Why the Left Will Fail to Find a Twitter Alternative After Elon Musk's Takeover
The left is going through it after Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. They want to leave for greener pastures but it would appear that nothing is proving itself to be worth it.
Probably the most famous of these is Mastodon, a leftist platform that many former blue checks ran to in order to escape the big bad billionaire, only to find that the very censoriousness they cheered on at Twitter is now being used against them. People will report others strictly for saying something they disagree with resulting in a ban or suspension from the platform.
(READ: Journalists Run to Twitter Alternative, Promptly Turn It Into a Hilarious Mean Girls Club)
According to The Hill, others have popped up to try to be the left’s go-to social media network but it’s just not working out at these places either. A network called “Hive Social” became overwhelmed by demand on its servers and was taxed by security glitches. It shut down its servers and never turned them back on, which they hilariously posted about on Twitter.
Another is “Post,” which looks to move in on the news/social media blend that Facebook and Twitter naturally became and dominate.
What they all have in common are the obvious issues. An established digital town hall is going to be a near-impossible task to overtake in order to become the standard. People have spent years on Twitter cultivating a following and abandoning that is going to be tough. You’re effectively asking people to start over again and on platforms that have far fewer users.
However, what will primarily stop these platforms from becoming anything worth looking at is the kind of clientele they’re getting. These are people who fled Twitter because they didn’t want to deal with people being able to speak their minds without filters silencing them as much as possible. They wanted shadow bans, suspensions, and bans for anyone and everyone they disagreed with.
When you build a platform that caters to this kind of emotion, you get the issue happening at Mastodon right now. People begin reporting and censoring each other merely off a disagreement. It becomes an echo chamber where the echoes become quieter and quieter as more and more people are pushed off the platform and wind up exactly where they started; back on Twitter.
People who want to silence others so they can live quietly in their own head space and hear nothing but what pleases them will eventually stagnate any space they inhabit as they force out everyone else. This is why Twitter will continue to thrive and every other platform will stay in the shadows.
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