1 yr. ago • 96%

The fall of Twitter is making the trolls and grifters desperate

www.salon.com "They need us. We don't need them:" The fall of Twitter is making the trolls and grifters desperate

The business model depends on "triggering" liberals — but they're running out of progressives to bait

"They need us. We don't need them”

Twitter @lemmy.world "They need us. We don't need them:" The fall of Twitter is making the trolls and grifters desperate

Technology @lemmy.world "They need us. We don't need them:" The fall of Twitter is making the trolls and grifters desperate

19 comments

These folks, by design, are annoying all of the time, but lately, things seem to be getting worse. After being captured on tape spouting an anti-semitic conspiracy theory, Kennedy doubled down with an incoherent gripe about not getting Secret Service protection, which mainly appeared to be an excuse to dog whistle "14" and "88," which are understood as coded signals of support to neo-Nazis.

Im just... Yikes.

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- The fact he's polling anywhere above 0% is fucking terrifying
  
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  Most of his "Democratic" supporters are probably Republicans.
  
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  I think that's just his last name doing the heavy lifting. Once you hear what he actually stands for (like being both antisemetic and supporting Israel no matter what they do), there's probably not a huge constituency.
  
  That's probably why the media is amplifying him and not Marianne Williamson.
  
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- Now I must go look these dog whistles up so I can know the enemies of America.
  
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Perhaps, Musk can create some bots that auto respond in a shocker manner to the trolls so they keep paying for the blue checks. Sort of like what those dating sites did with the fake members.

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- First off, it’s funny that you think Musk can create software that works, and secondly, what bots on what dating sites??
  
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  https://www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2022/12/09/dating-bots-ai
  
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He destroyed Twitter and made a shitty alt right page

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- It seemed intentional
  
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  That's giving him way too much credit.
  
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Interesting take. I wonder how it will pan out.

All this, Ryan said, explains why the trolls "are getting more extreme and desperate." The pool of people available to get attention from is shrinking, so the only way to keep the engagement rates as high is to say wilder and nastier things

If that happens then it will just implode quite rapidly. Regular users will just leave and that fuels the fire and Twitter just becomes yet another niche right wing echo chamber in no time.

I do question the claim that 'the trolls are getting more extreme' though. That seems like anecdotal evidence and I wonder if it's actually happening. The author listed many examples of extreme views on Twitter but I could have done the same thing and made the same claim 5 years ago. There has always been loonies on there and some of them get worse and some don't.

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Naww poor widdle baby's can't scam people as easy now. Does the baby need their binky?

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Maybe it's just my personal bias aligning with the journalist but it makes me optimistic hearing what feels like an objective take on what's wrong with our society.

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I think Musk screwed the golden goose on this one. I think he thought his large following would keep the site afloat. Sadly he's just alienated his fans in one way or another over the past handful of years and Twitter users did not like his extreme right-wing pandering.

He really should just focus on his electric cars and rocket businesses. Sell Twitter's corpse. Sell the other small companies he owns. Sigh...

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