The power we use and the power we give
Briefly

Remaining on Twitter/X is framed as necessary to influence the national conversation and to support a nascent center-left publication. The platform has changed materially under new ownership that intentionally elevates and amplifies right-wing messaging, reducing prospects for redirecting its influence from within. Engagement and contributions act as transfers of power that users confer on platforms and organizations. Those entities accumulate and deploy that power according to their priorities. Strategic focus should shift from attempting persuasion inside a hostile platform to building independent institutional and social power incrementally, given systemic obstacles to internal reform.
But this idea that others could swoop in and collectively shift the conversation, beyond imposing an odd job requirement on all of us, misunderstands the nature of the change from Twitter to X. It is owned and directed by a far-right actor who bought it specifically to elevate and amplify right-wing messaging. You might as well argue that people should join the Republican Party in order to redirect it to less extreme terrain;
In fact, it is useful and important to look at this question not through the lens of persuasion but the lens of power. Your engagement and your work, not unlike your vote, is a form of power, something you can choose to grant to others. Those others, particularly organizations and companies, accrue that power to use as they see fit. The immediate question isn't, say, where you can change zoning laws. It is, instead, building power, even if only incrementally.
Read at pbump
[
|
]