Elon Musk’s hostile takeover of twitter, now X, Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to remove fact-checking from his platforms and Jeff Bezoz’s brown-nosing endorsement of Donald Trump have made me begin to question both my habits on social media and to reassess where I buy my products from. I have been a prolific user of social media from the very beginning but it is now becoming very difficult, conscience wise, to carry on using them. And it’s the power of these billionaire tech bros which bothers me. What can I do to fight back?
Nazi saluting Musk’s X is a case in point. Twitter I found great fun. Yes, there were numerous bots and trolls on the platform to be sure, but by and large I could turn my little place into a mini echo chamber. I could effectively blot out the hate. Now, it’s much harder. Musk, not least by tweaking the algorithms, has turned X into a far right cesspit of hate. He has also revealed his true political colours as an out and out fascist, I can no longer sit by and do nothing.
Zuckerberg, like all these tech bros, donated huge sums of money to Trump for his inauguration, which I interpret as being explicit support for the ugly politics of Donald Trump. That in itself isn’t enough for me to leave his social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads but I am scaling back my use of at least some of them.
And finally Amazon boss Jeff Bezoz. I am not going to boycott Amazon because that would in some ways be an act of self-harm, but his support for Trump and Amazon’s withdrawal from supporting “equity for black people” and the LGBT community means I will use it less.
My actions in themselves will mean nothing to these super rich supporters, but what choice do I have? Silence, in this instance, is complicity. To that end, I have taken certain actions.
- I have not closed my account on X but I shall be using it sparingly in future, if at all. If I close it, what happens to the Eclectic Blue ‘brand’ (shit word, I know, but it’s the best I can do) I have built up over 25 years? Will some scrote of a troll pick it up and post absolute filth, apparently in my name? I am not going to take that chance. Elon Musk is a total wrong ‘un. I have no power to stand up to him so I am doing the only tiny little thing I can.
- I am keeping my Facebook account for the foreseeable future until or unless it becomes a cesspit like X, as it could well do when facts are no longer checked. The right say that fact-checking is an attack on free speech. I say that allowing lies, often vicious and downright dangerous lies to go unchecked is a far bigger danger. However, I have got rid of Threads and I won’t be posting on Instagram (which is nothing new anyway because I regard as a site for exhibitionists and rarely use it).
- The third, Amazon, is a little trickier, and it will cost me more money, but fuck it. I buy a fair few things from Amazon, but now, when I can, I buy my music direct from the artist. I choose not to stream music because I believe musicians should be fairly rewarded for their work. Buying from the artist is a way of doing the latter. The same applies with books. If I can buy things not from Amazon at a reasonable price, then I will.
Small things, granted, that won’t be a pin-prick on the filthy rich at the top. And I’m not helping by not walking away from all of them. Yet I have to do something, if only to satisfy my own conscience. To be honest, in these dark, dank days, I am relieved I appear to still have one at all.
The tech bros join the big media behemoths, like Rupert Murdoch, Viscount Rothermere and the like, with unprecedented power and, more worryingly, control over our lives. They are in thrall to Donald Trump and some are in the pocket of Putin. And we have precious little by way of say in what happens in our world.
So, I am doing my little bit because I can’t do nothing. To those of you who feared the rise of the internet would eventually take us into dark places, well you were right. We can’t rise up because we don’t have the money and the power they have.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” Edmond Burke didn’t say, but if he had said it, he would have been right.
