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Comment by HarlequinHair | Hacker News Reader

General sentiment might be this, but every social network (even Instagram and Facebook) can be good and productive if you change how you use them.

If you follow specific profiles/channels/pages and just read the feeds from them as if they were news, you are removing the toxic part (mostly infinite scrolling) and getting a resourceful feature.

If for some reason someone you need to follow is on X (twitter) only, you have to choose between losing a source or compromise with the platform.

I personally belong to the former group (and possibly you do, too), leaving behind sources, but not everyone likes it that way ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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> you have to choose between losing a source or compromise with the platform

I thought so too. But after leaving 3 years ago it turns out: Not a single source is that important.

Also, as the importance increases, the likelihood of seeing the same information outside that hellhole increases linearly.

The platform compromise is a new thing. One of the reasons people used Twitter was its open nature, enabling its use as a bulletin board where anyone could post a message and being sure that the message link was free for anyone to see. This isn't the case anymore, as X forces people to make accounts to see messages.

Yes, indeed, And just as the platform changed, also your choices can change :)

Twitter is a private company, deciding for their own services. Leaving it behind is more useful than asking them to rollback.

But it’s still supporting a man who’s a toxic as they come and working hard to distort reality and undermine democracy, you won’t wash that toxic off.

Allowing more voices on the platform might've made it more toxic (who knows - you're not the judge of toxic) but at least we have left- and right-wing toxicity, instead of only left-wing. And we get a lot of additional non-toxic voices, which was the actual point.

You think there wasn’t right wing toxicity before?

Again, there's no point using a word like "toxicity".

> Allowing more voices on the platform might've made it more toxic (who knows - you're not the judge of toxic)

Allowing the nazi voices definitely did. And while that dude isn't the judge of what is toxic, a majority of people are.

I don't know what you personally want to call it when someone posts condolences about a tragedy or massacre killing many people in their home country, and the nazis pop up to reply "you're next, [racial slur omitted]". Pretty sure most people would call that toxic, so it's toxic, even if a small minority of people disagree.

Abdul Ballout drove a car into CSD-goers in Berlin on 25.7. Were affected parties able to discuss better on Twitter or Bluesky? As philipallstar wrote, in a chamber of only left-wing voices, the discussion is not better.

Maybe, maybe not. I don't use BlueSky, are there often people there threatening racially-based killings, with the reporters getting banned? That is the worst for sure.

Seems like a tangent either way: letting violent right-wing nazis do violent right-wing nazi things on twitter has definitely made it worse and more toxic than not letting violent right-wing nazis do violent right-wing nazi things on twitter.

Indeed, death threats are worse than whatever censorship one claims happened on twitter pre-elmu, because free speech is predicated upon appropriately responding to death threats. Otherwise, speech can be censored with violence, and on twitter, it is now (along with elmu and friends censoring accounts they don't like by banning them).

I bring up an Islamist attack in Berlin and you respond with right-wing nazi violence this that. We won't see eye to eye.

"They don't call you a Nazi because you are one, they call you a Nazi to silence you."

We were discussing right-wing death threats on X, and you tried to distract by bringing up something else, somewhere else.

You are free to continue condoning nazi death threats towards minorities on twitter since elmu started allowing it, but it has nonetheless made twitter worse and more toxic. Whatever you personally think about whatever drama on whatever other social network is irrelevant to that.

I am a minority. My point is relevant. You've misrepresented Twitter and people who use it. I don't use Twitter. It's not a crime to want to discuss things openly.

You and I being minorities is not relevant to whether the elmu-condoned nazi death threats on twitter have made it more or less toxic than it was before.

What some other random social media site did or does is not relevant to whether the elmu-condoned nazi death threats on twitter have made it more or less toxic than it was before.

Do you personally believe that nazi death threats are toxic? You can be honest.

It's ok to think it differently and have different opinions. You just happen to value censorship more than free speech. This is ok, don't feel sorry, but try also to understand that other people might value different things.

If you think a post is so bad to be illegal you have means to deal with that outside the platform. Just remember that on internet you will find everyone, from 12 years old kids, to older people coming from different cultures, or more simply, trolls...

You have your opinions, but that doesn't mean they are objectively correct. Also, if you are offended, doesn't mean you are right.

hello brand new HN poster, you're adorable

let's be friends, I can be your first one here :)

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