3 years ago, Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion. The tycoon, whom some of us fools only knew as Grimes’ ex-partner, was surprised by spending that money on a social network that already looked in decline. Like YouTube, it was losing momentum in favor of Meta, especially Instagram – since Facebook was also already going downhill – and especially TikTok. That other network that seems to be going from being an instrument of Chinese information control to an instrument of Trump’s information control.
Today, if you have not found out why Elon Musk bought Twitter, it is not because of his discretion in terms of objectives. Musk has invested at least $250 million in Trump’s campaign, according to the New York Times, he will play a fundamental role in his mandate, and the way in which he has manipulated the Twitter algorithm, or what It has remained under the name of X, solely to favor the victory of the Republican Party. If not, someone explain to me what we have been able to do from the JENESAISPOP profile so that messages appear about the convenience of Trump invading Greenland. Messages from supposed people supposedly born in Denmark supposedly desperate for Trump to save them.
Not content with the power obtained in the United States, Elon Musk is now moving towards Europe, and hopes to influence the German elections, as El País reports. He has already flirted with the far-right candidate, said that Hitler was a “communist”, and has done something similar to the Nazi salute on Trump’s inauguration day. A few months ago Tulsa declared that Twitter was a rotten social network, several media outlets have abandoned it, such as The Guardian, appealing to the dissemination of “far-right and racist theories” and today it is our turn too. Starting today, we will strengthen our position in Bluesky, but above all we have to resume our newsletter, as well as other ways to maintain contact with our audience, such as our forums, which will undergo a remodel this year.
Twitter is -was- the social network in which JENESAISPOP has accumulated the most users organically, 55,000. A figure that in recent weeks has been reduced due to desertions of users fed up with being manipulated. It is no longer a question of whether information or “fake news” can be verified or contrasted. Verification is just a smokescreen in the face of the massive exposure that this type of extremist and biased information achieves, almost always opinionated in the same direction, appearing on the wall without having anything to do with you or your tastes or your record.
The outlook on the rest of social networks does not look much better. Meta has adapted a verification system similar to X, that is, evil, and will allow, for example, the LGTBIQ+ community to be considered “mentally ill.” A return to the 20th century. In general, Trump’s victory promises to bring an era of darkness and inequality in the world, the epicenter of which will be his immigration policy, denying climate change and resorting to the most vulgar (but apparently effective) propaganda methods. Fearful of the tycoon, large companies like Amazon are already eliminating their programs or websites specialized in diversity, inclusion and equity.
It has been warning for some time that democracy is in danger, and its destabilizing elements lurk on various fronts, from the largest to the smallest, on all scales. They are in front of our eyes.
Not knowing if this has anything to do with it or not, perhaps this forum is the place to also comment that in 2024, a site as mindful as JENESAISPOP, had to spend a considerable part of its budget, not on writing or video post-production, but or in publishing more books, which is what we would have wanted, but in containing repeated attacks from bots, of unknown origin. Many of you will remember constant errors 502 and 504 that we had a hard time identifying. They were denial of service attacks, some simpler (DoS) and others more complex and distributed (DDOS), from which we only knew how to escape thanks to the generous help of our APACHEctl colleagues.
In the process, there were those who argued that these attacks came from China and/or Russia, there were those who said that the IP’s are very manipulable, there were those who proved that the attacks are random on sites of different ideologies, and there are those who believe that we are a target . Nobody knows exactly what is happening, but I know that several colleagues – from websites much larger than ours, to also much smaller ones – are constantly suffering similar attacks. For example, encouraging media outlets to close comments on some or all news items, as a defense mechanism. Nobody will talk about it, but this means that many independent and free media are spending a budget that we barely have, to contain these types of attacks.
Surely the waters will calm down. Trump governed and left, he has returned and, as he has come, he will leave. Although if more things happened in favor of “chaos”, using the words of the Head of State, it will not have been for lack of clues.
