After Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, the left is feeling it. Although they want to move to greener pastures, it seems that little is worth the effort.
Mastodon is the most well-known of these platforms. It is a leftist platform many ex-blue checks used to escape the Big Bad Billionaire. However, they now find that the same censoriousness that they cheered at Twitter is being used against them. People will report others if they say something they don’t like, which can lead to a ban or suspension.
According to The Hill, other social media networks have tried to become the go-to network for leftists. However, it isn’t working out at these places. The network “Hive Social” was overwhelmed by the demand for its services and was hit by security problems. It closed down its servers, and then never brought them back online. This was hilariously documented on Twitter.
Another option is “Post”, which aims to take over the news/social media mix that Facebook and Twitter naturally merged and have become dominant.
They all share the same obvious issues. To become the standard, it will be nearly impossible to surpass an established digital town hall. It will be difficult to abandon a community that has spent so many years building a following on Twitter. It’s asking people to restart their lives on smaller platforms.
These platforms won’t be worth much if they attract the wrong kind of clientele. These people fled Twitter because they couldn’t deal with the idea of people speaking their mind without being silenced by filters. They demanded shadow bans, suspensions and bans for everyone and everything they disagreed with.
This is what happens at Mastodon when you create a platform that caters for this type of emotion. People start reporting on each other and censoring one another based only on disagreement. It creates an echo chamber, where the echoes become louder as more people are removed from the platform. They end up back at Twitter.
People who seek to silence others in order to live peacefully in their head space and hear only what they want will eventually occupy all spaces they occupy. Twitter will continue its growth and all other platforms will remain in shadows.
