Labour MPs have begun quitting X in alarm over the platform, with one saying Elon Musk had turned it into “a megaphone for foreign adversaries and far-right fringe groups”.

Over the weekend, newly elected MPs took to WhatsApp groups to raise growing concerns about the role X played in the spread of misinformation amid the far-right-led riots in parts of England and Northern Ireland.

Two Labour MPs are known to have told colleagues they were leaving the platform. One of them, Noah Law, has disabled his account. Other MPs who still use X have begun examining alternatives, including Threads, which is owned by Facebook’s parent company, Meta, and the open-source platform Bluesky.

In an article for the Guardian on Monday, a former Twitter executive, Bruce Daisley, said Musk should face personal sanctions and even an arrest warrant if he continues to stir up public disorder online.

  • DigitalDilemma@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    120
    ·
    3 months ago

    No shit. The amount of far-right propaganda, hate and disinformation it’s pushing is so much that it’s pretty much over the line as an extremist site now, and I expect it to start getting flagged as that with a lot more organisations.

    Musk wants to set the world on fire and X is his box of matches.

  • AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    78
    ·
    3 months ago

    Of course, none of them are going to the fediverse, because social media that’s not owned by a corporate entity and ready for algorithmic enshittification is not a thing for normal people.

    • Hannes@feddit.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      52
      ·
      3 months ago

      Tbf - once the fediverse gets big enough it’s kind of open season for misinformation spreading groups. They can just join another server once the one they used got blocked. Worst case they get onto a server that actually gets used by normal people and produce a lot of casualties by getting the server defederated.

      I think it’s a nice concept but for this type of misinformation it’s really not the best thing…

      • IcePee@lemmy.beru.co
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        3 months ago

        It really depends how well maintained the instances are. This extra work may come at a cost. Which may exclude some of the opportunists.

        • GoodEye8@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          3 months ago

          If by “well maintained” you mean keeping a whitelist of instances, then yeah. But I doubt anyone is doing that because it’s actually counterproductive to the concept of fediverse. By keeping a whitelist you are creating an in group and an out group and instances can live or die based on that grouping.

          As for why you’d need a whitelist, you can’t defend against a malicious attack if they keep spinning up new instances with bots designed to spread misinformation. The moment you ban once instance another one gets spun up. The only solution is a whitelist so all new instances are automatically blocked. Of course that works if all “normal” instances also have proper registration policies and can’t become attack vectors.

          If the fediverse becomes wildly popular defending the instance can become a full-time job as the open nature gives more attack vectors. Also most instances are ran by volunteers so it’s probably not going to be a good time for anyone.

      • fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        3 months ago

        I’ve been saying this for a year now but no one cares to listen.

        Federating with all instances by default only works if admins and mods of all instances are acting in good faith. Sooner or later that won’t be the case.

        • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          edit-2
          3 months ago

          Do you think systems like fediseer would help with that? As I understand it’s a voucher based reputation system.

      • shininghero@pawb.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        3 months ago

        Would be interesting, but Lemmy and Mastodon would both need some work to tick some security and compliance checkboxes.

        On the plus side, we could get proper 2FA support (i.e. Yubikeys or TOTP tokens) as a result. I’d love to get some more use out of that old yubikey.

    • psvrh@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      3 months ago

      I really wish Bluesky could federate with other Mastodon servers.

      Also, fuck Threads.

    • Angry_Autist (he/him)@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      3 months ago

      No offense but you guys are on almost no-one’s radar. I only found out about the fediverse by googling reddit alternatives last year, and I WORK in IT.

      • DigitalDilemma@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        3 months ago

        Working in IT doesn’t mean you know everything about what’s on the internet.

        (Source: I also work in IT. A toddler with a tablet knows more about a lot of things online than I do)

  • gladflag@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    49
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    I wish own/governments/journalists started running their own mastodon instances.

      • Blackmist@feddit.uk
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        3 months ago

        If a couple of furries can figure it out, I’m pretty sure a major Western government can do the same.

        • Angry_Autist (he/him)@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          3 months ago

          Well since they’re not doing it and your aggressive othering isn’t helping, how about just make it easy for people to join in on new, good things instead of setting an arbitrary bar originally achieved by zoophiles as the base level for user adoption?

          I mean, if your intent is to get more people to adopt mastodon, then how about you remove all of the barriers for them to do so?

          THIS is why linux will never go anywhere, the entire fuckdamn community is so high from sniffing their own farts that they have no idea how impenetrable linux is for the average person. There’s an xkcd comic that illustrates it but I don’t care enough about you to link it. You know the one I’m talking about, the punchline being ‘and quartz, of course’.

          I see so fuckdamn many of you whining about M$'s market dominance but almost never do I see any initiative to make adoption as easy as possible for your average user.

          Instead I see a shitton of people like you that insist that the privilege of using such vaunted software is earned by passing a gauntlet of arbitrary and constantly changing technical challenges, and anyone who seeks to bypass that challenge not being worthy of using the software.

          Gatekeeping is ReeeeEEEEeallll sexy in 2024 my guy.

    • EnderMB@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      3 months ago

      But that’s not where the average voter is. It’s not really where any of their constituents are.

      • gladflag@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        3 months ago

        Build it and they will come. The media will follow for the story and people will hear the message. Maybe.

  • njm1314@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    39
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    As should everyone. At a certain point you’re sticking around a place that literally promotes racism and hatred and pedophilia and actual nazis well it says things about you. And I’ve heard the arguments before about how convenient Twitter still is, about how it was just easier. I’ve heard those kind of arguments about hanging out with Nazis before. Came from Germans who pretended like they weren’t Nazis.

  • solsangraal@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    37
    ·
    3 months ago

    the news SHOULD be everyone is quitting twitter, and get rid of the scare quotes around hate and disinformation

    • ms.lane@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      3 months ago

      Most public facing organsations quit it when they started requiring an account to be logged in to see tweets.

      What’s the use of it as an official announcement platform if only logged in twitter users can see it?

    • takeda@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      3 months ago

      I never created an account on xitter. I tried on Mastodon, and the tool was designated for people who love attention. The reason they are afraid to switch is losing their audience.

      Maybe labeling them something embarrassing like Nazi sympathizers could help, but I even doubt that would do anything.

      BTW: what do you call 9 Nazis and one non-nazi sitting together? 10 Nazis.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    20
    ·
    3 months ago

    Meanwhile, Trump is going to DeSantis himself on Twitter tonight with an “uncensored” live conversation with Musk.

  • ArdMacha@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    3 months ago

    Yet they’ve been there for the last year and not noticed this, anyone with sense quit as soon he became owner.

  • TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    That government agencies are staying with them just makes them seem like jackasses that just care about the views by any means necessary. Anne Frank would be a nobody today, nothing but a banned account in today’s social networks, a lot of the intentional disinformation, narrative shaping, and hidden incontestable moderation these social networks are getting away that can completely lock away your work from any access except their own should be prosecutable and have legal recourse.