Sorry, but speaking as an Elon disliking European, if your democracy can be so easily hacked just by a blue checkmark then your democracy was super weak and vulnerable to begin with and you have way bigger issues and attack vectors to worry about. That's like complaining about other actors finding and exploiting the backdoors you intentionally put in your system that you used to exploit before. That's your own self inflicted problem, that now has been exposed and the problem is with you not with the ones who found it. So build a stronger democracy with no backdoors.
Sure, Elon is a certified schizo, but labeling everyone who points out issues with the EU leadership policies as "trolls", "far right", "MAGA" and "Putin supporters" to discredit opinions they don't like, only causes further contempt, and adding censorship to "protect democracy", doesn't fix the structural issues of your democracy which stem from the lack of trust and disappointment the voters have in their leaders and their policies from the last ~10 years, not from X and its blue checkmarks which only serves as a convenient scapegoat to dodge accountability.
X is just one of the few unmoderated escape valves people have left to vent their frustrations without fear of speech censorship or repercussions, and instead of leaders treating it as an option poll or pulse of the nation to know where the displeasure of their voters lie, they do exactly the opposite of what people there say, and then are shocked at elections why people get even angrier and start voting more extreme right/left in retaliation.
Oh, and the major hypocrisy that gives X a lot of weight despite its issues, is that when the free sharing of information on Twitter led to the 2011 Arab Spring regimes topplings despite those regimes trying to stop Twitter, GSM and internet access, it was championed as a victory for free speech by the west, but when the tables turn and the same free sharing of information on X leads to exposure of corruption, cronyism and lies of western governments and mainstream media, then now X is the problem and we get attempts of Chat-Control and Age-ID for our internet access. Huh, aint that sus how what's good for the goose isn't good for the gander.
So as that old saying goes, if you cut a man's tongue, you're not convincing people he's a liar, you're convincing them that you're afraid of what he has to say. Just to be clear, by "man" here I mean X and social media in general, not Elon, that guy's nuts.
Worse still, EU isn’t actually a democracy. It’s an economic union. Which citizens voted for Vonderleyen? What power do EU citizens have over policies tabled in EU parliament? Who made the final choice on chat control?
Autocracy is what threatens EU democracy, not a check mark on a social media website.
So I don’t get called a Pro-Elon shill, I don’t like Elon, and think he is an ass. But he has done (maybe unwittingly) more for democracy on social media than his counterparts.
EDIT: Community notes might have been before Elon. So he only gets a half credit.
where a huge amount of influential accounts posing as American patriots were actually essentially content-farmers from the global south?
For my 2 cents, I consider X in 2025 (which is very different from Twitter in 2011!) to be basically an anonymous imageboard like 4Chan, mostly full of straight-up noise and largely decoupled from reality, with the only reliable signal being a bias towards information that is personally flattering or aligned with Elon Musk.
I don't know that I'd ever seriously listen to a place like 4Chan for guidance about how to tie my own shoes, much less how to govern an entire nation.
throwfaraway135|2 months ago
* Community notes
* Organization/Person verification
* And now visible locations
All of which are much more than you have in other places like Reddit or Instagram. Is there a lot more you can do? Probably yes.
plastic-enjoyer|2 months ago
know-how|2 months ago
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jack_tripper|2 months ago
Sure, Elon is a certified schizo, but labeling everyone who points out issues with the EU leadership policies as "trolls", "far right", "MAGA" and "Putin supporters" to discredit opinions they don't like, only causes further contempt, and adding censorship to "protect democracy", doesn't fix the structural issues of your democracy which stem from the lack of trust and disappointment the voters have in their leaders and their policies from the last ~10 years, not from X and its blue checkmarks which only serves as a convenient scapegoat to dodge accountability.
X is just one of the few unmoderated escape valves people have left to vent their frustrations without fear of speech censorship or repercussions, and instead of leaders treating it as an option poll or pulse of the nation to know where the displeasure of their voters lie, they do exactly the opposite of what people there say, and then are shocked at elections why people get even angrier and start voting more extreme right/left in retaliation.
Oh, and the major hypocrisy that gives X a lot of weight despite its issues, is that when the free sharing of information on Twitter led to the 2011 Arab Spring regimes topplings despite those regimes trying to stop Twitter, GSM and internet access, it was championed as a victory for free speech by the west, but when the tables turn and the same free sharing of information on X leads to exposure of corruption, cronyism and lies of western governments and mainstream media, then now X is the problem and we get attempts of Chat-Control and Age-ID for our internet access. Huh, aint that sus how what's good for the goose isn't good for the gander.
So as that old saying goes, if you cut a man's tongue, you're not convincing people he's a liar, you're convincing them that you're afraid of what he has to say. Just to be clear, by "man" here I mean X and social media in general, not Elon, that guy's nuts.
demarq|2 months ago
Autocracy is what threatens EU democracy, not a check mark on a social media website.
So I don’t get called a Pro-Elon shill, I don’t like Elon, and think he is an ass. But he has done (maybe unwittingly) more for democracy on social media than his counterparts.
EDIT: Community notes might have been before Elon. So he only gets a half credit.
throwaway91827|2 months ago
where a huge amount of influential accounts posing as American patriots were actually essentially content-farmers from the global south?
For my 2 cents, I consider X in 2025 (which is very different from Twitter in 2011!) to be basically an anonymous imageboard like 4Chan, mostly full of straight-up noise and largely decoupled from reality, with the only reliable signal being a bias towards information that is personally flattering or aligned with Elon Musk.
I don't know that I'd ever seriously listen to a place like 4Chan for guidance about how to tie my own shoes, much less how to govern an entire nation.
rightbyte|2 months ago