791
submitted 2 weeks ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

Summary

Over 60 German and Austrian universities and research institutions announced their exit from Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter), citing the platform's promotion of right-wing populist content and its incompatibility with democratic and scientific values.

This follows Germany's Federal Court of Justice and trade unions leaving the platform.

The German government is also debating a withdrawal, expressing concerns over X’s polarizing effect on political discourse.

The departure comes after Musk’s public support for Germany's far-right AfD party and a live talk with its leader Alice Weidel ahead of upcoming elections.

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[-] xmunk@sh.itjust.works 118 points 2 weeks ago

Leave it and....

Leave it and....

block that steaming pile of garbage.

It's critical to make this asshat's soapbox irrelevant.

[-] disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world 31 points 2 weeks ago

That’s a cartoon waiting to happen. Musk jumping up and down on his dilapidated soapbox, in the center of X plaza, surrounded only by his bots. It’s the glorious final stage of the echo chamber.

[-] UpperBroccoli 116 points 2 weeks ago

What the hell took them so fucking long. Anyone still using Xitter is a fascist enabler.

[-] Omnipitaph@reddthat.com 8 points 2 weeks ago

Well ain't that a sweeping generalization. Almost like it can't possibly be true...

[-] Zementid@feddit.nl 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Like: Vacation in SA = Support butchering of Journalists.

It's really that easy. Give money to evil people (on purpose knowingly)... support evil shit.

Consumersnhave some responsibility too. Everything else is deflection and: Mimimimi

Like Nestle... avoid their products, kill the company. "But I like Nesquick"... Alright, eat Nesquick kill some Chocolate Framers for it, but be aware what you do.

[-] donuts@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

Everything else is deflection and: Mimimimi

I always chuckle when I see this in the wild. For non-Germans: mimimi is mocking what someone said, like they are whining, for instance if they proclaim something is unfair.

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[-] octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 68 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Please rest of the world - SHUN Musk and to whatever degree you can, also Trump, exactly like this. Their egos can't handle it, and your efforts to de-legitimize them both may be one of our most effective weapons to limit the damage they do.

[-] samus12345@lemm.ee 33 points 2 weeks ago

X is pronounced like "icks" in German. Appropriate.

[-] PedroMaldonado@lemmy.world 25 points 2 weeks ago

Godammit, elon. All you had to do was be cool. Coast on that "visionary' crap and keep on winning life. But, no. You are just and asshole. Jerk.

[-] volvoxvsmarla@lemm.ee 19 points 2 weeks ago

Good fucking riddance. What took them so long?

[-] Zementid@feddit.nl 4 points 2 weeks ago

Lazyness. Incompetence. Lack of know. Lack of Care.

The same shit everywhere.

[-] Hubi@feddit.org 18 points 2 weeks ago

Better late than never...

[-] riodoro1@lemmy.world 18 points 2 weeks ago

Fukkin ban the website.

There’s already laws for it, just ban it.

[-] cows_are_underrated@feddit.org 10 points 2 weeks ago

We can also ban the far right AfD. The law allows it and almost everyone who knows enough about the German law supports it saying that it has good chances to be successful, but still nothing happens. It has been over one year since we got probably the biggest protests since the reunification of Germany, they happened after reports of members of the AfD being part of a meeting where they planned mass deportations, and no political party gave a damn about it.

[-] riodoro1@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago

It’s almost as if the financial elite doesn’t rally care about freedom and all that democracy bullshit.

[-] MyOpinion@lemm.ee 14 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)
[-] etuomaala@sopuli.xyz 13 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Leave Twitter and go where?

With this question unanswered, the sentiment is not very powerful.

Worse, if the answer is "go to Bluesky" or some other institution with a trust structure identical to Twitter, the sentiment is totally meaningless.

[-] rhel 46 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Their official server in the fediverse (https://social.bund.de/public/local) with currently 99 active government agencies and institutions.

[-] etuomaala@sopuli.xyz 14 points 2 weeks ago

Aw, nice!

But that was never mentioned in the article. Missed opportunity.

[-] rhel 12 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Yep, Germany in general has a pretty active open source community, so there are already a lot of alternatives out there. Unfortunately, most IT people are bad at marketing, which is why hardly anyone knows about these alternatives.

[-] NuclearDolphin@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 weeks ago

Unfortunately, most IT people are bad at marketing, which is why hardly anyone knows about these alternatives.

Developers may be bad at naming shit, but no one knows about alternatives because FOSS projects don't have marketing money, not because developers are bad at getting the word out.

[-] barsoap@lemm.ee 11 points 2 weeks ago

That's just the federal level, by now every state should also have an instance, e.g. here's the SH one. Offers accounts to state ministries and agencies, municipalities, public and state-owned corporations and charitable/non-profit associations.

Then there's instances from public broadcasters, someone should make a list.

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[-] Knoxvomica@lemmy.ca 37 points 2 weeks ago

Leave Twitter and go where? - person commenting on fucking Lemmy of all places

[-] etuomaala@sopuli.xyz 5 points 2 weeks ago

The point is that they didn't give an alternative in the article. AP is obviously what I would recommend.

[-] CgH10N4Co2@lemmy.cafe 15 points 2 weeks ago

Mastodon, dude.

[-] Omnipitaph@reddthat.com 11 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Bluesky is built on an open, decentralized protocol. There are appications that allow the AT protocol to federate with Mastodon, even. So yeah, move to Bluesky. Its not like Mastodon isn't also a private company.

Literally anyone could build apps on top of the AT protocol to create a parallel Fediverse to the ActivityPub protocol Fediverse. Best case scenario is we fold them in.

[-] etuomaala@sopuli.xyz 5 points 2 weeks ago

As far as I can tell, all real accounts are all hosted on Bluesky's servers. Until that changes, it's centralised, de facto.

[-] Omnipitaph@reddthat.com 4 points 2 weeks ago

I think someone else already posted the information above about hosting your own account on a private server, so I won't double dip there. But yeah, you totally could host your own server with accounts :)

[-] Saryn@lemmy.world 8 points 2 weeks ago

How about just quiting without replacing it with something else? Everyone desperately needs to stop using social media like a crack addict needs to stop doing crack. Shitter, FB, IG, TokTik, etc - it's all utter, utter shit.

[-] etuomaala@sopuli.xyz 5 points 2 weeks ago

Organisations use things like Twitter to broadcast news as push notifications to a large audience of subscribers. This is something that they're going to want to keep doing, and is only one aspect of social media. On its own, I don't see this ability as being damaging. They're basically just using Twitter as a more efficient mailing list. Things only get bad when opaque AIs start ranking shit and publishing to non-subscribers.

ActivityPub does provide a really good way to reproduce this ability. It is a good solution.

Bluesky is just another Twitter, subject to all of the same drawbacks. The only difference between the two of them is four years.

[-] Saryn@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

There are plenty of ways for governments to engage in strategic communications without having to rely on social media, especially when said platforms are disentangling the fabric of society before our very eyes. Moreover, government communication (and 99% of other communication processes) does not require the constant and immediate production and consumption of information that social media are purposefully designed for. Pretending like people are addicted to social media because we really want to stay in touch with policy is just silly.

And no, one thing is not equivalent to another thing just because they belong in the same category of things. Editorial and privacy policies, ownership structures, the extent to which a company or its owners are politically exposed - these are all things that can differ drastically from one actor to another.

[-] etuomaala@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 weeks ago

So what happens to Bluesky when it is bought by some fucking billionaire?

[-] Glasgow@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 weeks ago

It doesn’t have a trust structure identical to Twitter though.

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[-] affiliate@lemmy.world 7 points 2 weeks ago

this is just like what mark zuckerberg said about all of europe having “too much censorship” and “making innovation impossible”. but i guess if germany really cared about being unbiased they would have moved all their institutions to texas by now or something.

[-] etuomaala@sopuli.xyz 7 points 2 weeks ago

Where is the censorship here?

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[-] RagingRobot@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago

Where is the innovation? Those companies just buy other companies they don't innovate they buy

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[-] atro_city@fedia.io 4 points 2 weeks ago

I fear where they are going to go... they probably have a governmental Mastodon instance, but will go to Bluesky or Threads. They will have learned next to nothing from the experience, I bet.

[-] ApatheticCactus@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago
[-] Nougat@fedia.io 2 points 2 weeks ago

Makes sense, since you know Musk can and will corrupt what you say on his platform.

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this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2025
791 points (100.0% liked)

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