…Nor Piefed.
This particular post encapsulates it perfectly:
https://lemmy.world/post/48552575/24407224
It rose to #1 on the front page.
Yet check the source, and it’s a blue checkmark Tweeter. He pays for Twitter, he appears to be a stereotypical Silicon Valley vulture, all-in on OpenAI and Anthropic. And assuming they aren’t AI generated, he a posts a deluge engagement bait garbage all day:
He doesn’t care. People like him are the reason the internet is broken, yet the vast majority of Lemmy just nodded away.
But this is just one of a hundred examples. Every day I scroll here, I see a repost of some ragebait Tweet, and when I go check the source, it’s some bot or content farmer, completely disingenuous.
And they’re paying Elon Musk for extra attention.
And it’s all from a site that, to me, represents everything wrong with the internet. The purely algorithmic discovery, the engagement rat race, the echo chamber effects, the hot takes from pro influencers without even the pretense of selecting for credibility. Not to speak of the influence campaigns, all funding Elon Musk.
I downvote every blue checkmark post I see.
It makes me sad to see them on the front page.
With rare exceptions, it doesn’t belong on the Fediverse. It goes against its spirit. And it pollutes the site with X’s engagement bait.
It’s the same thing with people that repost from reddit. Thankfully it’s mostly stopped, but it was some real hot garbage while it was going on. We need to focus on our own discourse, not outsourcing it to shittier services.
I hate twitter posts, and posts with a “funny reply”, and pictures of Reddit comments. Gtfo
Im with you, moose-man
That’s a really interesting find, thanks for sharing this. Since I left Twitter forever ago I really didn’t know it devolved this far. I’m going to start downvoting them too.
It has, indeed.
I hadn’t thought of mentioning this, but for other readers who don’t know: the blue checkmark isn’t an identity verification anymore. It’s just means the user subscribes to X Premium (which also boost their posts in the algorithm).
Wikipedia, as always, is super helpful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_check
I think it’s important to spread information no matter which platform it comes from and the source has diminishing influence over us.
I think this is the parts of the fediverse where we should be less strict, because no post can destroy the team spirit of communities in the fediverse.
