlines that anyone with any conscience whatsoever needs to disengage from it. It’s not okay for governments to engage with it. And though I don’t suggest that capital cares has any sort of conscience, but engaging with it has been increasing in cost and decreasing in benefit. NPR recently left, for example, and saw nearly no impact whatsoever. So the cost of leaving is low.
Ideally people would deny it any money, advertising or otherwise, until it ceases functioning. I suspect Musk will continue to be a delusional asshole for years to come. But at least twitter will be dead and gone.