Twitter following the dox
Thank goodness that Elon Musk has finally decided to throw the switch and allow "X" users to see where various accounts pushing political narratives in the West are based.
Not surprisingly a great many of them are totally fake, pretending to be European or American, while being based in Tehran or Calcutta.
This is a good business move by Musk, as it will increase the credibility of "X" and reinforce its position as the "honest" market-place of ideas.
There is a degree of irony here because all that these fake accounts are actually doing is just pushing ideas, like "muh Scottish nationalism" or "muh Neo-Naziism," "muh neo-masculinity," "muh MAGAtardism," etc.
These are all 'ideas' of course, but coming from Indians, Iranians, or other Third Worlders, there is something immediately fake about them.
MAGA with the lights on.
This reveals that ideas are never entirely abstract, but are rooted in identity, locale, and genuine motivations. This is even true for Left-wing ideas.
With regard to all these formerly hidden "brown" accounts, the motivation is entirely parasitic, hoping to feed off the polarisation of Western societies for traffic and revenue; but the real fault is ultimately with the architecture of social media and its algorithms that are set up to get people engaged by making them, angry, stupid, and afraid.
This is why my profile on "X" contains the following Rousseauian message:
"We were all born 'frens' but social media algorithms made us 'fite' each other."
The big question of course is whether Western social and political discourse will be able to survive the near "extinction event" of modern social media. Musk shining a light on all the "cockroaches in the kitchen" is a step towards the right kind of informational hygiene, but there is still a lot more to be done.
Busted!
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Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Neokrat and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying his book here (USA), here (UK), and here (Australia), or by taking out a paid subscription on his Substack.
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