A German agency that tackles discrimination and racism says it is quitting the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. It cited a rise in hate speech since owner Elon Musk took over last year.
German anti-racism body leaves X over 'rise in hate speech'::A German agency that tackles discrimination and racism says it is quitting the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. It cited a rise in hate speech since owner Elon Musk took over last year.
Many German officials have resisted calls to quit X, saying there was no substitute channel at present that would allow them to reach a broad section of the online public.
That's it right there - this line really emphasizes why Musky came up with the idea to buy the platform in the first place.
It's also an exit condition. When it no longer serves as a channel to reach enough people, they leave, and more leave as a result.. the interesting question is there that threshold lies
There certainly isn't a shortage of government-run mastodon servers in Germany. It's probably a good idea to make sure everything gets posted there and agencies with small and specialised audiences can get off twitter (also, facebook) quite easily. Say if you're interested in updates to discussions about updates to the tax code.
Others will stay as long as there's people to reach and the information is important. E.g. the weather service can withdraw when they get tired of the platform, while catastrophe relief just plainly won't as long as there's people on there. Everything actually important that the weather service says is also said by catastrophe relief (imminent bad storm, extreme UV/heat, what have you).
I honestly don't get Elon's obsession with X. First it was his thing with x.com and PayPal, then it was SpaceX, then he called his son X, then Twitter....
No, it's not concerning that they can block it heavily fine a website that does not follow their hate speech laws.
We do have severe laws against hate speech in Europe because we suffered the consequences of not reigning that in in the past.
I finally deleted Twitter from my phone a couple weeks ago.
I only used it for porn for the last 3 years and hadn't been on in over a month but I saw an article on here and was curious. So I opened it up and looked to see how the porn situation was going. I was going to keep it around if I could find a bit of good porn. But I scrolled and scrolled down through my feed and I only had politics, bigots, ragebait, and hateporn. I hadn't realized it had gotten so bad... I also have no idea where all my porn creators fled to.
FADA said hateful comments and disinformation had "increased particularly" since Tesla tycoon Elon Musk took over the platform formerly known as Twitter last year.
In a statement, FADA said there had been an "enormous increase" in anti-trans and homophobic hostility, racism, misogyny, anti-semitism and other misanthropic content.
Ataman said FADA could only try to combat the surge in hate comments by channeling more resources to the platform, which could be a questionable use of public money.
A rise in disinformation on the platform, with doctored images and misleading claims, has been reported since the Palestinian terror group Hamas launched a massive surprise attack on Israel on Saturday.
Many German officials have resisted calls to quit X, saying there was no substitute channel at present that would allow them to reach a broad section of the online public.
X said it had taken steps to curb the recent spread of inappropriate posts and that it had removed newly created Hamas-affiliated accounts to "prevent terrorist content from being distributed online."
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I guess we'll see if they choose Mastodon or one of the proprietary platforms.
You must be woefully innocent if you think people aren't paid to switch and promote different platforms.
I recommend looking into how Red Bull got big. They literally paid influential people on college campuses to shill their product to people who can't think for themselves.
In what way? Even one of their own people is quoted in the article:
Ataman said FADA could only try to combat the surge in hate comments by channeling more resources to the platform, which could be a questionable use of public money.
Leaving the platform altogether isn't fighting against the discrimination or misinformation. They're more worried about how their agency would be perceived staying on the platform. This isn't a statement. It's giving up.