Meta to End Fact-Checking to Become Twitter 2, or 3?

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We all (or most of us) remember when Musk took over Twitter. People got fired, the website became increasingly unstable, the algorithm got tweaked to be less “biased” toward fascist propaganda, lies, and hate, and then everyone left in droves. Then, in response to this, Meta launched Threads, a Twitter alternative. And it was actually nice … for a time. About a year ago. But then Trump got elected, and like billionaires do, Marky Knuckleburger decided that it was time to pander, by eliminating safe-guards against the exact same things that turned Twitter into 4chan 2.

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I’m not saying that community notes on Twitter have been a bad thing, because they’ve actually been pretty funny when its been used against liars and people who fabricate situations in order to embolden hate. But, it’s the context, and the reasons you have to look at. Mack Fucklenarg has never been genuine or progressively-inclined about anything he’s ever done. From building The Facebook, which was originally a website used to rate the “hotness” of girls in college, to seemingly condemning the acts of the January 6th terrorists.

This was, and you guessed it, manipulative pandering to the incoming administration.

Fark Bafflenard doesn’t have any core beliefs. Like all billionaires, he follows the money, and he follows his own interests in not wanting to be potentially arrested and imprisoned by the currently incoming administration. It is only a complete coincidence if your beliefs and your virtues ever line up with what Mark Zugzugsomethingneeddoing is currently doing, or saying.

Right now, those actions are lining up with the same criminals and potential mass shooters that Twitter harbors. And that’s a bad thing. A bad thing for people who enjoy posting within a civilized atmosphere that at least attempts to pretend that we’re living in 2025, and not 1825.

If, in 4 years, a straight-up communist is somehow elected, I’m almost entirely sure that Marky-Mark would make statements on how Meta and its properties will release control of its production means to its users.

It’s just as pathetic as Diamond-Mine Musk using memes from 15 years ago in an attempt to impress neo nazis who are in their 40s and 50s.

Men who go through life believing in nothing, who hold insurmountable amounts of power over mass amounts of people, will be the downfall of civilized society.

But, despite all of Meta’s mistakes, its family of apps hold more than 3.98 billion users (as of February 1st, 2024), and that’s a staggering amount of people. That’s about half of the entire world’s popu-frikken-lation. And while I’ve seen the usual round of people promising they’re moving to Bluesky (which is honestly not even much better of a platform), I don’t think there is any way in any shape or form, that you will ever convince half the world’s population to join Mastodon, or even the Twitter-carbon-copy, Bluesky.

Like with most things, the average user only cares about ease of use, and if you can sign up for Threads by already having an Instagram account, that eliminates the process of even just setting up an account. You’re already there! An advantage that Meta has over all other platforms. And this is why I think it is incredibly important that Mastodon, and other ActivityPub apps and projects, work toward simplifying the onboarding process even more than they already have.

It is imperative to get as many people off of propaganda platforms as humanly possible, because, the annoying people from 2017 Tumblr … were correct, after-all.