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https://medium.com/doomscrolling/elon-musk-is-weaponizing-twitter-against-transgender-people-d1bdc3eb3b0c>
"On April 20th, as the owner of Twitter scarcely for 6 months, Elon Musk
followed through on his promise to yank the once-coveted “blue checkmark” from
people who weren’t paying for it. Remarkably, on that same day of 4/20 (Musk
has a predictable, juvenile sense of humor), a rocket launched from his Space-X
effort successfully launched only to vaporize moments later in what his company
called a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.” Many of his critics highlighted that
euphemism as way for sugar-coating a disaster.
For Musk, though, the disasters weren’t only unfolding in the air. Here, in
cyberspace, his latest changes to the platform were wreaking havoc, too, as
formerly authenticated people were now thrown into the same unverified space
the rest of us have been languishing in for years. Predictably, a new wave of
impersonators rushed in, but this time many of them bore the coveted blue check
mark—because they paid for it—while the OG accounts bore none. It was another
moment in the slow-motion collapse of a social media platform, which had proved
the most influential on the planet for the past decade or so.
Within all this chaos, however, Musk is still moving deliberately. He’s making
changes to the platform, typically without any nuanced sense of experience
strategy, certainly not as the result of sophisticated user research. Instead,
he’s making changes to satisfy the whims of his real core audience now, a
ramshackle collective of alt-right extremists, Proud Boy/white supremacist
types and Q-Anon whackos. (Perhaps, I repeat myself.) That’s not some sort of
far-out critique or politicized broadside, I’m leveling against Musk. Those are
the facts of his interactions on the platform, which you can witness on any
given day now. Those parties’ grievances are many and Musk seems to be doing
his level best to satisfy them, whether by it’s offering a blue badge to anyone
who’s willing to pay for one, or banning journalists who criticize him, or
labeling media organizations as government organs when they don’t align with
right-wing values.
But I want to focus on one effort of Musk’s, specifically, an effort I believe
is intentional: Elon Musk is weaponizing Twitter against transgender people.
This isn’t a conspiracy theory; it’s not just a complaint (though it is that);
this is an assertion. Elon Musk is actively enabling the harassment and
marginalization of transgender people with Twitter. He’s unshackling the worst
dynamics of the platform, so it can be used as a bludgeon against the trans
community.
Don’t take my word for it, though. Let’s look at the facts."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
