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submitted 10 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has had his account on X - formerly Twitter - reinstated by Elon Musk.

Musk asked users to vote in a poll whether or not to lift a Jones ban pre-dating his ownership of the platform, signalling he would honour the result.

Around 70% of roughly two million respondents voted to lift the ban.

Jones is most notorious for falsely claiming the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, in which 20 children and six adults died, was "staged".

He was ordered to pay $1.5bn (£1.32bn) in damages to family members of the victims, after courts found he had caused them to be subjected to harassment and death threats with his false claims.

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[-] brawleryukon@lemmy.world 115 points 10 months ago
[-] Jaysyn@kbin.social 93 points 10 months ago

If you're still on Twitter, you're a fascist sympathizer, full stop.

[-] loki_d20@lemmy.world 27 points 10 months ago

What a ridiculous idea. People rely on Twitter for their job and aren't interacting with the politics of social media. They're sympathizers for daring to have a job that involves being seen on social media. Regardless of your view of Twitter, people aren't leaving Twitter and that means their customers are still reliant on it for a source of info on many content providers.

[-] griefreeze@lemmy.world 23 points 10 months ago

Humor me, if you don't mind. What jobs require the use of Twitter?

[-] rbesfe@lemmy.ca 19 points 10 months ago

Communication departments for basically every public transit service?

[-] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 23 points 10 months ago

They should get an instance on mastodon and control everything about it.

[-] noahm@lemmy.world 18 points 10 months ago

They don't want this! Control comes with responsibility and is expensive. Twitter is already there, has been there for a long time, and still has the users and the mindshare. It's still the logical choice for organizations wanting to reach the widest audience.

Fortunately that last bit does seem to be changing. It's not happening as fast as many of us think it should, some prominent organizations have left X. Hopefully more will continue to do that, but calling the stragglers fascists, as was done earlier in this thread, is not a productive way to engage.

[-] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Lemmy.world, one of the largest instances said it costs around $1500 per month and about $200 to set up, I don't think it's expensive. If all of one state's government puts it on Mastodon, then everyone under that can post as well under that umbrella. This isn't a huge deal or groundbreaking.

[-] noahm@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago

How much does their paid staff cost?

State government doesn't operate on a volunteer basis.

[-] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 8 points 10 months ago

To do what? They have websites they maintain already. There are already companies switching to Mastodon like BBC, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-63534240

[-] Eccitaze@yiffit.net 7 points 10 months ago

Who says the government has to hire anyone? Have the sysadmin set it up, have your existing Twitter staff swap to using mastodon, done.

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[-] cokeslutgarbage@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

I dont have Twitter or children, but I know some school districts exclusively use Twitter to announce school closings or delays from weather. To play devil's advocate towards myself, parents could just listen to the radio or watch their local news, both of which usually/used to have school closings listed.

I don't have an opinion abt this, I just have friends that are still on Twitter because they follow their kid's schools.

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[-] TBi@lemmy.world 10 points 10 months ago

If you are still on by choice then I’d agree with the OP. If you need it for work then that’s different, but you should be trying to move off it.

[-] the_q@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago
[-] takeda@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

People did, but Twitter is no longer reliable: https://youtu.be/0kwtVbM5o-o

[-] ripcord@kbin.social 4 points 10 months ago

Yes, they are.

[-] squiblet@kbin.social 24 points 10 months ago

Some people are just oblivious. Take my dad, for instance. He told me last week “so Twitter is now called ‘X’!” Uh, yeah, thanks.

[-] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 4 points 10 months ago

But he's probably not on twitter since it also changed its look.

[-] squiblet@kbin.social 7 points 10 months ago

He is, he uses it every day. For some reason he assumed I hadn’t heard of it which I guess makes sense as I deleted my acct and don’t use it at all, but I mean, it was all over tech news for a couple months.

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[-] reverendsteveii@lemm.ee 68 points 10 months ago

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/twitter-users-vote-elon-musk-quit-ceo-poll-rcna62332

A year ago next Monday, Musk asked "Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll". The votes came in, 57.5% to resign, 42.5% to stay. If you're wondering how much he care about polls where he hasn't pre-ordained the outcome.

[-] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 21 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

He did step down... he hired a CEO to run day to day.

He was going to do it either way though

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[-] Cranakis@lemmy.one 66 points 10 months ago

"Let's see, how can I make it even shittier.....?" -Elon

[-] squiblet@kbin.social 19 points 10 months ago

Next, he should hire Andrew Tate for a management position

[-] aphlamingphoenix@lemm.ee 8 points 10 months ago

Is that guy out of Romanian prison yet?

[-] squiblet@kbin.social 6 points 10 months ago

I believe he’s been under home detention for a while.

[-] Lifecoach5000@lemmy.world 50 points 10 months ago

Coincidence that he just also appeared as a guest on Tucker’s show for the first time ever? I think Alex is getting some kind of push somehow/somewhere to spew his bile back into the limelight.

[-] phoneymouse@lemmy.world 35 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I’m sure it’s for the 2024 election… the right is drumming up the crazies to get out and vote for the orange traitor.

[-] Lifecoach5000@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago

Hmmm I wonder if we’ll see Trump guest on Infowars like he did for the 2016 election.

[-] Catma@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago

I mean if it happens he is going to have to pay the Sandy Hook families the money he owes. Dude is still on the hook for a cool billion with 2 trials to go.

[-] Cqrd@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 10 months ago

He's been getting a lot of love from Russia, and the GOP and Russia are best friends

[-] RealFknNito@lemmy.world 44 points 10 months ago

There we go. Now it's officially Truth Social as run by Elon Musk. He could have just bought the actual Truth Social for way less.

[-] ripcord@kbin.social 11 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

But he got a huge huge audience, which is what the other platforms lack. It was a realy good move if your goals are to try to move social media massively to the right, shut down conversations you don't like, etc.

It may have been expensive, but way cheaper than buying or starting a new platform and trying to get that size of an audience and apparent lock-in/addiction.

[-] rckclmbr@lemm.ee 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I'm convinced he did it for the '24 election. He lost a lot on Twitter, but he stands to gain a lot more if trump wins.

Remember that last election, all major social media sites released a "fact check" on content at the last minute, completely hijacking Trumps strategy of lying about everything.

[-] LEDZeppelin@lemmy.world 42 points 10 months ago

Freedom of hate speech

[-] rbesfe@lemmy.ca 30 points 10 months ago

Good, now advertisers have even less reason to spend money on that platform

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[-] Uniquitous@lemmy.one 27 points 10 months ago

I see we're still reporting on X as if it retained any kind of importance or significance. Quaint.

[-] jennwiththesea@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago

I appreciate the heads up that we're going to be hearing from Alex Jones again soon, regardless of who, exactly, has chosen to platform him again. This is awful. He's a hateful, horrible person, and I don't look forward to the conspiracy theories he's going to create again.

[-] Telorand@reddthat.com 5 points 10 months ago

Thank you. Tired of hearing about this clown, as if doing alt-right shit is novel. It's only newsworthy when he does something progressive by accident.

[-] Nougat@kbin.social 19 points 10 months ago

Musk has a great deal of control over:

  • Satellite internet
  • Low Earth orbit launches
  • Electric vehicle charging infrastructure
  • Social media

His choices impact world events whether you "hear about this clown" or not. Ignoring him doesn't change that.

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[-] SatanClaws@lemmy.world 24 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

On the one hand, it is sad to see what Twitter has become. On the other hand, it is a bit funny, as Truth Social is more likely to fail the more X takes on their userbase. Which is hurting Trump right in the wallet.

[-] EurekaStockade@lemmy.world 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Twitter has always sucked and destroying it at his own expense is the one good thing Musk has done. He should buy Facebook next.

[-] TrendigOsthyvel@lemmy.world 22 points 10 months ago

Just keep adding more water to the ship, please!

[-] bender223@lemmy.today 20 points 10 months ago

Smells like desperation 😤

[-] garibaldi_biscuit@lemmy.world 20 points 10 months ago

Xcho chamber

[-] schwim@reddthat.com 15 points 10 months ago

I love anything that further sinks the site.

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this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2023
354 points (100.0% liked)

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